Although the specific circumstances of their formation, history, and living conditions vary, some characteristics are relatively common among reserves created during the 19th and early 20th centuries. For instance, they were generally created through treaty agreements or by colonial decree and consistently represented an area much smaller than, and often at a great distance from, a given group's traditional territory. In addition, early reserves were usually placed on economically marginal land—that is, in areas that were very dry, wet, steep, or remote. Finally, their formation was typically accompanied by the creation of pass laws that prohibited indigenous residents from traveling outside the reservation. These and other rules, such as those prohibiting the possession of weapons, were designed to pacify resident populations and to prevent the formation of inter-reserve coalitions.

The territories in question were almost always opened eventually, although the legal mechanisms for doing so varied from place to place. In some cases laws were passed that caused a certain amount of reserve land to be allotted to each indigenous adult or household, with the remainder made available to those who were not aboriginal. Another method required that indigenous residents prove a certain degree of genetic relatedness to the original signatories of a treaty. Persons with less than the required degree of relatedness, or blood quantum (often, though not exclusively, the equivalent of having a grandparent or great-grandparent from the group), were then disenfranchised of their land. As with allotment, any “surplus” land made available through this mechanism would subsequently be opened for sale to outsiders. These and other schemes reduced the size of most reservations considerably, in some cases by more than 50 percent. When combined with the pass laws noted earlier, land cessions often rendered reserves too small to support the traditional economies of the resident hunting-and-gathering (hunting and gathering culture), horticultural, and pastoral cultures. This typically pushed native peoples toward the adoption of colonial forms of food production, thus quickening the pace of cultural assimilation.

In some reservation communities—but by no means all—out-migration among those seeking an education or employment has combined with slow local development to foster high rates of poverty, substance abuse, and violence. However, a number of forces also counter these tendencies, most notably the efforts of a wide variety of indigenous professionals and activists who work to improve the economic, physical, and social health of their communities. In addition, many who out-migrate continue to consider a given reservation to be their true home and help to support its residents by providing them with financial and other forms of assistance.