**Author:** [[3. Resources/Authors/Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz|Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz]] # An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States ![[An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Visual.excalidraw]] --- ## Book Overview ### About the Author **Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz** grew up in rural Oklahoma, daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. She is the author or editor of many books, including *Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975* and *Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War*. She received her doctorate in history from UCLA and taught for several years in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward. She has lived and worked with Indigenous communities in the Americas, from northern Canada to South America. ### Central Thesis The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism—the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft. The conventional narrative that frames US history around concepts of discovery, immigration, and a frontier of limitless opportunity is a myth that obscures this reality. The very existence of the United States is predicated on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples through deliberate policies of extermination, removal, and assimilation. Dunbar-Ortiz argues that what happened to Indigenous peoples was not an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of progress, nor was it primarily caused by disease epidemics. It was genocide—planned, implemented, and celebrated. The "terminal narratives" that explain Indigenous population decline as the natural result of European diseases serve to obscure the military campaigns, scorched earth policies, bounty hunting, forced relocations, and destruction of food sources that constituted the actual mechanisms of elimination. The book contends that US militarism, from its counterinsurgency tactics to its celebration of "savage wars," has its origins in the colonial and early republic wars against Indigenous peoples. The "first way of war" developed on the North American frontier—total war against civilians, destruction of food supplies and villages, and terrorization of populations—became the template for US military operations worldwide. ### Why This Book Matters This book matters because it centers Indigenous peoples in the telling of US history—not as obstacles to progress or tragic victims of inevitable forces, but as nations with sophisticated governments, economies, and cultures who actively resisted colonization. It challenges the foundational myths of American exceptionalism by documenting how the ideology of the "chosen people" and the covenant with God was used to justify land theft and genocide. Published as part of Beacon Press's ReVisioning American History series, the book responds to Howard Zinn's call for a history "from the Indigenous point of view." It provides essential context for understanding contemporary Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, land rights, and self-determination. At a moment when the country debates Confederate monuments and the legacies of colonialism, this book offers an unflinching examination of the foundations upon which the nation was built. --- ## Chapter Summaries ### Author's Note Dunbar-Ortiz establishes her methodology and terminology. She uses "Indigenous" rather than "Indian" or "Native American" to connect with international Indigenous movements and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She notes that terminology itself is contested terrain—each option carries historical baggage. She identifies herself as having grown up in Oklahoma, daughter of a part-Indigenous mother, which informs her perspective. ### Introduction: This Land The introduction establishes the framework of settler colonialism. Dunbar-Ortiz cites the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and argues that US policy toward Indigenous peoples meets each of its criteria. She critiques the "multiculturalism" that treats Indigenous peoples as one ethnic group among many, rather than as colonized nations with inherent sovereignty. The introduction addresses the "terminal narrative" of population decline through disease, arguing that this framing obscures deliberate policies of extermination. Whatever the role of epidemics, they don't explain three centuries of unrelenting warfare, bounty systems for Indigenous scalps, forced removals, and systematic destruction of food sources. ### Chapter 1: Follow the Corn This chapter challenges the myth of a "pristine wilderness" by documenting the sophisticated agricultural civilizations of the Americas. Agriculture developed independently in three locations in the Americas around 8500 BC—roughly the same period as the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile, and Yellow River systems. Corn (maize) was the foundation, domesticated from a wild grass over thousands of years. The chapter describes the Mississippian civilization centered at Cahokia (near present-day St. Louis), which at its height around 1100 CE had a population larger than London's. Indigenous peoples had developed trade networks spanning the continent, sophisticated irrigation systems, and diverse governmental structures ranging from egalitarian bands to hierarchical chiefdoms. The myth of wilderness served to justify taking land that colonizers pretended was unoccupied. ### Chapter 2: Culture of Conquest Dunbar-Ortiz traces the European "culture of conquest" to its medieval roots. The Crusades (11th-13th centuries) established patterns of holy war and accumulation through plunder. The concept of "limpieza de sangre" (cleanliness of blood), developed to persecute converted Jews and Muslims in Spain, laid the groundwork for modern racial ideology. The chapter examines how England's colonization of Ireland served as a "dress rehearsal" for North American conquest. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who later founded the first English colony in Newfoundland, had earlier terrorized Ireland by lining the path to his tent with the severed heads of Irish. The English developed their system of bounties for heads (later scalps) in Ireland before bringing it to America. The chapter introduces the concept of land as private property, tracing how English "enclosure" movements displaced peasants from common lands. These dispossessed people became the surplus labor—and eventual settlers—for colonial ventures. Privatization of land in England preceded and enabled privatization of Indigenous lands in America. ### Chapter 3: Cult of the Covenant This chapter examines Calvinist covenant ideology as the spiritual engine of settler colonialism. The Puritans saw themselves as the new Israelites, called by God to build a "New Jerusalem" in the wilderness. The land was promised to them by divine covenant, regardless of who lived there. The chapter traces how John Calvin's doctrines of predestination and the "elect" translated into white supremacy. If material prosperity was a sign of God's favor, then the poverty and dispossession of Indigenous peoples (and enslaved Africans) became evidence of their damnation. Covenant ideology provided religious justification for extermination. The Scots-Irish (Ulster-Scots) emerge as key figures. Already seasoned settler-colonists from the English colonization of northern Ireland, they formed the shock troops of westward expansion. Seventeen US presidents have been of Scots-Irish descent, from Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama (on his mother's side). ### Chapter 4: Bloody Footprints This chapter documents the "first way of war"—the colonial military practices developed against Indigenous peoples that became the template for US militarism. These included: total war against civilian populations, destruction of villages and food supplies, scalp bounties, ranger militias, and counterinsurgency tactics. The chapter traces these methods from the Pequot War (1636-38), where colonists burned a village and killed 400-700 men, women, and children in a single night, through the Revolutionary War, which was as much a war against Indigenous nations as against Britain. George Washington ordered the complete destruction of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) towns, earning the Seneca name "Town Destroyer." The connection to contemporary US militarism is made explicit: the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden used "Geronimo" as the code name for their target; military helicopters are named Apache, Black Hawk, Chinook, and Kiowa; "Indian Country" remains military slang for enemy territory. ### Chapter 5: The Birth of a Nation Martin Luther King Jr.'s observation opens the chapter: "Our nation was born in genocide." The United States from its founding was committed to eliminating Indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi. The Constitution empowered Congress to "regulate commerce" with "Indian tribes," treating them as foreign nations while simultaneously claiming sovereignty over their lands. The chapter examines the Northwest Ordinance (1787), which pledged that Indigenous lands and liberty "shall never be taken from them without their consent" while simultaneously opening the Ohio Valley to settlement. The contradiction was resolved through military conquest. Between 1783 and 1812, the young nation fought continuous wars against Indigenous confederations defending their homelands. The chapter documents how Indian hating became a national pastime, celebrated in literature, theater, and public spectacle. Scalp bounties created a grotesque economy; some states paid more for the scalps of children than adults, to prevent them from growing up to resist. ### Chapter 6: The Last of the Mohicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic This chapter covers the period from the Louisiana Purchase (1803) through Indian Removal in the 1830s. The Jacksonian era represents the consolidation of the settler republic through the elimination of Indigenous peoples from the Southeast and the establishment of Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Andrew Jackson—Indian fighter, land speculator, and slave owner—embodied the "common man" of Jacksonian democracy. His presidency formalized Indian Removal as federal policy. The Cherokee, who had adopted written language, constitutional government, and plantation agriculture, were forced from their homes at gunpoint. The Trail of Tears (1838-39) killed approximately 4,000 of 16,000 Cherokee removed. The chapter examines how James Fenimore Cooper's *Last of the Mohicans* and similar literature constructed a romantic narrative of noble but vanishing Indians—a cultural justification for policies that were making them vanish. ### Chapter 7: Sea to Shining Sea This chapter covers westward expansion, the Mexican-American War (1846-48), and the conquest of California. Walt Whitman's support for the war against Mexico is quoted: "The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated; it is the law of the races." The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred half of Mexico's territory to the United States, including California just before the Gold Rush. The discovery of gold unleashed genocidal violence against California Indians. Between 1846 and 1873, the Indigenous population of California declined from 150,000 to 30,000—an 80% reduction in less than three decades, much of it through direct killing, enslavement, and starvation. The chapter documents bounty systems in California that paid for Indigenous scalps, ears, and heads; militia raids that slaughtered villages; and the kidnapping of Indigenous children for labor. ### Chapter 8: "Indian Country" This chapter covers the Civil War era and the intensification of warfare against Plains peoples. The US Army, freed from fighting Confederates, turned its full force against Indigenous nations. The chapter documents Sand Creek (1864), where Colorado militia slaughtered and mutilated over 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women and children; and Wounded Knee (1890), where the 7th Cavalry massacred at least 250 Lakota, including many women and children. The chapter examines the reservation system as a form of concentration camp. The military strategy was to confine Indigenous peoples to defined areas, destroy the buffalo to eliminate their food source, and force dependency on government rations. General Philip Sheridan famously declared, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." The Dawes Act (1887) broke up communal reservation lands into individual allotments, with "surplus" lands opened to white settlement—a massive land grab that transferred 90 million acres from Indigenous to white hands. ### Chapter 9: US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism This chapter connects continental conquest to overseas imperialism. The same officers who fought Indigenous peoples led the invasions of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The same tactics—concentration camps, scorched earth, "water cure" torture—were deployed against Filipinos that had been used against Indigenous Americans. The chapter examines Theodore Roosevelt as exemplar of this continuity. Author of a multivolume history celebrating the "winning of the West," advocate for overseas expansion, and architect of US interventionism, Roosevelt explicitly connected frontier conquest to imperial destiny. The boarding school system receives attention as "cultural genocide"—the policy of removing Indigenous children from their families, forbidding their languages and religions, and attempting to "kill the Indian, save the man." Captain Richard Henry Pratt, who founded Carlisle Indian Industrial School, used military techniques honed in frontier warfare. ### Chapter 10: Ghost Dance Prophecy: A Nation Is Coming This chapter traces Indigenous resistance and survival from Wounded Knee through the Civil Rights era to the present. The Ghost Dance movement of the 1880s-90s, which prophesied the return of the buffalo and the ancestors, was crushed at Wounded Knee but exemplified ongoing spiritual resistance. The chapter documents the revival of Indigenous activism in the 1960s-70s: the "fish-ins" in the Pacific Northwest; the founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM); the occupation of Alcatraz (1969-71); the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington (1972); and the Wounded Knee occupation (1973). These movements demanded sovereignty, treaty rights, and an end to termination policies. The chapter examines how the "frontier thesis" and its revivals—from Turner to Kennedy's "New Frontier" to Reagan's "city on a hill"—have perpetuated settler colonial ideology into the present. ### Chapter 11: The Doctrine of Discovery This chapter examines the legal foundations of colonialism. The Doctrine of Discovery, derived from 15th-century papal bulls, held that Christian nations could claim lands not already possessed by Christians. This doctrine was incorporated into US law through *Johnson v. M'Intosh* (1823), in which Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Indigenous peoples had only "occupancy" rights, not ownership, and could not sell land to anyone but the federal government. The chapter documents Indigenous peoples' use of international forums, from the League of Nations to the United Nations, to challenge colonialism. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), adopted over US opposition, represents a partial victory, affirming the right to self-determination and to lands, territories, and resources. The Doctrine of Discovery has been repudiated by multiple religious denominations but remains embedded in US property law. Dunbar-Ortiz argues that meaningful reconciliation requires reckoning with this legal foundation of dispossession. ### Conclusion: The Future of the United States The conclusion argues that Indigenous peoples have not vanished—they have survived, resisted, and persisted. The narrative of "settler colonialism in the past tense" serves to obscure ongoing colonialism: the extraction of resources from Indigenous lands, the denial of treaty rights, the underfunding of Indian Health Service, the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Dunbar-Ortiz calls for a transformation in how the United States understands itself. Rather than a nation of immigrants who settled an empty frontier, it must be understood as a settler colonial state built on stolen land and genocide. This recognition is not about guilt but about truth—and about creating the conditions for genuine decolonization. --- ## Key Themes and Highlights ### Settler Colonialism as Foundational The book's central framework is settler colonialism—a form of colonialism that seeks not to exploit Indigenous labor (like plantation colonies) but to eliminate Indigenous peoples and replace them with settlers. The United States is not a post-colonial nation; it is an ongoing colonial project built on Indigenous land. ### Genocide as Policy, Not Accident Dunbar-Ortiz repeatedly challenges "terminal narratives" that attribute Indigenous population decline to disease epidemics and lack of immunity. While epidemics were devastating, they don't explain three centuries of military campaigns, bounty systems, forced relocations, and destruction of food sources. What happened was genocide—deliberate, planned, and celebrated. ### The Origins of US Militarism The "first way of war" developed against Indigenous peoples—total war against civilians, scorched earth tactics, ranger militias, counterinsurgency—became the template for US military operations worldwide. From the Philippines to Vietnam to Iraq, the same methods and often the same terminology persist. ### Covenant Ideology and White Supremacy Calvinist covenant ideology—the belief that God had promised the land to the settlers—provided religious justification for dispossession. The doctrine of predestination enabled white supremacy: material prosperity was evidence of election, while poverty and dispossession marked damnation. This fusion of religious and racial ideology remains embedded in American exceptionalism. ### Indigenous Agency and Resistance Despite the focus on destruction, the book documents continuous Indigenous resistance: military confederations, diplomatic efforts, legal challenges, cultural persistence, and spiritual movements from the Ghost Dance to AIM. Indigenous peoples are not passive victims but active historical agents. --- ## Analytical Reading ### Main Arguments 1. **US history is settler colonial history** - The conventional narrative of discovery, immigration, and frontier opportunity obscures the foundational reality of Indigenous dispossession. 2. **What happened was genocide** - By the UN Convention definition, US policy toward Indigenous peoples constitutes genocide. Disease alone doesn't explain the population decline; military campaigns, bounty systems, and deliberate starvation do. 3. **Settler colonialism is ongoing** - The United States is not a post-colonial nation. Colonial relations persist in the legal status of tribes, the extraction of resources from Indigenous lands, and the denial of treaty rights. 4. **US militarism originates in Indian wars** - The tactics, terminology, and ideology of counterinsurgency warfare were developed against Indigenous peoples and exported worldwide. 5. **Covenant ideology enables white supremacy** - Religious beliefs about chosen people and promised land provided justification for land theft and extermination. These beliefs persist in American exceptionalism. 6. **Indigenous peoples have survived and resisted** - Despite policies of extermination, removal, and assimilation, Indigenous nations persist as nations, asserting sovereignty and rights. ### Methodology Dunbar-Ortiz employs: - Primary source analysis (treaties, military records, settler accounts) - Revisionist historiography (the Berkeley School on population, Jennings on colonial mythology) - Indigenous perspective (oral histories, Indigenous scholars) - International law framework (UN Genocide Convention, Declaration on Indigenous Rights) - Comparative colonialism (connecting US to South Africa, Israel, Ireland) ### Strengths - **Unflinching documentation** - Doesn't look away from atrocities; provides specific names, dates, numbers - **Legal framework** - Uses UN definitions to establish genocide, not as rhetoric but as legal category - **Contemporary connections** - Links historical policies to ongoing colonialism and US militarism - **Indigenous-centered** - Written from Indigenous perspective, centering Indigenous agency and resistance - **Global context** - Situates US settler colonialism within worldwide colonial history ### Limitations - **Comprehensive but dense** - Covers 500 years in 200 pages; some periods receive cursory treatment - **Primarily focused on US** - Less attention to Canada, Mexico, and other American states - **Limited on internal Indigenous diversity** - The diversity of hundreds of distinct nations sometimes flattened - **Activist orientation** - Clear political commitments may concern readers seeking "objective" history (though all history has a perspective) --- ## Personal Reflection ### Key Takeaways 1. **Settler colonialism is a present structure, not a past event** - The legal, political, and economic arrangements that dispossessed Indigenous peoples remain in force. 2. **"Terminal narratives" serve colonial interests** - Explaining Indigenous elimination as the result of disease or inevitable progress obscures deliberate policies and absolves perpetrators. 3. **US militarism has domestic origins** - The tactics celebrated as "American way of war" were developed against Indigenous peoples of this continent. 4. **Covenant ideology persists in American exceptionalism** - The belief that America has a special mission, divinely ordained, continues to justify imperialism. 5. **Indigenous nations are nations** - Not ethnic groups, not "first Americans," but political entities with inherent sovereignty that precedes the United States. ### Questions Raised - What would genuine decolonization look like in the US context? - How can treaty obligations be fulfilled when treaties were violated from the beginning? - What is the relationship between reckoning with Indigenous genocide and other justice movements? - How do Indigenous nations exercise sovereignty within a settler colonial state? ### Connections to Other Works - **"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn** - The template for this series; Zinn's call for Indigenous-centered history - **"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown** - Earlier popular history of Indian wars; more elegiac, less analytical - **"The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander** - Parallel analysis of how legal structures perpetuate racial hierarchy - **"Settler Colonialism" by Lorenzo Veracini** - Theoretical framework Dunbar-Ortiz draws upon - **"Conquest" by Andrea Smith** - Connections between colonialism and sexual violence - **"Red Skin, White Masks" by Glen Coulthard** - Indigenous critique of recognition politics --- ## Reading Notes Read in January 2026 as: - A corrective to conventional US history narratives - Framework for understanding Indigenous sovereignty movements - Context for contemporary debates about monuments, land acknowledgments, and reparations Particularly relevant sections for frequent reference: - Introduction "This Land" - Settler colonialism framework and genocide definition - Chapter 2 (Culture of Conquest) - Origins of white supremacy in Spanish limpieza de sangre - Chapter 4 (Bloody Footprints) - "First way of war" and US militarism - Chapter 6 (Andrew Jackson's White Republic) - Indian Removal and Trail of Tears - Chapter 11 (Doctrine of Discovery) - Legal foundations of colonial land claims This book recasts US history fundamentally—not as a nation of immigrants fulfilling manifest destiny, but as a settler colonial state built on Indigenous genocide. Its value lies not in making readers feel guilty but in providing the historical knowledge necessary to understand present conditions and envision alternatives.