First America – Merciless Indian Savages | Episode 1
Rebecca: Where do you want us to park? Should we park right here?
Nick: I think you have to park in here.
Rebecca: And then the fort is that way?
Nick: Yeah, the fort’s that way.
Rebecca: Okay.
On a cold day in January I visited Fort Snelling in Minneapolis. I was there with my friend Nick Estes. He’s a history professor at the University of Minnesota, and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
[noise of us getting out of the car and walking]
Nick: This is the historic Fort Snelling. You want to walk closer to it?
[ambi – walking]
Rebecca: Can you just describe what the fort looks like?
Nick: There’s a guard tower and then there’s like, I think there’s a wall that surrounds the entire fort.
Next to the historic buildings are modern day trashcans that let you know this is a tourist attraction. School kids come here on field trips.
Nick: This is a sacred site for Dakota people, which was later appropriated by the U.S. military to build their fort. And so, um–look at that bald eagle! [laughs] I told you we were going to see one. I wish the United States never appropriated the eagle. Do you hear him?
[ambi of eagle calls]
I mean, I dunno man. I don’t know how you can’t believe in the power of this stuff. Because those things happen for a reason.
[start walking]
I told you we were going to see one!
The history of what happened at Fort Snelling is significant to the Dakota people. And that history is acknowledged at the site. But you have to go and find it.
Nick: There’s like a healing site, right over here.
…it’s next to an underpass…
Nick: Where is this place? Oh, here it is.
…down a long set of stairs…
Nick: Be really careful…
[snow ambi]
…on the edge of the woods.
Rebecca: Can you just describe what the memorial looks like?
Nick: Yeah so it’s a…like a camp circle. But in the center, it looks like there’s prayer ties. Sage, tobacco, etc. Wrapped in cloth. And there are also prayer ties in the trees that surround us.
Rebecca: Who do you think left the prayer ties in the trees?
Nick: I’m assuming it’s the descendants of those who experienced that…genocide.
Over 1600 Dakota were held here during the winter of 1862.
Nick: This is the area actually where the concentration camp was actually at. Dakota people–people who dared to stand up to the United States–were put in a concentration camp. And all kinds of atrocities happened.
The concentration camp was just one part of a broader campaign to expel all Dakota people from the state of Minnesota. The campaign also included death marches, massacres, bounties placed on Indigenous heads, open air prisons and mass executions.
Nick: Um, there was a lot of malnutrition, purposeful starvation. [pause] There were reports of women being raped and violated. Y’know it’s a site of…of horrors.
Rebecca: Do you think most people who come to this spot do you think that they come here to honor the atrocity that happened here?
Nick: No. They’re doing winter sports. Recreation. I mean, you can see, uh, right here… you can see these parallel tracks. People cross country ski through this area.
While we were standing there, some hikers walked by.
[ambi of hikers going by, woman saying hi]
Walking around Ft Snelling with Nick, it felt like this perfect metaphor for our country. All our terrible history, it’s there. But we just don’t talk about it.
[MUSIC]
This all started as a conversation between Nick and me about four years ago. We were frustrated–well, I was pissed–at how Native people are erased from the story of America. We wanted to tell the history of the United States with the Native people written back in. I wanted to correct the record.
[driving ambi up]
When we were in the car, Nick’s phone rang.
Nick: Hold on. My wife called me. Somebody got shot.
He pulled up the news on his phone.
News: Breaking Witnesses report a woman was shot in the face while allegedly trying to flee ICE agents in central Minneapolis.
Earlier that day, a woman named Renee Nicole Good had tried to block ICE agents with her car. An agent had just shot and killed her.
Nick: Damn, the photos are really bad. It looks like a deployed airbag is just covered in blood.
We parked and watched the video.
Rebecca: Wow. Wow. That’s awful. That’s so awful.
When I was in Minneapolis last January, thousands of ICE agents were on the ground.
Nick: It’s in, like, a residential neighborhood.
Federal agents had been rounding people up, including children… and sending them to detention facilities. People were afraid to leave their homes. Parents stopped sending their kids to school.
Rebecca: It’s interesting given what we were talking about this morning of the history of Dakota people being rounded up and violently forced out of Minnesota…
[MUSIC – THEME INTRO]
When I started this project, I thought I was making a history podcast. I read books, I interviewed historians, I went to important sites, I traveled across the country. Butthen this thing kept happening. I would be in a place, learning about America’s past. And then the same thing would happen. Right here, in our present.
[THEME]
You’re listening to First America–the true story of how the United States came to be. And how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. From Pushkin Industries and Critical Frequency, I’m your host Rebecca Nagle. Gohini daqwadoa. Tsalagi Ayetli gela. Citizen of Cherokee Nation.
[MUSIC]
I didn’t go to Minneapolis to report on ICE. I had come to interview Nick. We just happened to be at Ft Snelling the day ICE shot and killed Renee Good.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe in coincidences.
I canceled my flight home and stayed to report on what was happening.
Protesters: Renee Nicole Good! Renee Nicole Good! Renee Nicole Good!!
The next morning there was a protest… back at Ft Snelling.
Protesters: ICE GO HOME! ICE GO HOME! ICE GO HOME! ICE GO HOME
Because Fort Snelling is also the site of ICE’s Headquarters in Minneapolis.
Rebecca: I was curious why you guys came today ‘cause, I mean, you know, someone was literally killed yesterday for standing up to ICE. So is it, is it scary to be here today knowing the violence?
Protester: Yes. Yes. It’s scary and I’m angry and the anger overcomes the fear. I have a good friend and she lived in Denmark during the German occupation and she has told me over and over again, you cannot be quiet. You must stand up, because silence is what allowed this to happen in the Second World War.
Rebecca: How far are we from the historic Fort Snelling?
Protester: Um, just right across, uh, highway 62 here.
Rebecca: And do you know what happened there?
Heidi: Oh no, no, don’t ask me those kinds of questions! I’m not good with history! (laughs) It’s a historic fort. (laughs) It’s historic!
Rebecca: Yeah. Sorry to put you on the spot.
Heidi: I mean, the reason this is all happening here is because of the ICE offices that are there, not because of the historic fort. But…
Rebecca: Well…the fort in the 1860s was actually a concentration camp for Dakota people.
Heidi: Oh…
Rebecca: I’m just curious if any of that history feels relevant to what’s happening now.
Heidi: Yes, clearly, you know, but I mean, our state, I mean, just, I, I, yeah, I mean, what’s you, I mean, you, you watch that video. [Start fade] Thank God that person was there taking the video on their cell phone yesterday so everyone can see what happened.
After leaving the protest I went back to see Nick Estes at his office
Nick: The murder of Renee Good and the history of Fort [00:14:00] Snelling are actually inseparable. First of all, ICE is headquartered on the Fort Snelling area campus.
Rebecca: Do you know if that’s because it’s federal land?
Nick: Yeah, it’s, it’s headquartered there because it’s federal land.
Rebecca: And why is it federal land?
Nick: Because it was once a military reservation from the Zebulon Pike Treaty of 1805. And that was a treaty sign between some Dakota leaders and the United States government to create a military outpost.
It’s not just the same place. The same thing is happening.
Nick: People are being hunted in their neighborhoods in their schools. Places that were considered sanctuary sites such as hospitals and churches are no longer off limits // 150 years ago they were hunting us down to kill us. And now they’re hunting down immigrants to deport them,
While I was out reporting this project, a lot happened. ICE killed people in the streets. I watched a kid in bunny ears get detained. Our government abducted the leader of Venezuela and started a war with Iran. Analysts kept talking about the “stages of authoritarianism.” And I found myself asking this question I think a lot of people are asking.
How is this happening? How is–ALL THIS–happening? In the United States?
The answers I kept hearing–Youtube, lonely white men, the economy–didn’t feel like enough.
I started to wonder if maybe the explanation was deeper than all that. Deeper than anything going on right now. I’m still trying to figure it out. But the more time I spend in the past, the more the present makes sense.
Maybe the answer is in that history we don’t know how to talk about.
——-MIDROLL————
[BELL RINGING IN TAPE]
The first place I went on my quest to put Native people back in the story of America was the Declaration of Independence. This year is the 250 anniversary of the signing of that famous document. And it made sense to me as a starting place. I mean, it’s the most popular origin story of our country, right?
But it turns out, what I thought I knew about the Declaration was wrong. Native people aren’t missing. We’re there. We’re one of the most important lines in the document. But somehow no one knows about it.
Actor: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people
[duck tape here]
Actor: to dissolve the political bans which have connected them with another
A couple of summers ago, on a hot, July day, this man in a large coat and a feathered hat walked up a small set of stairs. Surrounded by Revolutionary War reenactors, bayonettes, and the twin speakers of the Park Service’s PA system, he began reading the Declaration of Independence.
Actor: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.[duck and run under]
At the time of the document’s creation, a lot of people were illiterate and printing stuff was slow and expensive. So, word spread through public readings like this one.
Actor: The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries [duck tape here] and usurpations all having in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.
I think of the Declaration of Independence like a break up letter. Our founders are breaking up with George the III, King of England. And the Declaration is that part of every break up, or at least every bad break up, where you tell the other person everything they did wrong. If Thomas Jefferson and King George were having it out on the front lawn, Jefferson would have his finger in George’s face yelling, “and another thing”.
Actor: for imposing taxes on us without our consent.
And so the Declaration is basically this long list of complaints.
Actor: He has plundered our seas
Actor: Ravaged our coasts,
A lot of historians say that list has an order. It starts with smaller grievances…
Actor: Burnt our towns
… and ends with the biggest ones.
Actor: and destroyed the lives of our people.
We’ve been told the American Revolution was fought over taxes and representation. But the last complaint, the thing our founders were most angry about, goes like this:
Actor: He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages,
There’s a racial slur in the Declaration of Independence. Native people are called savages. Alongside those lofty ideals, our founders included their deep hatred for Indigenous people.
Actor: the merciless Indian savages Whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
In case you need a refresher, the popular story of the American Revolution goes like this.
Britain unjustly imposed taxes on the colonists and they got mad. But every time they protested–like when they threw tea into the Boston Harbor–the King just imposed harsher laws. The colonists started to see their King as a tyrant. Some started talking about independence.
Late one night, Paul Revere rode his horse to warn militias waiting outside Boston that the British were coming. The next morning, the militia squared off against the Brits, and the Revolutionary War began. A year later our founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia to write the Declaration of Independence.
But for two and half centuries that document has been telling a different story. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most angry about was Indians. How did we all miss that?
Rebecca: Can you please introduce yourself?
Ned: Hi, I am Ned Blackhawk.
I went to Connecticut to find out
Rebecca: And, uh, what’s your tribal affiliation?
Ned: I’m Western Shoshone.
Rebecca: And, uh, what do you do, Ned?
Ned: I teach history
Rebecca: Where?
Ned: I teach at Yale university.
Ned: I was the, first tenured American Indian, to teach at Yale.
Rebecca: Wait, I just kinda wanna back up, like in the entire history of Yale, you’re the first Native person to get tenure here.
Ned: Yes, and I’m still the first
Rebecca: you’re still the only
Ned: tenured faculty [00:22:00] member? Yes.
Rebecca: Is it ever lonely?
Ned: Um,
Ned wears a long ponytail and the kind of sweater you imagine a professor would wear. Ned and I have been talking about this history for years. He, along with Nick Estes and some other Indigenous scholars helped shape the idea for this podcast.
I wanted Ned to tell me the story of why the founders hated Indigenous people so much they put it in the Declaration of Independence. Ned says that story starts a couple decades earlier with this big, big war.
Rebecca: Was it kind of like World War Zero?
Ned: No, it is the first World War.
It started as a fight over who would control North America, and it eventually covered the globe. Great Britain won. And they get a bunch of land from France. This land spans from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and from present day New York to Minnesota. The colonists are thrilled.
Ned: All across British North America, colonists are rejoicing , sermons are being offered on Sundays. Pamphlets and almanacs are being written about land possibilities in the interior.
And there’s this kind of growing sense of shared kind of euphoria that the British government and the British Empire are not just the largest in world history, but also the virtuous and/or free.
A lot of that starts cracking, that euphoria, in the summer of 1763 when news of Indian rebellions or uprisings start pervading into the colonies.
Those celebrations come to a halt in the summer of 1763, when news spreads of an Indigenous uprising.
The land England took over from France, is still controlled by Indigenous nations. What England actually wins in the war, in real terms, is forts. About 13 forts stationed around the Great Lakes. As the new fort boss in town, England thinks it can push Native nations around.
Ned: They don’t listen to the native peoples, they don’t trade with them adequately.
And that angers Indigenous leaders. An Odawa Chief named Pontiac forms a multinational Indigenous military alliance to push back.
Rebecca: could you just tell me a little bit more about like who Pontiac is?
Ned: Pontiac, um, is an Odawa leader, And he’s fallen into close affinity with a \ preacher whose Delaware or Lenape named Neolin. // Neolin is the Delaware prophet. Pontiac is the political leader, and together they start articulating a vision for the future that is transformative. They decide that they no longer want their followers to, um, rely upon the goods of Europeans. // And it’s a process kind of similar to what the colonists are going through, // Because once they start reimagining themselves in these ways, they decide that they’re going to drive the English out.
Pontiac and his soldiers go around and attack British forts. One of these attacks was particularly brilliant. Some Anishinaabe warriors go to this fort in Northern Michigan, as they often did, to trade. But while they’re there, they pretend to play a game of lacrosse right outside the fort.
Ned: And uh, one ball makes it over the fence. And so they ask if they could kind of, get their ball returned. And so the, the fort officials are opening the doors to return the, ball that’s been taken and flood of warriors or come in and destroy the fort.
Pontiac’s military alliance attacks forts all over the Great Lakes region. Remember, England took over about 13 forts. Well Pontiac and his alliance destroy eight.
Ned: They signal to the English that peace is gonna be more costly than war has been for you.
And another costly war for the Crown is a big problem. England is broke. Like broke, broke.
That global war England spent almost a decade fighting? It was expensive. The Crown doesn’t want to pay for another one.
Ned: And they decide, okay, we’ll make peace with Pontiac.
Rebecca: Why would the king do that? Because England is a global empire. So why wouldn’t the King of England want more land in North America?
Ned: Okay. Have you ever been to India?
Rebecca: No.
Ned: Have you heard of the Caribbean?
Rebecca: Yes.
Ned: Okay. The English crown governs millions of people around the world. The British colonists in North America are a small percentage of that. The overwhelming economic priorities that the British Empire has in the [00:30:00] Western Hemisphere revolve around places like Jamaica and Barbados, not Virginia or Massachusetts.
Rebecca: Is that because Barbados makes the Crown more money?
Ned: Correct. Because Barbados produces large quantities of slave produced alcohol and sugar that can be consumed across the British empire.
So in the interests of Britain, this global empire, peace with the Indigenous nations makes the most sense. It saves the Crown money. It serves the Crown’s interests.
To preserve peace, the King of England gives Pontiac and his confederacy what they want.
Ned: The proclamation line of October, 1763, draws this perimeter along the crest of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Crown promises to keep settlers off their land.
Ned: So everything east is British North America. Everything to the west is to be reserved for the Indians.
While peace with Indigenous nations serves the Crown’s interests, it angers the colonists. Because it takes from them what they want most. More land.
Ned: Land mania, we might say, pervades and overwhelms the colonial system.
Ned: gentry leaders, People like George Washington understood that their lands were becoming increasingly less valuable.
People like Washington are commanding their enslaved populations to help bring nutrient rich soils from the bottom of river beds.
Rebecca: because the fields are so depleted.
Ned: ‘Cause the fields have become so depleted.
People like George Washington made money from this thing called land speculation. They’d buy up land that still belonged to Indigenous nations to sell for profit once Indigenous people were pushed out. The King’s new boundary, it messed up their whole scheme.
The boundary line angered regular and poor people too. People who couldn’t afford to buy private property, often squatted on Indigenous land. Pioneers, frontiersmen, settlers, whatever you wanna call them were already living west of the King’s line.
Ned: And there are numbers of settlers who are forced back east. And they don’t like it.
And there’s this other thing about the King’s concession to Pontiac the colonists don’t like. Peace.
You have to understand that the colonists have been at war with Indigenous nations for most of their lives. And now the King wants to make peace with their enemies?
Ned: And in fact, the British are going to give them, uh, ammunition. They’re gonna trade with them. They’re gonna recognize them. “Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t we just fight with you to control this world?”
To help cement peace with Pontiac, England arranges to bring gifts and supplies. This was how diplomacy between Indigenous nations and European powers worked back then.
Ned: 80 supply mule trains are coming. Um, Massive actually, logistical undertaking, if you think about it.
At Pittsburgh awaits these traders who are gonna take these goods to pontiac’s Confederate gatherings.
The colonists organize a militia- basically a band of angry white men with guns and attack the convoy.
Ned: The first shots of the American Revolution are fired in March of 1765 when one of these back country militia groups known as The Black Boys attacks a British force escorting trade goods to Pontiac.
They’re not attacking Indigenous people. The Black Boys are attacking British troops.
Ned: They say things like, we are willing to die to disrupt and destroy these relationships.
So before colonists are willing to die for lofty ideals like freedom and liberty and independence, they are willing to die to stop the Crown from making peace with Indigenous nations. And we know why they are willing to die for this cause. Because they wrote a song about it.
Ned: The black boys create an anthem. You know, a song that they march to.
Ned: and that anthem calls Native peoples the enemies of mankind.
I asked Ned to read part of it for me.
Ned: On March the fifth in 65
their Indian presence did arrive
but when this property is designed to serve the enemy of mankind,
it’s high treason in the amount.
Rebecca: What does that line mean?
Ned: It means that the British trading policies of supplying native peoples are supporting the enemies of not just settler society, but mankind more broadly. That Britain is committing treason not to the crown, but to humanity as a whole.
Ned: And so this vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for mankind, the first time mankind is being articulated that I’m aware of universally as a kind of rallying political representational strategy is in deeply anti- indigenous settings.
Hating Indigenous people, seeing us as less than human, helped the colonists come together and form a unified identity. It helped them come together to fight for independence.
Ned: I do believe that the [00:34:00] start of the fall of the British Empire North America began on the Pennsylvania frontier.
Ned: The sense of lawlessness or essentially fashioning one’s own self-governing principles and practices. This is happening in Pennsylvania, before it’s happening in Massachusetts.
We teach the origins of the American Revolution as this drum beat of violence and protest happening in Boston over taxes. But years before any of that, colonists are firing guns at British troops… over Native land.
Ned: and to my knowledge that black boys history that we’ve been discussing has yet to appear in any US history textbook.
Ned: Why we can’t tell that story? is a mystery to me.
Before I left Yale, I gave Ned a present.
Ned: You want me to open this? Okay.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Ned: Early Christmas present
Rebecca: early Christmas present. You may or may not want it.
Ned: Declaration of Independence shot Glass. Thank you so much.
Rebecca: What does it say?
Ned: We, the people.
Rebecca: What to you does that shot glass represent? If we think about how Americans think about their history?
Ned: Um, I wanted to say something that it’s easily digestible,
Rebecca: goes down smooth.
Ned: I think we as a country are losing a real sense of understanding about our nation’s past. The declaration, which is full of these beautiful, beautifully rendered, you know, sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals does also have this darker history to it.
Rebecca: Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution, why is it important that Americans know about it?
Ned: Well, if we don’t understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won’t understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself.
I am mad that Native people have been written out of the story of the Revolution. But I’m also baffled by it.
I mean, it’s kind of wild, right? It’s not like you have to dig through the archives to find out that hunger for Indigenous land drove the Revolution. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence. In our country’s most famous document. In one of the most famous documents in all of human history. But somehow no one knows about it? It feels like a magic trick, like making a rabbit disappear into a hat.
And when I started this project, that’s what I thought I was up against. The pervasive and systemic erasure of Native people from US history. I thought the thing people couldn’t see was me, my community. And then I started to realize what’s missing from the story of America–its bigger than that.
After I left Minneapolis, I kept hearing politicians say the same thing.
News archival:
What is happening right now in America is fundamentally unamerican
This is so unamerican
It is fundamentally unamerican.
I understand where this comes from. It comes from the part of the Declaration of Independence we were taught. The all men are created equal… life, liberty and happiness part. But when we tell the whole story, the truth of how and why our country was founded, the present moment doesn’t feel like a contradiction.
Violently rounding people up, putting people in detention, even shooting any one who gets in the way, our government has done this before. Not once, not twice, many times. We just don’t talk about that history, because it happened to Indigenous people.
I keep hearing people go to Nazi Germany or Putin’s Russia to try and understand the rise of fascism. We don’t need to leave the United States to understand the horrors of authoritarianism. It’s right here in our own history. And if we want to root that authoritarianism out, we have to know where and how it started. If we think we can win by defeating one leader, it will be like pruning a weed. It will only come back stronger.
I thought what was missing from the story of America was Native people. But then I realised without us, that story is wrong. What’s missing from the story of America? It’s the truth — I want us to know how we got here. Because without that, we will never find our way out.
[music cue to set transition]
Coming up on this season of First America.
Tape Waterfall
Chiefs on three. 1, 2, 3. Chiefs!
Rebecca: Whoa. I feel like that’s gonna happen a lot.
Audrey: Do Native Americans still exist?
Agnes: Maybe?
Martin Case: So the entire plan for funding, the federal government was acquiring indigenous land and selling it
Scott: So you were running for your lives and um, and you saw behind you everything you knew being burned down.
Rebecca: What democracy rounds an entire ethnic group up at gunpoint and puts them into a concentration camp. Like not a strong democracy, not a durable democracy, not, um, yeah. Uh, I would say not even a democracy.
Maggie: It’s not, it’s not a new thing. We’re, this is what we’ve done. We’re good at this.
If you like what you’re hearing, please leave a review. It’s one of the best ways to help more listeners find this show. You can also support First America by subscribing or sharing episodes with your friends.
First America was made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation and NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project. Additional support came from NDN Collective, First Nations Development Institute, Yuhaaviatam (yv-HAA-vi-v-tahm) of San Manuel Nation, Borealis Philanthropy, and Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective. Our fiscal sponsor is Red Media.
I dreamed this project into the world in collaboration with an amazing group of Indigenous scholars including Maggie Blackhawk, Fond du Lac Ojibwe, Ned Blackhawk, citizen of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, Phil Deloria, descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux tribes, and Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
I, Rebecca Nagle, citizen of Cherokee Nation also reported, wrote, hosted and executive produced the show.
First America is produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries. Our managing producer is Amy Westervelt, senior producer and sound designer is Brendan Baker. Our story editor is Audrey Quinn.
Jules Bradley, Kim Nederveen Pieterse and Jordan Gass-Pooré are our producers.
Our editorial consultant is Connie Walker, citizen of the Okanese [okineese] First Nation. Fact-checking by Naomi Barr. Our partnerships director is Lindsay Crowder. Our development consultant is Jenny Lawton.
Our theme song is by Raven Chacon, who is Diné. Scoring by Laura Ortman, citizen of the White Mountain Apache tribe and Raven Chacon. Artwork by Keli Gonzales, citizen of Cherokee Nation.
The team at Pushkin is Gretta Cohn, CEO; Eric Sandler, Chief Strategy Officer; Grace Ross, VP of Business Development; Morgan Ratner, Director of Marketing; Owen Miller, Content Delivery Associate; Kyra Posey, Creative Partnerships Manager; Jordyn McMillin, Social Media Manager; Brian Srebrenik [Tsreb-bren-ik], Senior Analytics Manager; and Jake Flanigan, Production Counsel.