One of my motivations for reading these books at this point in time was current events in the Middle East, though I think I had started reading The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee before October 7, 2023. The current situation is not identical to the U.S. genocide of North American Indigenous people, but there is enough similarity to make me close my eyes in pain every day.
This is one tweet that gets the idea across:
People who don’t understand how America committed genocide against Natives so successfully should look at the tactics being used against Gazans. They come for your kids and family. They surround you and starve you, cut off from all support. And they talk about God while doing it.
cheryl @dangitbird
Of course, the Israeli Defense Force says it's countering Hamas's attack, and preventing future ones, but that is what the U.S. military said in the 19th century, and what American militias, "Indian fighters," said when they wiped out Indigenous villages and killed women and children. And they didn't have missiles and an air force, like the IDF.
Who started it, and what counts as out-sized retribution instead of defense?
For this post, I'm going to deal with a combination of Treuer's chapter 1 (through 1890) and Dunbar-Ortiz's main narrative through the same year (Wounded Knee). This is a very brief retelling of their histories.
Dunbar-Ortiz sets out what the Western Hemisphere's continents were like, pre-1492: their population size and distribution, agriculture, governance, trade, various peoples and their locations. The people didn't practice animal husbandry, but game management. They managed the woodlands and had domesticated crop foods, some very widely spread through trade (corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, potatoes).
Treuer describes archaeological findings that date back 19,000 years, close to 10,000 years before the Bering land bridge existed. Then various tribal peoples and cultures emerged. Both writers describe how tribes amalgamated in the face of European pressure from disease, warfare, and settlement, at first in the Southeast and later in the Plains. In talking about the Great Lakes area and Ohio, Treuer describes how the influx of Indigenous refugees from the East was disruptive to life before European settlers even arrived (p. 45).
Dunbar-Ortiz describes how enclosure in England in the 16th century impoverished many people and sent waves of settlers and indentured servant-settlers toward the promise of commodified land. She consistently uses the term squatters for settlers, which is consistent with the promised perspective in the title of her book. She emphasizes that the "free land" of the frontier was an escape valve against uprisings among the new immigrants and lower classes in the eastern parts of the U.S.:
The sacred status of property in the forms of land taken from Indigenous farmers and of Africans as chattel was seeded into the drive for Anglo-American independence from Britain and the founding of the United States (p. 35).
The mistaken belief that Indigenous people were "hardly using" the land persists to this day. The Puritan work-ethic holds that perceived under-use to be unforgivable.
North America was no wilderness, however. If it was "undeveloped, without roads, and uncultivated, it might still be so, for the European colonists could not have survived. They appropriated what had already been created by Indigenous civilizations" (Dunbar-Ortiz, p. 46). Europeans of that time did not have the capacity to maintain an outpost that far from home with their own resources (and barely could do it with the resources that were available in North America). They were "Incapable of conquering a true wilderness" in the words of historian Francis Jennings (p. 47) — but they were well trained in conquering other people.
The English military leaders of the early colonies had all fought religious wars in Europe (Standish, Smith, Mason, Underhill), where they burned villages and fields and killed unarmed people.
In the 18th century, Scots-Irish Protestant settlers, displaced from Ulster, were the "shock troops of the 'westward movement' in North America" (p. 52). Many of these soldier-settlers came first to Pennsylvania, then spread to the South and the backcountry along the western border of the Appalachians, a human wall, squatting on unceded Indigenous territory. They were Calvinists (Presbyterians). They considered themselves to be authentic patriots, making blood sacrifice for land. They were both Indian fighters and farmers. But the land they fought for became a commodity that was sold to planters, as the moved onward.
Reading this section, I found myself in mental tug-of-war with all the things I've read from settlers'/squatters' (colonists') perspectives. Books like Calico Captive, which I loved as a young teen, or even the first flashback scene of Little Big Man. Who is the "good guy" and the "bad guy"? Dunbar-Ortiz frequently refers to a book by historian John Grenier on the first 200 years of colonial and American warfare, who argues
"rather than racism leading to violence, the reverse occurred: the out-of-control momentum of extreme violence of unlimited warfare fueled race hatred. Successive generations of Americans, both soldiers and civilians, made the killing of Indian men, women, and children a defining element of their first military tradition and thereby part of a shared American identity. Indeed, only after seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Americans made the first way of war a key to being a white American could later generations of 'Indian haters,' men like Andrew Jackson, turn the Indian wars into race wars (p. 59).
The Seven Years War in North America (the French and Indian War), 1754-1763, "British colonial militias consisted largely of frontier Scots-Irish settlers who wanted access to Indigenous farmland in the Ohio Valley region" (p. 53). British victory in that war resulted in Britain proclaiming that its subjects should not move west of the Allegheny-Appalachian mountains, but they did anyway, with even more squatters moving west. The British didn't enforce the rule, and that tension was part of the push toward independence from Britain. Land speculation was rampant, providing even more financial incentive to take Indigenous land.
Sometimes tribes would ally with the British against the settler squatters, because it was better to work with a distant power than a nearby one. If you ever wondered about that part of the Declaration of Independence, where it says about King George...
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
...this is the kind of thing it's talking about. The militias at the core meaning of the Second Amendment are based in Indian-fighting as well, in both the North and South. (Their use in slave patrols in the South is better known.) That was the "security of a free State" that the amendment referred to.
In general, the Land Ordinance of 1785, then later the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, set up a procedure for how land was acquired and how statehood was achieved. Indian land was auctioned to the highest bidder... then "annexation via military occupation, territorial status, and finally statehood. Conditions for statehood would be achieved when the the settlers outnumbered the Indigenous population" (Dunbar-Ortiz, p. 124). So white people who wanted their territories to become states were motivated to wipe out as many Native people as possible, and bring as many settlers as possible.
The post-Revolutionary period in Ohio and Indiana is a detailed history of destruction and death that I only vaguely learned about in school. The name "Tippecanoe" is one of the few things I remember, but not why, other than its association with William Henry Harrison. I knew that the name Miami, as in the University located in Ohio, comes from a tribe. I didn't remember that Tecumseh* was a Shawnee leader there of a pan-Indigenous movement from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, fighting to prevent settlers. He allied the confederacy of tribes with the British in the incipient War of 1812 after the U.S. destroyed Prophetstown, the village of Tecumseh's brother, which was located next to the Tippecanoe River. The battles raged back and forth until Tecumseh was killed near Detroit in 1813, which ended the confederacy of tribes he had worked to create.
Andrew Jackson was a child of the many Scots-Irish immigrants, orphaned as a teenager during the Revolution. With a law degree and working as a young man on "disputed land claims, he acquired a plantation near Nashville worked by 150 slaves" before he was 30 (p. 97). He merged many roles: land speculator, enslaver and forced-labor-camp-owner, judge, and militia leader (i.e., Indian-killer). The lands Jackson and his forces "cleared" of their rightful inhabitants became slave states: Alabama, Mississippi, then Florida.
Jefferson was the thinker in the early years of the century, Jackson was the doer of populist democracy / white supremacy and colonialism. Treuer quotes Jefferson's thoughts on methods for dealing with Indigenous nations, which boiled down to debt, dependency, threats, and force (p. 34). Jefferson recorded these ideas while he was president.
Dunbar-Ortiz notes that Indian removal was the centerpiece of Jackson's presidency, but historians don't recognize that fact. Probably the most astounding thing to me is that Jackson ignored a Georgia Supreme Court decision in favor of the Cherokee and its constitution, taunting Chief Justice Marshall to enforce it if he could. Before the case could come to a head, though, gold was discovered in Georgia, and as would become a familiar pattern in many other states, a flood of squatters overran Cherokee lands, "looting, killing, and destroying fields and game parks" (p. 110). That was it for the Cherokee constitution and their land rights.
Both writers cover the complex story of fighting, war, trade, and land grabs in the Southwest, including the transition from Spain to Mexico, the Mexican-American War, and the Texas Republic. Texas left Mexico in order to maintain slavery. The name of the Texas Rangers is a direct reference to the other "rangers" who were Indian killers, as in previous history throughout the country. In the midst of all of this, the Navajo, Apache, and Utes were never colonized by the Spanish, and with the Pueblo managed to maintain themselves into the 20th century. After the Mexican-American War, the Apache insurgency lasted from 1850–1886. Geronimo surrendered as a POW rather than a criminal. A third of the U.S. combat force pursued him, plus scouts and thousands of volunteer settler militia.
And then there's the unspeakable genocide of California. Treuer notes that at the time of contact, "more Indians lived in California than in the rest of the United States combined" — more than 500 tribes, speaking 300 dialects of 100 languages. It was more densely settled than most parts of Europe at the time (Treuer, p. 64). Invasive plants and animals made Europeanization possible, and forced Native peoples to the missions because of ecological disaster: they needed refuge from famine (Treuer, p. 65). In 1770, Treuer says, there were 133,000 California Indians at missions; by 1832 there were only 14,000. The mission leaders sent militia into California's eastern back country to capture more, especially women (p. 66). The Franciscan who founded California's missions, Junipero Serra, was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1988.
Both writers emphasize the Indigenous resistance, which held out until 1848 when the gold rush overwhelmed it with the sheer number of people arriving. Dunbar-Ortiz says that 100,000 Native California people were exterminated in 25 years (p. 129). Treuer reports that there were only 9,000 non-Indians before the gold rush (6,000 Spanish/Mexican, 3,000 American, mostly located in southern California). As many as 90,000 arrived in 1849 alone. State funds were allocated to hunt and exterminate the tribes from 1850-60, reimbursed by the federal government. The first governor (Peter Burnett) said that a war of extermination must be expected (Treuer, p. 67). Treuer tells one particularly grueling story of the retribution massacre of the Pomo at Clear Lake, California (pp. 67-68). By the 1890 census, fewer than 50 California tribes were recorded.
Just before the Civil War started, the U.S. Army had seven departments: six were stationed west of the Mississippi. It was a "colonial army fighting the Indigenous occupants of the land" (Dunbar-Ortiz, p. 133). The Army was the main aspect of government in the West. She calls it the "Genocidal Army of the West." Once the Civil War started, to free the professional soldiers, they recruited volunteers who wanted to get their population balanced for statehood — murdering mercenaries like Kit Carson, and killers like the the soldiers at Sand Creek in Colorado.
The time during the Civil War was active both legally and militarily against Indigenous peoples. The Homestead Act and Morrill Act were both passed in 1862, giving away Indigenous land. The Pacific Railroad Act gave private companies 2 million acres. All of these broke multiple treaties. Railroad barons were granted a checkerboard of square miles, beyond the railroad tracks, that they could sell off for huge profits.
Innovations from the Civil War were used in the West, such as the gatling gun. After the war, Civil War generals took command of troops in the West, and Dunbar-Ortiz says there was a patriotism effect that spread to campaigns out West, as well as increased military centralization.
The U.S. government ended formal treaties with Indigenous nations in 1871 unilaterally using a rider to the Indian Appropriation Act. There was no more acknowledgement of nations or tribes as independent nations, tribes, or powers to make contracts by treaty (Dunbar-Ortiz, p. 142). I find that to be one of the most incredible facts of all. They just... said, Nope, no more treaties. This was also the beginning of the boarding school era, when the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded in Pennsylvania.
Overlapping these changes, starting from the Civil War, was the war against the Plains nations. Treuer asks why the Plains Indians have come to stand for Indians so much in our collective history. He suggests it's a combination of their struggle being last, after photography existed and mass media was more prevalent, and because the resistance was great. It raised the question of whether this is a democracy, or just another greedy power grab. He acknowledges that many of the various peoples of the Plains had migrated from eastern areas as Europeans/Americans created pressure, and that the horse and the gun changed their ways of fighting and hunting. The "tribes showed supreme adaptability, resourcefulness, and creative syncretization. They took what Europeans brought and made it wholly their own" (p. 88). Despite their losses, it's likely they're only around today because they fought with guns and horses.
When the Spanish encountered the Plains people in 17th century, Treuer says, they didn't note them as particularly warlike. But by the early 19th century, the U.S. was greeted by armies they had never seen before.
Not surprisingly, given that he's from Minnesota, Treuer gives a more detailed account of the 1862 Dakota War than Dunbar-Ortiz does. Both cover Colorado's Sand Creek Massacre. "Every time the Indians fought back against clear violations of the treaties they had signed in good faith, a reign of terror was unleashed upon them. America did not conquer the West through superior technology, nor did it demonstrate the advantages of democracy. America 'won' the West by blood, brutality, and terror" (Treuer, p. 94).
The second treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) had secured a large homeland for the Lakota, encompassing more than half of South Dakota, close to half of Nebraska, a major part of Wyooming, and parts of North Dakota, Montana, Colorado, and Kansas (mostly bounded by rivers):
But the treaty was almost immediately violated when gold was found in the Black Hills soon after. The U.S. encouraged settler encroachment and began the mass slaughter of buffalo, estimated at 5,000 animals per day in the 1870s, which had devastating effects on the peoples' ability to sustain themselves. The slaughter continued through the 1880s.
Custer, meanwhile, had led a slaughter in 1868 in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and was destroying villages in 1874 and '75. The Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho joined together at Little Big Horn in June 1876 to confront his troops. Treuer gives a more extensive description of what led up to that decisive battle, where Custer was killed. After that, for the next decade and a half, Treuer says the U.S. tried a combination of negotiation, starvation, and open war against the tribes.
Both Treuer and Dunbar-Ortiz describe the Ghost Dance phenomenon at this point, Treuer in more detail. A Pauite holy man, Wokova, gave hope to desperate people from different tribes, about living in peace, but also about the white man disappearing. It reached the Sioux by 1890. Reservation officials believed the Hunkpapa Sioux chief Sitting Bull, who had recently returned from exile to Standing Rock, was behind it and thought it was dangerous. He was killed when authorities tried to arrest him on December 15, 1890.
Warrants were issued for other leaders, in particular Spotted Elk/Big Foot, who led 350 Lakota to sanctuary at Pine Ridge on foot. Before they could reach it, they met U.S. troops who ordered them to camp at Wounded Knee Creek. Custer's old regiment, the Seventh Cavalry, arrived and took over. Four Hotchkiss machine guns were trained on the people, and the commanding colonel gave whiskey to the troops.
The next morning, December 29, there was a weapons search, and a rifle went off. (Details on this part differed in the two books.) In about an hour, up to 300 Lakota were killed and 25 soldiers by "friendly fire." (Again, Treuer's account is more detailed, with more caveats.) Treuer quotes a General who toured the scene three days later and was shocked by what he saw, and relieved the colonel of his command. Dunbar-Ortiz notes that Congressional Medals of Honor were given to 20 soldiers from the "battle" and that there's a monument at Ft. Riley, Kansas, to the soldiers who were killed. Soon afterward, L. Frank Baum wrote an editorial in the Aberdeen, South Dakota, newspaper calling for extermination of the Indians, which is cited by both authors.
Both authors also cite the historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who wrote in 1894 about the closing of the American frontier, and wondered about its effect on the American psyche, the creation of a spiritual vacuum. Treuer says "It neatly symbolized the accepted version of reality — of an Indian past and an American present, begun in barbarism but realized as a state of democratic idealism" (p. 10).
His book is a rejection of both assumptions in that version of reality, and it's clear that Dunbar-Ortiz would agree with him. Indigenous people are not only of the past, and the U.S. is far from a state of democratic idealism when it rests on unacknowledged genocide and stolen land, and continues supporting similar practices today.
__
*William Tecumseh Sherman's family were settlers / squatters in Ohio who
drove the Shawnee out. "Sherman's father gave his son the trophy name
Tecumseh after the Shawnee leader who was killed by the U.S. Army" (p.
144). Sherman used the methods used against the Indigenous against
people in Georgia. Right after the Civil War, he was killing women and
children in Montana.
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