An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People

“The continued influence of settler colonialism and genocide show up when history is retold in a way that celebrates settlers and makes Indigenous peoples disappear from historical records. This practice is sometimes called ‘firsting and lasting.’ You may have seen examples of it. All over North America are places that are described as ‘the first’ settlement, building, or school. [...] On the other hand, stories of the US are also full of instances of the ‘last’ Indians or the last tribes—’the last of the Mohicans,’ ‘Ishi, the last Indian,’ and End of the Trial (a famous sculpture created by James Earl Fraser).” 

A common defense to stories of Indigenous genocide is that those events are in the past with no bearing on today’s citizens. But framing European firsts as innovative and Indigenous peoples as extinct can be a subtle form of White supremacy. This passage also directly addresses young readers, whose educations largely come from this perspective, and asks them to think critically about what they’ve read and seen up to this point.

“Oren Lyons, a member of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs, explains the central ideas of the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace: ‘The first principal is peace. The second principal, equity, justice for the people. And third, the power of the good minds, of the collective powers to be of one mind: unity. […] And the process of discussion, putting aside warfare as a method of reaching decisions, and now using intellect.” 

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s constitution, the Great Law of Peace, demonstrates the political sophistication of early civilizations. The six nations of the confederacy, spread throughout present-day New York, Pennsylvania, and Quebec, maintained decentralized democratic norms in ways that influenced the U.S. Constitution. It also gave women much more political power than non-royal women on other continents, such as the right to distribute corn, speak at councils, and impeach leadership. The Great Law of Peace remains active to this day.

“When Europeans arrived on this continent, they often seemed unaware that many conditions that were useful to them were the result of Indigenous peoples’ stewardship of the land. Some early settlers remarked that in many places they could easily have driven carriages between the trees. Others commented about large clearings in the forests, some with well-tended gardens and cornfields. They did not seem to recognize that for thousands of years Native people have been making roads and clearing spaces to make trading, hunting, and agriculture easier.”

Dunbar-Ortiz defines stewardship as a careful land management that preserves resources for future generations. She argues that Europeans did not stumble onto an unstained land but a transformed infrastructure that already achieved the “sea to shining sea” trading network that future US leaders desired. The chapter ends by comparing the principle of stewardship to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation protests of today, where activists maintain similar principles against energy interests that downplay the environmental risks of their projects.

“Other can imply ‘not like me’ or ‘not like us.’ Many societies, or groups in a society, identify as Us or We and view people outside their group as They or Them. This is a typical human response to recognizing differences that can become a problem when more than one group wants the same resources. Then, the groups may begin to emphasizes the differences and frame them as a threat.” 

The adaptation of Indigenous Peoples’ History includes explanations to help younger readers understand complex issues. This sidebar explains the concept of othering, which depicts a group of people as evil or animal-like to justify cruel treatment. Othering is at the core of White supremacy, genocide, and slavery. Othering does not have to be based on skin color, as the Catholic Church demonized nonbelievers and England exploited evolutionary theories to portray the Irish as an inferior species. Political beliefs, immigration status, gender, and sexual orientation are other common targets.

“Their names and voyages are well known. They are all celebrated as ‘courageous explorers’ or ‘brave conquistadores,’ but their primary motivation was greed. In some places where they waged war on Indigenous peoples, they destroyed magnificent statuary and artworks just to take the gold and silver the artisans used. Explorer and conquistador alike were ultimately seeking gold for themselves and their sponsors.” 

Classrooms often depict the early days of colonization as an Age of Exploration, with goals like a journey to prove the Earth is round or the search for the Fountain of Youth and El Dorado. However, these journeys were done on the commission of European monarchs who wanted the status that came with gold and territory. The Doctrine of Discovery enabled explorers to take these resources through force rather than trade, destroying equally valuable artwork in the process. A form of this continues today when companies build on lands that may contain ancient artifacts, such as Lake Oahe.

“According to Calvin: Humans do not have free will and do not determine the course of their own lives. Everything that happens is the will of God [...] Certain individuals are ‘called’ by God and are among the ‘elect’ [...] Outward good fortune, especially material wealth, is a sign of God’s favor; Obeying lawful authority, even when one disagrees with it, is a sign of being one of the elect.”

John Calvin was a Christian reformist who railed against the religious doctrine of his day and inspired the Puritans and pilgrims. The belief in predestination and a holy covenant fuels American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. Despite their reputation as fundamentalists, Calvinists had tenets that promoted material wealth and labeled poverty as sinful, despite Jesus Christ’s appeals to help the poor. Versions of this prosperity gospel continue to this day, manifested in the religious Right’s criticism of allegedly overgenerous social programs, for example.

“As owners of land, the Ulster Scots could think of themselves as wealthy, as having their own kingdoms to rule over. But in fact, they were not part of the ruling class. The Ulster Scots were, for the most part, foot soldiers in the formation of the North American empire. Their ability to own land made it seem that the new country was a more class-free and democratic society. For people of European ancestry, social class divisions were certainly more fluid in the United States than they had been in Europe, but the United States was never an entirely classless society. Indeed, class mattered a great deal.” 

The Ulster Scots, “settler-soldiers” who assisted England’s colonization of Ireland (59), were the bulwark of colonization further into Indigenous territories and a core part of George Washington’s army. Their Calvinist beliefs and individualist values drove the perception of the U.S. as a land of opportunity in comparison to the highly stratified Europe. However, the Ulster Scots themselves were still part of a class system as they often arrived as indentured servants who worked under harsh conditions for a set period. But they held greater protections than enslaved people, whose masters considered them and their children property for life, and many Ulster Scots abandoned their Puritan values after joining the upper classes.

“‘Could it not be contrived,’ Amherst wrote to a subordinate officer, ‘to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them.’”

British Major General Jeffrey Amherst suggests intentionally spreading smallpox to Indigenous nations during the Seven Years War (1756-1763). New diseases prevented the Pequot and other nations from taking decisive action against Europeans early on. The intentional spread of disease is considered irregular warfare, along with the destruction of food sources and scalping of noncombatant civilians. Now considered an act of genocide, this suggestion demonstrates the ruthlessness of colonization and the limited regard that Europeans had for the original occupants.

“On December 1, 1790, Seneca chiefs sent a letter to George Washington. In it they wrote, ‘When your army entered the Country of the Six Nations, we called you the Town-destroyer and to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the neck of their mothers.’” 

George Washington, or “Conotocarious” to the Seneca, has an honored place in American history as the first president and a dignified military commander. While controversy about Washington usually focuses on his use of enslaved people, he and other Founding Fathers also worked as land surveyors who outlined territory with the intent to sell for profit. That led to the destruction of Indigenous towns and introduced a financial motive for separating from Britain after it forbade colonists from further expansion. Washington did not apply his lauded qualities to existing nations, as he encouraged a brutal invasion into the Ohio Valley as president.

“There is no faith to be placed in their words. They are not like the Indians, who are only enemies while at war, and are friends in peace. They will say to an Indian: ‘My friend, my brother.’ They will take them by the hand, and at the same moment destroy him. And so you will also be treated by them before long. Remember that this day I have warned you to beware of such friends as these. I know the long knives; they are not to be trusted.”

Delaware leader Buckongahelas warned a group of Moravian Delaware at Gnadenhütten in 1781 about taking Europeans at their word. Just a year later, a Pennsylvania militia accused these villages of harboring settler killers and systematically murdered 96 Delaware men, women, and children—despite these people becoming Christian converts and practicing pacifism. This warning also foreshadowed future interactions between Indigenous people and the U.S.: For every sympathetic agent, there were more who sought their destruction.

“The Constitution’s Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, does not mention Indigenous people, but it had a significant impact on them. It reads, ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ This meant that the irregular warfare waged by militias against Indigenous Peoples in the colonial period would continue, approved by the central government and assured by the Second Amendment.” 

Gun rights are among today’s most controversial issues as the need to stop mass shootings by lone gunmen with far-deadlier weapons than those in 1791 clashes with a gun culture that celebrates self-defense and explosive firepower. The framers of the Constitution likely saw the Second Amendment as a means to continue expansion. Militia members outnumbered the regular army of that period, rangers were a profitable profession, and many celebrated the defiance of treaties. Dunbar-Ortiz covers the Second Amendment in more detail in Loaded: A Disarming History.

“It seems likely that the US government knew that the squatters would not abide by the treaty. Indeed, thousands of squatters had already claimed nearly a million acres of land west of the mountains. The Washington administration gave the appearance of wanting to treat tribal nations fairly, but its actions spoke otherwise. Secretary of War Knox advised the squatters’ leaders to continue building in order to attract more illegal settlers.” 

Dunbar-Ortiz uses “squatter,” a person who lives on a property without permission, to emphasize that settlers were not going into unexplored frontiers but taking sovereign lands. Squatters like the Franklinites reasoned that the federal military would ultimately protect them over enforcing tribal treaties, and the Washington administration took advantage of this to expand its territory. Even when the federal government tried to resolve tensions with the Muscogee and Chickamauga nations, it met resistance from the citizens and the Georgia government.

“The emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed that, if they remain within the limits of the States, they must be subject to their laws. In return for their obedience, as individuals, they will, without doubt, be protected in the enjoyment of those possessions which they have improved by their industry.”

Andrew Jackson’s words on the Indian Removal Act give the book an opportunity to teach young readers about political rhetoric. Some speeches that appear to sympathize with marginalized peoples were really designed to convince supporters that harming them was the right thing to do. The book provides two interpretations of this speech. For settlers, it appears that Jackson was being tough but fair by insisting that Indigenous people could remain on their homelands if they adopted American values. For the Cherokee and other nations, who remember Jackson’s own past and the broken promises of other presidents, these were just empty words. 

“Squads of troops were sent to search out with rifle and bayonet every small cabin hidden away in the coves or by the sides of mountain streams, to seize and bring in as prisoners all the occupants, however or wherever they might be found. Families at dinner were startled by the sudden gleam of bayonets in the doorway and rose up to be driven with blows and oaths along the weary miles of trail that led to the stockade [...] A Georgia volunteer, afterward a colonel in the Confederate service, said: ‘I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.’” 

Journalist James Mooney recounts the U.S. Army’s final removal of the Cherokee from their homes in present-day Georgia and Alabama in 1838. The beginning of the Trail of Tears, this account is shocking for the stories of American soldiers taking Cherokee from their homes and off the road by gunpoint, and also for the stories of opportunists who raided towns and gravesites shortly afterward. The decision to remove them during the winter made the long march to Oklahoma even more brutal, leading to roughly 8,000 deaths.

“Although Mexico banned slavery in 1829, many of its land grants in the province of Texas were given to plantation owners from the US who used enslaved workers. Historians commonly refer to them as Anglo-Americans. [...] Eventually a group of these wealthy settlers developed a plot to have Texas secede from Mexico. The plot evolved into a war that included the famous 1836 Battle of the Alamo. The Anglo-American forces lost that battle, but within a month won the decisive battle at San Jacinto, and Mexico gave up the province of Texas.”

In the Battle of the Alamo, 200 Texas separatists at a San Antonio mission withstood 13 days of attacks from a 2,500-soldier Mexican regiment. The soldiers killed all the combatants, including congressman and mythologized frontiersman Davy Crockett. “Remember the Alamo” became a rallying cry during the Mexican-American War, and the state promotes it as a symbol of Texas pride to this day. But straightforward narratives often hide complicated legacies. Indigenous peoples who benefitted from limited Mexican control lost their safe haven, and the US would exploit a similar situation to annex Hawai’i.

“Journalists and popular writers justified US efforts to take land from Mexico in the same way. For example, the poet Walt Whitman wrote during his time as a newspaper editor that ‘miserable, inefficient Mexico’ could not possibly have any role in ‘the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race.’ He claimed that it was ‘the law of the races’ that ‘a superior grade of rats’ would clear out ‘all the minor rats.’ In other words, he believed that ‘Anglo-Saxons’ would eliminate all the supposedly lesser races.” 

Walt Whitman’s journalism would shock readers who primarily read works like Leaves of Grass, which celebrate nature and the human spirit. Whitman’s poetry received praise for its seeming celebration of diversity, including from African-American writers, until his muddled views became more well known. While he supported abolition and immigration, he thought most African and Indigenous people lacked self-determination and were destined for extinction. This social Darwinism comes from a society that provided few opportunities for marginalized groups and shows that even transcendent artists were products of their time (Hutchinson, George and David Drews. “Racial Attitudes.” Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, edited by J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings. New York: Garland Publishing. 1998.)

“Everything the Kiowas had come from the buffalo. . . . Most of all, the buffalo was part of the Kiowa religion. [...] Then the white men hired hunters to do nothing but kill the buffalo. Up and down the plains those men ranged, shooting sometimes as many as a hundred buffalo a day. Behind them came the skinners with their wagons. They piled the hides and bones into the wagons until they were full [. . .] Sometimes there would be a pile of bones as high as a man, stretching a mile along the railroad track.” 

This account from a Kiowa woman reflects the dual purpose of William Sherman’s buffalo hunts: to deprive Great Plains nations of a key resource and to clear the path for railroad systems. Losing the buffalo would force tribes to adopt stationary farming, and Indigenous forces targeted slaughterhouses during conflicts. Meanwhile, the Army relied on commercial hunters like William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who hosted hunting trips and Wild West shows for urban tourists. Out of an estimated 30 million buffalo, only a few hundred remained by the 1880s. Repopulation efforts since then helped bring the population back to about 25,000. (Phippen, J. Weston. “Kill Every Buffalo You Can! Every Dead Buffalo Is an Indian Gone.” The Atlantic. 13 May 2016.)

“During the night, Colonel James Forsyth and the Seventh Calvary, Custer’s old regiment, arrived. These soldiers had not forgotten that relatives of these starving, unnamed refugees had killed Custer and his troops. They aimed four Hotchkiss machine guns at the camp. The following morning, December 29, 1890, the soldiers brought the captive men out from their tipis and tents and called for all weapons to be turned in. One young man did not want to part with his Winchester rifle and, when the soldiers grabbed him, the rifle fired a shot in the air. Soldiers opened fire with rifles and the Hotchkiss guns. When the shooting ended, the troops had killed almost three hundred Sioux, including Big Foot, and 25 of their fellow soldiers.”

Wounded Knee encompasses several focal points in Indigenous history. Big Foot and his Lakota group planned to surrender before the U.S. Army intercepted him. A separate Lakota group assisted in killing George Armstrong Custer’s troop before it could attack a Sioux and Cheyenne encampment, and the positioning of the Seventh Calvary’s weapons ensured the maximum number of deaths during the chaos. This was also at the height of the Ghost Dance movement, which left government forces on edge in the face of Indigenous unity. In 1973, eight decades later, a nearly three-month standoff at Wounded Knee between Indigenous activists and the FBI over a controversial tribal councilman left two Native men dead.

“They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must get civilized. I remember that word too. It means ‘be like the white man.’ I am willing to be like the white man, but I did not believe the Indians’ ways were wrong. But they kept teaching us for seven years. And the books told how bad the Indians have been to the white men—burning their towns and killing their women and children. But I have seen white men do that to Indians.” 

Philanthropist Edwin Embree attributes this quote to Sun Elk, the first Taos Pueblo child to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, though the book notes that Sun Elk’s identity and the quote’s translation is disputed. What it does depict is how U.S. government boarding schools attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into American culture. This was in accordance with Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis that Native cultures were only obstacles to the formation of American democracy, a perspective whose influence continued into modern times. Despite recognizing the hypocrisy of the teachings, Sun Elk learned to mock his ancestors’ traditions.

“Under our treaties with the United States of America, we are a distinct race, nation and people owning and occupying and governing the lands of our ancestors and under the protection of the federal government […] Under these treaties with the USA we do not consider the Act of June 2, 1924 as applying to the Six Nations Confederacy.” 

This is from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy’s 1940 rejection to the Indian Citizenship Act, which expanded US citizenship and voting rights to all Indigenous communities. Voting in US elections creates the opportunity to elect politicians who will provide fairer treatment. For example, Deb Haaland of the Laguna Pueblo is the first female Indigenous congresswoman and a nominee to become the first Indigenous person to head the Department of the Interior, which operates the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Chavez, Aliyah. “‘I’ll Be Fierce for all of Us’.” Indian Country Today, 2020). The Haudenosaunee contend that this right implies that tribes are subservient to the United States and damages its status as an independent nation. Some states blocked Indigenous voting rights for years after the act’s passage. In more recent times, North Dakota enacted voter ID rules that harmed Indigenous voting rights because reservation residents rarely used street addresses (Booker, Brakkton. “North Dakota, Native American Tribes Settle Voter ID Lawsuits” NPR. 14 February 2020).

“It was sickening to see American Indians get up and tell obvious lies about how well the federal government was treating them. . . . What was happening was these tribal officials, or finks, were just going into that gear of appealing to Great White Father again.” 

College student and Ponca citizen Clyde Warrior criticizes the submissive tone of the 1961 conference that led to the Declaration of Indian Purpose. The 1960s marked a new era of civil rights activism, but many movements also had tensions between older leadership and younger participants who wanted a more confrontational stance. That same year, student activists formed the National Indian Youth Council, which contributed to the Pacific Northwest fishing protests, the Trail of Broken Treaties, and other efforts. The “Proclamation of the Indians of All Tribes” also reflects this sentiment with a mocking reversal of American exceptionalism rhetoric.

“Welfare workers and social workers who are handling child welfare caseloads use any means available, whether legal or illegal, coercive or cajoling or whatever, to get the children away from mothers they think are not fit. In many cases they were lied to, they were given documents to sign and they were deceived about the contents of the documents.” 

U.S. Senator James Abourezk of the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs outlines the prejudices within child welfare systems nationwide, which frequently place Indigenous children in non-Indigenous households and prevent qualifying parents from regaining custody. This can be a form of genocide, and 25 percent to 35 percent of Native children endured this separation before the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. This law set minimal federal standards for removing children and prioritized Indigenous families for foster parents. Dunbar-Ortiz notes that language in the ICWA like “stability and security of Indian Tribes” demonstrates an understanding that sovereign nations need their children to remain citizens (191).

“Do we want to tell something that’s so important and sacred to us to a pipeline company? But it’s important for you guys to know the history and our connection to the area. . . . Today Chief Big Head’s descendants are in the room, Chief Little Soldier’s, and as well as many of the descendants of a lot of other chiefs. And for us to officially endorse or accept a proposal that would negatively impact our cultural sites, our prayer sites, our duties and responsibilities as stewards of the land [...] goes against the very intent of our office in fighting and protecting and preserving what we have here, what we have left for our people and our children.”

While outlining the historical importance of Lake Oahe as the site of an 1863 massacre, Tribal Historical Preservation Officer Waste Win Young explains the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation’s moral imperative to resist the development of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Construction companies often place hazardous facilities near disadvantaged communities, sidestep safeguards like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and frame their projects as economically necessary. To protect a vital spiritual landmark and water resource, the Sioux used legal tools and on-the-ground protests to resist DAPL’s development in ways that drew international attention. The use of the phrase “stewards of the land” also calls back to Dunbar-Ortiz’s discussion of Indigenous stewardship in Chapter 2.