An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

The most successful empires are built on a more powerful, more insidious foundation: a story so compelling it becomes invisible. This founding myth erases the very possibility that another reality ever existed. It recasts invasion as discovery, genocide as progress, and resistance as savagery. The story becomes so deeply embedded in a nation’s identity that its citizens learn to see the world through its lens without realizing they are wearing glasses. They celebrate holidays, recite pledges, and study textbooks that all reinforce the same quiet, foundational lie, mistaking the architecture of their own confinement for the landscape of freedom.

The real work of dismantling such an empire begins with the excavation of the story it buried. This is the understanding that animated historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. After decades of work in Indigenous movements and international human rights, she recognized that the official narrative of American history was a weapon. It was a carefully constructed story designed to neutralize the past and legitimize the present. Her life's work culminated in a project to write the history that the national myth was designed to silence, providing a counternarrative as the essential, foundational truth of the nation itself.

Module 1: The Pre-Colonial World and the Culture of Conquest

Before we dive into the history of the United States, we have to understand what was here first. The Americas were a vibrant, interconnected world. The book reveals that three of the world’s seven original centers of agriculture were in the Americas. These were ancient civilizations built on sophisticated agricultural science. Think of corn, or maize. It was a unique invention of Indigenous farmers, cultivated for ten thousand years. It cannot grow wild. This single crop, combined with beans and squash, supported a hemispheric population of around one hundred million people before Columbus arrived. Central Mexico alone had a population density rivaling contemporary Europe.

These societies were also deeply connected. Forget the image of isolated tribes. Extensive trade networks, migrations, and cultural exchanges connected societies from Alaska to Mexico. Turquoise mined in the Southwest was traded as far as central Mexico. The Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, developed a constitution called the Great Law of Peace. This system of consensual governance inspired key elements of the U.S. Constitution itself. This was a world of advanced engineering, continent-wide road systems, and thriving city-states like Cahokia, which was larger than London in the twelfth century.

So what happened? The answer lies in a mindset forged in Europe long before 1492. The book argues that the "culture of conquest" was a pre-existing European institution perfected through centuries of internal colonization and religious wars. The Crusades established a model for profit-driven, religiously justified warfare. European monarchies then turned these methods inward, crushing peasant revolts and colonizing their neighbors like Ireland and Scotland. The tactics used against the Irish—dehumanization, bounty hunting for scalps, and creating reservations—were a direct preview of what would happen in North America. This was a well-rehearsed strategy brought across the Atlantic. The conquest of the Americas was the continuation of a very old project.

Module 2: The Architecture of a Settler State

Now, let's explore how this project was implemented. The founding of the United States was the creation of a machine designed for one primary purpose: acquiring land. The author argues that the core military tradition of the United States was forged in irregular, unlimited warfare against Indigenous civilians. From the very beginning, colonial militias attacked non-combatants. They burned villages and destroyed food supplies. This was a strategy of annihilation designed to remove a population from its land. This became the American "way of war," a pattern that would repeat for centuries.

This violence was incentivized. Colonial authorities institutionalized a privatized, profit-driven system of scalp hunting. They offered bounties for the scalps of Indigenous men, women, and children. This commercialized murder. It erased the distinction between soldiers and civilians. It created a market for human bodies and turned atrocity into an economic enterprise. The mutilated corpses left behind were called "redskins," a term born from this brutal practice. This system of terror was a deliberate tool used to clear land for settlement.

On top of this violence, a powerful ideology was needed to justify it. The book asserts that the United States’ founding ideology is rooted in a Calvinist covenant that framed settlement as a divine mission. Early settlers, particularly the Scots-Irish who became the "shock troops" of the frontier, saw themselves as a chosen people. They believed they were claiming a promised land from "heathen" forces. This belief system transformed land theft into a sacred duty. It also created a permanent justification for violence. If you believe you are acting on God's will, any action can be rationalized. This covenant ideology became embedded in America's national identity, turning documents like the Constitution into sacred texts and wrapping the project of conquest in the language of divine destiny.

Module 3: Manifest Destiny and the Machinery of Removal

As the new nation grew, these foundational elements—irregular warfare and covenant ideology—were scaled up into a national policy. This brings us to a crucial concept. The book contends that the narrative of a "vanishing Indian" was a deliberate myth created to absolve settlers of guilt for genocide. Popularized by authors like James Fenimore Cooper, this story framed Indigenous peoples as a noble but dying race. They were destined to disappear, naturally making way for a superior civilization. This myth was incredibly effective. It transformed a violent process of ethnic cleansing into a sad but inevitable law of nature. It allowed the nation to reconcile its ideals of liberty with the brutal reality of its expansion.

This myth provided the cultural cover for a very real and violent process. Andrew Jackson, whose reputation was built on his ruthless campaigns against the Muskogee and Seminole nations, became the primary implementer of this policy. The book argues that Andrew Jackson’s presidential career was dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi. He pushed through the Indian Removal Act of 1830. He ignored a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed Cherokee sovereignty. His administration then orchestrated the forced removal of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muskogee, and Seminole nations. This led to the Trail of Tears, a death march where thousands perished from disease, starvation, and exposure. This was state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, planned and executed at the highest levels of government.

This machinery of removal was both legal and economic. The U.S. government used treaties, debt, and the legal system as instruments to facilitate dispossession. Treaties were often signed under duress, after military defeat, or with bribed leaders who did not represent their people. The government actively plunged nations into debt through controlled trade, then forced them to cede land to pay it off. The Constitution itself placed "Indian Affairs" under federal control, centralizing the power to manage and accelerate expansion. Every lever of the state was pulled in service of one goal: to separate Indigenous peoples from their land.