An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Sea to Shining Sea”

Dunbar-Ortiz explores the events leading up to the United States’ invasion of Mexico and its further expansion southwest and west in the mid-1800s. Reflecting the continuing development of the U.S. origin myth, racism underlying support for U.S. expansion was prevalent based on the ideas of Anglo-Americans as a superior race. The belief in manifest destiny drove the narrative of the United States expanding west to what it is today and justified invasions of Mexico and more Indigenous nations. Although historians have labeled the U.S. war against Mexico beginning in 1846 as its first foreign war, Dunbar-Ortiz rejects this, given the reality that the United States invaded numerous Indigenous nations already as well as the Berber Nation of North Africa in early 19th century.

The 19th century also saw many struggles for independence against European colonial rule, such as in Haiti or in South America. The Republic of Mexico gained independence after a war against Spanish colonialism that left the new nation severely weakened yet pressed to defend itself from the United States’ encroachment. The United States’ efforts to annex areas formerly under Spanish rule began as early as 1806 with Jefferson’s military project called the Pike expedition. Zebulon Pike and his men illegally entered Spanish territory to obtain intel that could later be used for a military invasion. When the new Mexican government emerged, U.S. traders in northern Mexico especially, fur trapper Kit Carson, helped set the groundwork needed for the United States to annex northern Mexico. U.S. settlers also helped eventually annex Texas and California. Things were made easier given Mexico’s policy of allowing land to be granted to foreigners in Texas, and expeditions to gather intelligence for military invasion were also sent into California. These well-thought-out exploration plans prior to war then settlement and trade activity were intentional moves by the United States to eventually invade Mexico until it surrendered its northern land in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The new territories the United States continued to acquire had to follow the guidelines laid out under the 1787 Northwest Ordinance to achieve statehood, which was preconditioned on settlers outnumbering the Indigenous population in the area, providing cruel incentive for settlers to forcibly remove or kill Indigenous people.

After the Mexican War, Indigenous communities like the Navajos, Apaches, and Utes now had to deal with the new colonial regime of the United States after having already resisted Spanish colonialism for centuries. North of the Rio Grande, Spanish colonial rule began in 1598 when Spain attacked Pueblo towns and forced Christianity on the Pueblos, who continued to resist Spanish rule. By the end of the 17th century, Spain was losing power and focused on holding its northern territories, such as Texas, where they established the first Spanish town at San Antonio, built forts, took land from Indigenous people, and gave it to Spanish settlers.

When Mexico won independence from Spain, the new government’s policy of granting Texas land to Anglo-American settlers, many of whom were plantation owners with enslaved people, paved the way for U.S. domination. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, which limited settlers’ ability to build more wealth, so they decided to secede from Mexico, leading to the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 and Mexico’s eventual defeat by Texas at the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas as a country was pro-slavery and adopted a U.S. style of warfare by establishing the Texas Rangers force that destroyed Indigenous towns and engaged in ethnic cleansing.

In California, colonization of Indigenous nations was done through the establishment of Franciscan missions between 1769 and 1823, connected by a 500-mile road called El Camino Real. The founder of these missions, friar Junípero Serra, was known for the rape, torture, death, and destruction he brought upon Indigenous peoples. Some of these missions remain very popular tourist sites in California today, but they represent a terrible history for Indigenous peoples. The gold rush brought further death, starvation, rape, and destruction as gold-hungry seekers protected by the U.S. Army poured into California, destroying Indigenous territories and the people who stood in their path. From 1845 to 1870, approximately 100,000 of the Indigenous population of California was exterminated, bringing the population down to 30,000.

During the invasion of Mexico, there was a high level of support and nationalism among U.S. citizens as reflected in war-mongering books during a foundational period of U.S. literature in the mid-19th century. Many writers or poets like Walt Whitman actively supported war while some like Ralph Waldo Emerson or abolitionists like Henry David Thoreau opposed the war but still supported the idea of manifest destiny.

However, the biggest question that arose with respect to the territory annexed from Mexico was that of slavery in the lead up to the U.S. Civil War. During the Civil War, the U.S. reorganized its counterinsurgency strategy it had practiced in the period between the Mexican War and the Civil War against resistant Apaches, using irregular warfare through attacks on civilians (including women, children, and the elderly) and the destruction of crops and livestock. This total war strategy would continue to be used against Indigenous nations during and after the Civil War in the Northern Plains and Southwest regions. It was during this time when the military term “Indian Country” began to be used to refer to enemy territory.

Chapter 8 Summary: “‘Indian Country’”

Dunbar-Ortiz chronicles continuing wars against Indigenous people during and after the U.S. Civil War through the end of the 19th century. The “Five Civilized Tribes” that had been forcibly removed to Indian Territory all signed treaties based on the decisions of a small, wealthy, and assimilated elite class who supported slavery in opposition to the majority of Indigenous people, who preferred to stay out of the conflict with the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out. Many Indigenous soldiers ended up switching over to the Union side alongside enslaved people who had escaped.

During the Civil War, when professional soldiers in the West returned to the East to fight Confederate soldiers, settlers volunteered to be soldiers in the West and fought against Indigenous peoples who were closer to them than any Confederate soldiers. Additionally, land speculators encouraged genocidal actions and ethnic cleansing against Indigenous people to meet the requisite majority settler population needed for statehood in newly acquired territories. Anti-Indigenous sentiment was at a high, leading to extreme violence against Indigenous people. For example, in 1864, Colorado volunteer soldiers massacred Cheyennes and Arapahos held captive at Sand Creek reservation, burned teepees, mutilated and scalped corpses, and took body parts of Indigenous people as decor for their weapons. Although the Sand Creek massacre was denounced by the federal commissioner of Indian affairs and investigated, none of the men were prosecuted, indicating that one could kill Indigenous people with impunity. Dunbar-Ortiz characterizes these campaigns against Indigenous nations during the Civil War as foreign wars that continued through the end of the 19th century aided by more dangerous technology and weaponry and experienced killers.

Congress passed the 1862 Homestead Act and Morrill Act that would transfer Indigenous lands to the estates of land-grant universities. Meanwhile, the Pacific Railroad Act gave private companies millions of acres of Indigenous land. Actions under all three acts violated multiple treaties the U.S. government had with Indigenous nations. Land as a commodity was still the basis of wealth and capital accumulation for the U.S. economy, as seen in land grants to railroad owners who received miles of land beyond just the width of railroads that they could then sell for profit. However, Indigenous peoples in western territories resisted these violations and appropriations of land under these acts as well as the subsequent building of railroads on their lands.

The period of the Grant administration from 1869 to 1877 saw many genocidal wars against Indigenous nations. General William Tecumseh Sherman led the genocidal wars in the West against any Indigenous nation that resisted, including the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho alliance in the Dakotas and Wyoming areas. He utilized a scorched-earth policy and the concept of total war that had become the U.S. way of war, which included attacking civilians and food supplies. He also solicited the help of George Armstrong Custer, who was already a notorious figure in wars against the Indigenous people. The Apache Nation resisted for decades until they surrendered in 1886, but Apache leader Geronimo was able to negotiate that they be given prisoner of war status, thereby confirming Apache sovereign status. Included among the U.S. troops who were sent West were Black soldiers known as “buffalo soldiers,” many of whom joined the army because it provided food, shelter, and pay and who were often unaware of the genocidal goals of the government. These buffalo soldiers were sent West after the Civil War to ensure they did not settle where they were unwelcome: with the white people in the East and the South. Sending these soldiers West with the intention of eradicating the Indigenous population was seen as a way to eliminate both the Black soldiers and the Indigenous people at the same time.

Congress stopped making treaties with Indigenous nations in 1871 in favor of making laws without consent or negotiation with Indigenous nations, but it did confirm sovereignty for Indigenous nations with preexisting treaties. In the Great Plains region, Indigenous nations were economically reliant on buffalo. The U.S. government directed the killing of buffalo to prompt Indigenous economic dependency on the U.S. and increase pressure on such communities. Buffalo went nearly extinct with tens of millions killed off by the U.S. Army and commercial hunters. In 1876, Custer tried to attack the Sioux and Cheyenne village by Little Bighorn River, but fighters from both Indigenous groups were led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to overcome Custer’s forces, killing Custer in the process. Nevertheless, settlers kept pouring into Indigenous territory in the West, and by the 1890s the U.S. had removed most Indigenous refugees to reservations or refugee children to boarding schools, which were a new type of colonial institution created under the Grant administration that only served as a source of trauma for Indigenous children. The goal at boarding schools was assimilating children by teaching them Christianity and banning them from speaking their own languages.

As a form of resistance, Indigenous peoples began performing the Ghost Dance around 1890. It was a dance introduced by a Paiute holy man that was meant to restore the Indigenous way of life, remove those who had invaded their land, and to bring the buffalo back. U.S. officials placed Sitting Bull under house arrest for this Ghost Dance, and a captor killed him soon after. U.S. officials then put arrest warrants out for other resistance leaders, such as Lakota leader Big Foot, who decided to surrender at the Pine Ridge Reservation with more than 300 Lakota civilians. However, on the way there U.S. troops stopped them and took them to Wounded Knee Creek where Big Foot and most of his people were massacred the next day. This became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

Although most Indigenous peoples lived on reservations, in 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) that would further divide up Indigenous land into allotments of 160 acres with the surplus being sold. Allotment further reduced lands in Indigenous hands and increased poverty. Since oil was discovered in Indian Territory, Congress passed the 1898 Curtis Act to remove sovereignty of the five Indigenous Nations there so their lands could also be allotted. Due to allotment, Indigenous people lost another three-fourths of their land until the Indian Reorganization Act ended allotment in 1934, but no compensation or restoration of land was made. The image that arose during the early 20th century was that of the “disappearing Indian,” (161) perpetuated in artworks, academic works, and movies showing Indigenous people continually being killed, but Indigenous people continued to survive and resist.

Chapter 9 Summary: “US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism”

Dunbar-Ortiz refers to numerous military interventions throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, particularly noting the establishment of U.S. colonies (referred to as territories or commonwealths) from 1898 to 1919, such as Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, or American Samoa. Many Pacific islands were used for establishing military bases or bomb testing. Influenced by the idea of U.S. exceptionalism and responsibility to spread its power globally, there was a high support among U.S. Americans for overseas imperialism.

The U.S. Army was sent to the Philippines in 1898 to intervene under the guise of assisting Indigenous Filipinos who had won independence against Spain. Over the next three decades, the U.S. used counterinsurgency tactics, as used in the past against Indigenous nations in North America, to quell Filipino resistance against the U.S. occupation. Notably, 26 out of the 30 U.S. generals who were in the Philippines previously served as officers in campaigns against Indigenous peoples. President Theodore Roosevelt reflected popular sentiment regarding U.S. imperialism as he believed that “Filipinos did not have the right to govern their country just because they happened to occupy it” (166). Twenty percent of the population of the Philippines died during the war, including from U.S. total warfare that involved food deprivation and attacking civilians.

Meanwhile, domestically, industrialization affected farmers who were replaced by machines and were left landless as banks foreclosed on them. The U.S. Army often sided with corporations over workers in conflicts, such as during the Great Railroad Strike in 1877 conducted in protest of wage cuts, during which U.S. troops were brought in to stop the strike. A key motive for overseas imperialism was access to more markets and resources that would expand corporate wealth. The rise of corporations and industrialization increased harm to Indigenous peoples with more attacks on Indigenous lands and resources. Individualism and competition became ideas to be encouraged. The U.S. government used federal trusteeships that held land sale funds to further intrusion by corporations into Indigenous lands because the Bureau of Indian Affairs invested those funds in railroad companies and local and state bonds.

The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 gave citizenship status to Indigenous people as another move toward assimilation. It wasn’t until the New Deal in the 1930s that Indigenous peoples were given some relief through acknowledgment of self-determination. Socialist anthropologist John Collier, as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Commissioner of Indian Affairs, understood Indigenous resistance to assimilation and advocated for the passing of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA), which ended allotment and validated Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Other aspects of the IRA were more controversial, such as encouraging the establishment of tribal governments. For some nations, tribal elites formed authoritarian governments that only served to increase wealth of a few and dismissed traditional forms of governance. The Navajo Nation notably rejected the terms of the IRA and lamented the killing of their livestock as part of the New Deal conservation plan to curb overgrazing of lands. Although the Indian Claims Commission and Claims Court was established in 1946, allowing Indigenous people to make claims for monetary compensation for illegal land seizure, this route was not always successful or took many years before a dispute was resolved.

Dunbar-Ortiz also argues that attempts to force assimilation on Indigenous peoples, thereby eradicating their identity, is another form of genocide. Under the Eisenhower administration, Indigenous education was placed under the authority of the States, and Indigenous healthcare was transferred to the U.S. Department of Health from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The 1953 Termination Act ended payments from treaties and federal trust protection. The federal government also transferred its police power on reservations to the states. The 1956 Indian Relocation Act attempted to incentivize Indigenous people to relocate to certain urban areas by offering funding, leading to large Indigenous populations in cities alongside other poor communities.

However, Indigenous resistance continued through the Termination era too, especially as the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s influenced young Indigenous people. Civil rights movements, including Indigenous rights, happened in the context of anticommunism, and many activists were accused of communism and attacked. Meanwhile, decolonization and liberation movements were developing in Africa and Asia against colonial powers. Dunbar-Ortiz notes that the response by the United States was to resort to counterinsurgency again this time through covert plans and invasions with the creation of the CIA in 1947. The CIA would become involved in overthrowing governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) and engaged in covert counterinsurgency in the lead up before the war in Vietnam. The CIA also attempted for years to overthrow Fidel Castro after he and Cuban revolutionaries overthrew U.S. supported dictator, Batista. The Cuban Revolution served as an inspiration for young activists in Latin America, which would in turn inspire Indigenous activists in North America.

Chapters 7-10 Analysis

Dunbar-Ortiz continues highlighting Indigenous resistance as she narrates the westward expansion of the United States and the invasions that accompanied it through the 19th century.

By again combating the idea of manifest destiny that drove westward expansion, Dunbar-Ortiz shows how the expansion wasn’t natural but required careful planning and premeditated actions. Dunbar-Ortiz’s overview of the U.S. war against Mexico is a key example of this strategy. This westward expansion brings under a spotlight of scrutiny common phrases glorifying the country’s expansion to its present size, such as “sea to shining sea.” While the concept of manifest destiny underlies such phrases of U.S. patriotism, the reality Dunbar-Ortiz tries to show is that of a bloody and violent expansion across the continent through displacement and genocide. On a macro level, manifest destiny pushed settlers further and further west, but Dunbar-Ortiz also provides specific forces that moved this along, such as an obsession with gold or the conditions of the Northwest Ordinance statehood guidelines that provided a cruel incentive to ensure that settlers outnumbered Indigenous people for that territory to become a state.

Dunbar-Ortiz’s discussion of the foundational period of U.S. literature in the middle of the 19th century underscores how nationalism and U.S. origin myths were also spread through popular culture, such as the work of “populist poet” Walt Whitman who “sang the song of manhood and the Anglo-American super race that had been steeled through empire” (117) as reflected in his racist writings supporting elimination of inferior races and supporting U.S. expansion that depended on replacing Indigenous people. The same origin and hero narratives found in popular culture at the time continue to influence how historical figures are viewed in modern society. For instance, in 1988, as a step toward sainthood, the Catholic Church beatified Junipero Serra, a key figure in founding Christian missions in California but a figure representing a painful history of rape, torture, and death for Indigenous peoples in California. Examples such as these show the stark ways in which an Anglo or Euro-centric view of history distorts realities or ignores Indigenous experiences.

In Chapter 8, as part of her discussion of the U.S. Civil War, she gives a full picture of Indigenous participation on the Confederacy side and connects it to colonialism and general mistrust of the U.S. Her argument here provides an explanation of the effects of colonialism beyond the more obvious. Other oppressed groups of people have participated in colonization or wars against Indigenous peoples. She mentions units of Black soldiers that became part of the U.S. Army, known as “buffalo soldiers,” and were sent out West after the Civil War to fight Indigenous people. Similarly, she discusses how Native Americans also joined the U.S. military against other Indigenous nations and later in overseas wars. As Dunbar-Ortiz argues, “this is precisely how colonialism in general and colonial warfare in particular work,” and it is “a part of the tradition of European colonialism” to have “armies of ethnic troops” as soldiers of colonization (147).

Dunbar-Ortiz not only discusses key events or consequences related to colonization of Indigenous peoples but is diligent in her inclusion of detail that truly reveal the deep extent and scope of the trauma repeatedly endured by Indigenous people. For instance, in Chapter 8 she mentions the slaughtering of the buffalo of Indigenous nations in the Great Plains region by the U.S. to increase economic dependency on the U.S., and in Chapter 9 she mentions the killing of the Navajo Nation’s sheep and goat. These details are less visible or less discussed aspects of Indigenous experiences under U.S. colonialism, but they are an important part of the overall picture of U.S. history as a settler-colonialist state.

In these chapters, especially in Chapter 9, Dunbar-Ortiz also delves deeper into the theme of the U.S. way of war by arguing that the “Indian wars” in U.S. history were a template for overseas imperialism by the United States, including in the present. She insists readers understand that U.S. imperialism abroad is connected to the subject matter of this book because “the same methods and strategies that were employed with the Indigenous peoples on the continent were mirrored abroad” (162). Although she discusses past examples, such as the U.S. invasion in the Philippines, Hawaii, or Cuba, she goes further in asserting that the connection isn’t just in the past but also “is key to understanding the future of the United States in the world” (164). Thus, Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates that her goal is not just to illuminate the realities of the past, but also to push for understanding the past to prepare ourselves for the future. She explores this argument further in later chapters.

Indigenous resistance and sovereignty are also present themes in these chapters, as they continued to deal with invasion and more wars. The Ghost Dance became a symbol of this resistance, and the U.S. response to squash this dance reflects the way in which any resistance, even nonviolent, was seen as a threat.

In Chapter 9, Dunbar-Ortiz discusses assimilation. In emphasizing the importance of sovereignty as a means of maintaining Indigenous traditions and culture, Dunbar-Ortiz rejects assimilation as a policy. Policies like allotment, termination, and boarding schools all reflect this. Dunbar-Ortiz also reminds readers of Indigenous sovereignty as nations by arguing that U.S. imperialism began with its invasion of Indigenous nations and characterizes wars against Indigenous people as foreign wars.