xiv Author’s Note

Chippewa). I have used some of the correct names combined with

more familiar usages, such as “Sioux” and “Navajo.” Except in ma

terial that is quoted, I don’t use the term “tribe.” “Community,”

INTRODUCTION “people,” and “nation” are used instead and

interchangeably. I also

refrain from using “America” and “American” when referring only

to the United States and its citizens. Those blatantly imperialistic

terms annoy people in the rest of the Western Hemisphere, who are, TH I S LAN D

after all, also Americans. I use “United States” as a noun and “US”

as an adjective to refer to the country and “US Americans” for its

We are here to educate, not forgive. citizens. We are here to enlighten, not accuse.

—Willie Johns, Brighton Seminole Reservation, Florida

Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of America—”from California . . . to the Gulf Stream waters”—are interred the bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American Indians.1 They cry out for their stories to be heard through their de scendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded and how it came to be as it is today. It should not have happened that the great civilizations of the

Western Hemisphere, the very evidence of the Western Hemisphere, were wantonly destroyed, the gradual progress of humanity inter rupted and set upon a path of greed and destruction.2 Choices were made that forged that path toward destruction of life itself—the moment in which we now live and die as our planet shrivels, over heated. To learn and know this history is both a necessity and a responsibility to the ancestors and descendants of all parties. What historian David Chang has written about the land that

became Oklahoma applies to the whole United States: “Nation, race, and class converged in land.”3 Everything in US history is about the

its wildlife; who invaded and stole it; how it became a commod ity (“real estate”) broken into pieces to be bought and sold on the market.

land—who oversaw and cultivated it, fished its waters, maintained

US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, though

often termed “racist” or “discrim inatory,” are rarely depicted as

what they are: classic cases of imp erialism and a particular form of

colonialism—settler colonialism. A s anthropologist Patrick Wolfe

writes, “The question ofgenocide is never far from discussions ofset

tler colonialism. Land is life—or, at least, land is necessary for life.”4

The history of the United States is a history of settler colonial

ism—the founding of a state based o n the ideology of white su

premacy, the widespread practice of A frican slavery, and a policy

of genocide and land theft. Those who seek history with an upbeat

ending, a history of redemption and rec onciliation, may look around

and observe that such a conclusion is not visible, not even in utopian

dreams of a better society. Writing US history from an Indigenous

peoples’ perspective re

quires rethinking the consensual natio nal narrative. That narrative

is wrong or deficient, not in its facts, da tes, or details but rather in

its essence. Inherent in the myth we’ve b een taught is an embrace of

settler colonialism and genocide. The m yth persists, not for a lack

of free speech or poverty of informatio n but rather for an absence

of motivation to ask questions that challe nge the core of the scripted

narrative of the origin story. How mig ht acknowledging the reality

of US history work to transform society? T hat is the central question

this book pursues. Teaching Native American studies, I a

lways begin with a sim

ple exercise. I ask students to quickly draw a rough outline of the

United States at the time it gained inde pendence from Britain. In

variably most draw the approximate pr esent shape of the United

States from the Atlantic to the Pacific—t he continental territory not

fully appropriated until a century after ind ependence. What became

independent in 1783 were the thirteen B ritish colonies hugging the

Atlantic shore. When called on this, st udents are embarrassed be

cause they know better. I assure them th at they are not alone. I call

this a Rorschach test of unconscious “m anifest destiny,” embedded

in the minds of nearly everyone in the U nited States and around the

world. This test reflects the seeming ine vitability of US extent and

power, its destiny, with an implication t hat the continent had previ

ously been terra nutlius, a land without people.

Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your La nd” celebrates that the

land belongs to everyone, reflecting the unconscious manifest des tiny we live with. But the extension of the United States from sea to shining sea was the intention and design of the country’s founders. “Free” land was the magnet that attracted European settlers. Many were slave owners who desired limitless land for lucrative cash crops. After the War for indepenäe but preceding the writing of the US Constitution, the Continental Congress produced the Nortlwest Ordinance This was the first law of the incipient republic, revealing the motive for those desiring independence It was the blueprint for gobbling up the Indian Territory (“Ohio Coun try”) on the other side of the Appalachians and Alleghenies Britain had made settlement there illegal with the Proclamation of ‘763. in 180i, PresidentJefferson aptly described the new settIerstate’s

intentions for horizontal and vertical continental expansion, stating: “However our present interests may restrain us within our own lim its, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover the whole northern if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar laws.” This vision ofmanifest destiny found form a few years later in the Monroe Doctrine, signaling the intention of annexing or domi nating former Spanish colonial territories in the Americas and the Pa cific, which would be put into practice during the rest of the century. Origin narratives form the vital core of a people’s unifying iden

tity and of the values that guide them. In the United States, the founding and development of the settler-state in volves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land. That part of the origin story is supported and reinforced by the Columbus myth and the “Doctrine of Discovery.” According to a series of latefifteenthcentury papal bulls, European nations acquired title to the lands they “discovered” and the Indig enous inhabitants lost their natural right to that land after Europeam arrived and claimed jt. As law professor Robert A. Williamsobserves about the Doctrine of Discovery:

Responding to the requirem5 of a paradoxical age of Re naissance and Inquisitj the West’s first modern discourses

of conquest articulated a vision of all humankind un

ited

under a rule of law discov erable solely by human reas

on. Un

fortunately for the Amer ican Indian, the West’s first t

entative

steps towards this noble v ision of a Law of Nations co

ntained

a mandate for Europe’s sub jugation of all peoples whose

radi

cal divergence from Europ ean-derived norms of right co

nduct

signified their need for conq uest and remediation.6

The Columbus myth sugg ests that from US indepen

dence on

ward, colonial settlers saw th emselves as part of a world

system of

colonization. “Columbia,” th e poetic, Latinate name used

in refer

ence to the United States f rom its founding throughou

t the nine

teenth century, was based o n the name of Christopher C

olumbus.

The “Land of Columbus” wa s—and still is—represented b

y the im

age of a woman in sculpture s and paintings, by instituti

ons such as

Columbia University, and by countless place names, incl

uding that

of the national capital, the D istrict of Columbia.7 The 179

$ hymn

“Hail, Columbia” was the e arly national anthem and i

s now used

whenever the vice president of the United States makes a

public ap

pearance, and Columbus Da y is still a federal holiday d

espite Co

lumbus never having set foot o n the continent claimed by t

he United

States. Traditionally, historians of the

United States hoping to have suc

cessful careers in academia a nd to author lucrative school

textbooks

became protectors of this or igin myth. With the cultural

upheavals

in the academic world duri ng the 196os, engendered by

the civil

rights movement and stude nt activism, historians came

to call for

objectivity and fairness in r evising interpretations of U

S history.

They warned against mor alizing, urging instead a dis

passionate

and culturally relative appr oach. Historian Bernard She

ehan, in an

influential essay, called for a “cultural conflict” understan

ding of

Native—Euro-American rela tions in the early United State

s, writing

that this approach “diffuses the locus of guilt.”8 In strivin

g for “bal

ance,” however, historians s pouted platitudes: “There w

ere good

and bad people on both sides .” “American culture is an

amalgama

tion of all its ethnic groups.” “A frontier is a zone of inte

raction be

tween cultures, not merely ad vancing European settlemen

ts.”

t Introduct0. This Land

Later, trendy postmodernist studies insisted on Indigenous “agency” under the guise of individual and collective empowerment, making the casualties of colonialism responsible for their Own de mise. Perhaps worst of all, some claimed (and still claim) that the colonizer and colonized experienced an “encounter” and engaged in “dialogue,” thereby masking reality with justiflcatio5 and ratio nalizations_in short, apologies for one-sided robbery and murder. In focusing on “cultural change” and “conflict between cultures,” these studies avoid fundamental questions about the formation of the United States and its implications for the present and future. This approach to history allows one to safely put aside present re sponsibility for continued harm done by that past and the questions of reparations, restitution, and reordering society.9 Multiculturalism became the cutting edge of post-civilrights

movement US history revisionism. For this scheme to work_and affirm US historical Progress__Indige05 nations and communities had to be left out of the picture. As territorially and treaty-based peoples in North America, they did not fit the grid of multicultur alism but were included by transforming them into an inchoate oppressed racial group, while colonized Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans were dissolved into another such group, variously called “Hispanic” or “Latino.” The multicultural approach empha sized the “contributions” of individuals from oppressed groups to the country’s assumed greatnes Indigenous peoples were thus cred ited with corn, beans, buckskin, log cabins, parkas, maple syrup, canoes, hundreds of place names, Thanksgiving and even the con cepts of democracy and federalism But this idea of the gift-giving Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the United States is an insidious smoke screen meant to obscure the fact that the very existence of the country is a result of the looting of an entire continent and its resources. The fundamental unresolved issues of Indigeno lands, treaties, and sovereignty could not but scuttle the premises ofmulticulturajjsm With multiculturaljsm manifest destiny Won the day. As an

example, in ‘994, Prentice Hall (part of Pearson Education) pub lished a new collegeeJ US history textbook, authored by four members of a new generati0 of revisionist historians. These radical

4 An Indigenous People s’ History of the United Sta

tes

U

6 An Indigenous Peopl es’ History of the United

States

social historians are all brilliant scholars with p

osts in prestigious

universities. The book’s title reflects the intent o

f its authors and

publisher: Out ofMany : A History ofthe Ame

rican People. The ori

gin story of a supposed ly unitary nation, albei

t now multicultural,

remained intact. The o riginal cover design feat

ured a multicolored

woven fabric—this ima ge meant to stand in plac

e of the discredited

“melting pot.” Inside, fa cing the title page, was a

photograph of a

Navajo woman, dressed formally in velvet and ad

orned with heavy

sterling silver and turqu oise jewelry. With a t

raditional Navajo

dwelling, a hogan, in the background, the woman w

as shown kneel

ing in front of a tradit ional loom, weaving a n

early finished rug.

The design? The Stars a nd Stripes! The authors,

upon hearing my

objection and explanation that Navajo weavers ma

ke their livings

off commissioned work th at includes the desired de

sign, responded:

“But it’s a real photograp h.” To the authors’ cred

it, in the second

edition they replaced the cover photograph and rem

oved the Navajo

picture inside, although the narrative text remains

unchanged.

Awareness of the settler -colonialist context of U

S history writ

ing is essential if one is to avoid the laziness of th

e default position

and the trap of a mytho logical unconscious belie

f in manifest des

tiny. The form of colonia lism that the Indigenous

peoples of North

America have experienced was modern from the be

ginning: the ex

pansion of European cor porations, backed by go

vernment armies,

into foreign areas, with s ubsequent expropriation

of lands and re

sources. Settler colonialis m is a genocidal policy. N

ative nations and

communities, while strug gling to maintain fundame

ntal values and

collectivity, have from th e beginning resisted mod

ern colonialism

using both defensive and offensive techniques, incl

uding the mod

ern forms of armed resis tance of national liberatio

n movements and

what now is called terror ism. In every instance the

y have fought for

survival as peoples. The objective of US colonialis

t authorities was

to terminate their existen ce as peoples—not as ran

dom individuals.

This is the very definition of modern genocide as c

ontrasted with

premodern instances of ex treme violence that did n

ot have the goal

of extinction. The United States as a socioeconomic

and political

entity is a result of this cen turies-long and ongoing c

olonial process.

r Introduction. This Land

Today’s Indigenous nations and communities are societies formed by their resistance to colonialism through which they have carried their practices and histories. It is breathtaking, but no miracle, that they have survived as peoples. To say that the United States is a colonialist settIerstate is not

to make an accusation but rather to face historical reality, without which consideration not much in US history makes sense, unless Indigenous peoples are erased. But Indigenous nations, through re sistance, have survived and bear Witness to this history. In the era of worldwide decolonization in the second half of the twentieth cen tury, the former colonial Powers and their intellectual apologists mounted a counterforce often called neocolonialism, from which multiculturalism and pOStmodernjsm emerged. Although much revisionist US history reflects neocolonialist strategY_an attempt to accommodate new realities in order to retain the dominance……

neocolonialist methods signal victory for the colonized. Such ap proaches pry off a lid long kept tightly fastened. One result has been the presence of significant numbers of Indigenous scholars in US universities who are changing the terms of analysis. The main chal lenge for scholars in revising us history in the context ofcolonialism is not lack of information nor is it one of methodology. Certainly difficulties with documentation are no more problematic than they are in any other area of research. Rather, the source of the problems has been the refusal or inability of US historians to comprehend the nature of their Own history, US history. The fundamental problem is the absence of the colonial framework. Through economic penetration of Indigenous societies, the Eu

ropean and EuroAmerican colonial Powers created economic de pendency and imbalance of trade, then incorporated the Indigenous nations into spheres of influence and controlled them indirectly or as protectorates with indispensable use of Christian missionaries and alcohol In the case ofu settler colonialism, land was the pri mary commodity With such obvious indicators of colonialism at Work, why should so many interpretations of US politicaleconomic develop be convoluted and obscure, avoiding the obvious? To 5O extent the twentiethcentury emergence of the field of “US

‘llriH

West” or “Borderlands” h istory has been forced into a

n incomplete

and flawed settler-colonia list framework. The father

of that field of

history, Frederick Jackson Turner, confessed as much in

1901: “Our

colonial system did not st art with the Spanish War [1

898]; the U.S.

had had a colonial histo ry and policy from the be

ginning of the

Republic; but they have been hidden under the phraseolo

gy of ‘inter

state migration’ and ‘territ orial organization.”10

Settler colonialism, as an in stitution or system, requires

viotence

or the threat of violence to attain its goals. People do n

ot hand over

their land, resources, child ren, and futures without a f

ight, and that

fight is met with violence. In employing the force nec

essary to ac

complish its expansionist go als, a colonizing regime ins

titutionalizes

violence. The notion that s ettler-indigenous conflict is

an inevitable

product of cultural differe nces and misunderstanding

s, or that vio

lence was committed equa lly by the colonized and th

e colonizer,

blurs the nature of the histo rical processes. Euro-Ameri

can colonial

ism, an aspect of the capita list economic globalization

, had from its

beginnings a genocidal tende ncy.

The term “genocide” was c oined following the Shoah

, or Ho

locaust, and its prohibition was enshrined in the Unite

d Nations

convention adopted in 194$: the UN Convention on the P

revention

and Punishment of the Crim e of Genocide. The conven

tion is not

retroactive but is applicable to US-Indigenous relations s

ince 198$,

when the US Senate ratified it. The terms of the genocid

e convention

are also useful tools for his torical analysis of the effects

of colonial

ism in any era. In the conv ention, any one of five acts i

s considered

genocide if “committed wit h intent to destroy, in whole

or in part, a

national, ethnical, racial or religious group”:

killing members of the grou p;

causing serious bodily or me ntal harm to members of the

group;

deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life

calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whol

e

or in part; imposing measures intended

to prevent births within the

group; forcibly transferring children o

f the group to another group. 11

In the 199os, the term “ethnic cleansing” became a useful descrip tive term for genocide. US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be

understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples, from the colonial pe riod through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of In digenous peoples from their ancestral territories and removals of Indigenous children to military-IIke boarding schools. The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebra tion of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the con sciousness of US Americans. Settler colonialism is inherently genocidal in terms of the geno

cide convention. In the case of the British North American colo nies and the United States, not Only extermination and removal were practiced but also the disappearing of the prior existence of Indigenous peoplesand this continues to be perpetuated in local histories, Anishjnaabe (Ojibwe) historian Jean O’Brien names this practice of writing Indians out of existence “firsting and lasting.” All over the continent, local histories monuments, and signage nar rate the story of first settlement: the founder(s), the first school, first dwelling, first everything, as if there had never been occupants who thrived in those places before Euro-Americans. On the other hand, the national narrative tells of “last” Indians or last tribes, such as “the last of the Mohicans” “Ishi, the last Indian,” and End of the Trail, as a famous sculpture by James Earle Fraser is titled. 12

Documented policies of genocide on the part of US administra tions can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jackso nian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern California; the post—Civil War era of the so-called Indian wars in the Great Plains; and the 195os termination period, all of which are discussed in the following chapters. Cases of genocide carried out as Policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the oral histories of Indigenous communities. An example from 1873 is typical with General William I. Sherman writing, “We must act With Vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their

8 An Indigenous Peoples’ H istory of the United States j Introduction. This Land 9

extermination, men, women and children . . during an assault,

the soldiers can not pause to distin guish between male and female,

or even discriminate as to age.”13 As Patrick Wolfe has noted, the

peculiarity of settler colonialism i s that the goal is elimination of

Indigenous populations in order to make land available to settlers.

That project is not limited to gove rnment policy, but rather involves

all kinds of agencies, voluntary mi litias, and the settlers themselves

acting on their own.’4 In the wake of the US 195os term

ination and relocation poli

cies, a pan-Indigenous movement aro se in tandem with the power

ful African American civil rights m ovement and the broad-based

social justice and antiwar movement s of the 196os. The Indigenous

rights movement succeeded in reve rsing the US termination poi

icy. However, repression, armed att acks, and legislative attempts

to undo treaty rights began again i n the late 1970s, giving rise to

the international Indigenous moveme nt, which greatly broadened

the support for Indigenous sovereignt y and territorial rights in the

United States. The early twenty-first century has s

een increased exploitation

of energy resources begetting new pressures on Indigenous lands.

Exploitation by the largest corporat ions, often in collusion with

politicians at local, state, and federal levels, and even within some

Indigenous governments, could spell a final demise for Indigenous

land bases and resources. Strengthenin g Indigenous sovereignty and

self-determination to prevent that r esult will take general public

outrage and demand, which in turn will require that the general

population, those descended from se ttlers and immigrants, know

their history and assume responsibilit y. Resistance to these power

ful corporate forces continues to have profound implications for US

socioeconomic and political develop ment and the future.

There are more than five hundred fed erally recognized Indigenous

communities and nations, comprisi ng nearly three million people

in the United States. These are the d escendants of the fifteen mil

lion original inhabitants of the land, the majority of whom were

farmers who lived in towns. The US establishment of a system of

I Introduction: This Land Indian reservations stemmed from a long British colonial practice in the Americas. In the era of US treaty-making from independence to 1871, the concept of the reservation was one of the Indigenous nation reserving a narrowed land base from a much larger one in ex change for US governme protection from settlers and the provision of social services. In the late nineteenth century, as Indigenous resis tance was weakened, the concept of the reservation changed to one of land being carved out of the public domain of the United States as a benevolent gesture, a “gift” to the Indigenous peoples. Rheto ric changed so that reservations were said to have been “given” or “created” for Indians. With this shift, Indian reservations came to be seen as enclaves within stat’ boundaries. Despite the political and economic reality, the impression to many Was that Indigenous people were taking a free ride on Public domain. Beyond the land bases within the limits of the 310 federally rec

ognized reservationsamong 554 Indigenous groupsJndigen05 land, water, and resource rights extend to all federally acknowl edged Indigenous communities within the borders of the United States. This is the case whether “within the original or subsequently acquired territory thereof, and whether within or without the limits of a state,” and includes all allotments as well as rightsofway run ning to and from them.’s Not all the federally recognized Indigenous nations have land bases beyond government buildings, and the lands of some Native nations, including those of the Sioux in the Dakotas and Minnesota and the Ojibwes in Minnesota, have been parceled into multiple reservations, while some fifty Indigenous nations that had been removed to Oklahoma were entirely alJotteddivided by the federal government into individual Nativeowned parcels. Attor ney Walter R. Echo-Hawk writes:

In 1881, Indian landholdings in the United States had plum meted to 156 million acres. By 1934, only about 50 million acres remained (an area the size of idaho and Washington)as a result of the General Allotment Act of 1887. During World War II, the governen took 500,000 more acres for Thilitary Use. Over one hundred tribes, bands, and Rancherias

10 An Indigenous Peoples’ History o f the United States

12 An Indigenous Peoples’ History ofthe United States

relinquished their lands und er various acts of Congress d

uring

the termination era of the 1 95os. By 1955, the indigenous

land

base had shrunk to just 2. 3 percent of its original siz

e.’6

As a result of federal land sales, seizures, and allotment

s, most

reservations are severely fragmented. Each parcel of

tribal, trust,

and privately held land is a separate enclave under m

ultiple laws

and jurisdictions. The Din e (Navajo) Nation has the

largest con

temporary contiguous land base among Native nations:

nearly six

teen million acres, or nearly twenty-five thousand squar

e miles, the

size of West Virginia. Each of twelve other reservations

is larger

than Rhode Island, which comprises nearly eight hun

dred thou

sand acres, or twelve hundred square miles, and each of ni

ne other

reservations is larger than D elaware, which covers nearly

a million

and a half acres, or two thou sand square miles. Other re

servations

have land bases of fewer th an thirty-two thousand acr

es, or fifty

square miles)7 A number of i ndependent nation-states wi

th seats in

the United Nations have less territory and smaller populat

ions than

some Indigenous nations of N orth America.

FollowingWorld War II, the U nited States was atwarwith m

uch of

the world, just as it was at w ar with the Indigenous people

s of North

America in the nineteenth c entury. This was total war,

demand

ing that the enemy surrender unconditionally or face anni

hilation.

Perhaps it was inevitable th at the earlier wars against

Indigenous

peoples, if not acknowledged and repudiated, ultimately wo

uld in

clude the world. According to the origin narrative, the Un

ited States

was born of rebellion agai nst oppression—against em

pire—and

thus is the product of the f irst anticolonial revolution f

or national

liberation. The narrative flow s from that fallacy: the bro

adening

and deepening of democracy; the Civil War and the ensuin

g “second

revolution,” which ended sla very; the twentieth-century m

ission to

save Europe from itself—twi ce; and the ultimately triump

hant fight

against the scourge of commun ism, with the United States i

nheriting

the difficult and burdensome task of keeping order in the

world. It’s

a narrative of progress. The 1 960s social revolutions, ignit

ed by the

African American liberation movement, complicated the

origin nar

1fltOthtcj01j: This Land 13

rative, but its structure and periodization have been left intact. After the 196os, historians incorporated women, African Americans, an

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