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Writing Indigenous people back into America’s story
The U.S. is celebrating its 250th birthday this summer. But native people are often left out of America's founding narrative. Does uncovering that history change how we think of the country?
Guest
Rebecca Nagle, writer and activist. Citizen of the Cherokee nation. Host of the new podcast “First America.”
Ned Blackhawk, professor of history at Yale University. Author of many books, including “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.”
Transcript of Full Broadcast
The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:
Part I
AMORY SIVERTSON: When you think of the Declaration of Independence, what comes to mind? Self-evident truths? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? All men being created equal? There's something all the way down near the bottom of that founding document that Cherokee writer and journalist Rebecca Nagle says we don't pay enough attention to.
Rebecca's the host of First America, a new podcast that explores the ways indigenous people are left out of the story of the United States, including its founding. All this month, we've been examining the idea of America, and today we're looking at Native America, which brings us right to that often-overlooked part of the Declaration of Independence.
Rebecca Nagle, what is it?
REBECCA NAGLE: That part of the Declaration of Independence calls Indigenous people 'merciless Indian savages.' So right next to those lofty Enlightenment ideals about all men being created equal, there is language in our founding document that our founders saw Indigenous people actually as less than human, as savages. And it's not just a throwaway line. We're all familiar with the preamble, the opening of the Declaration of Independence, but when you get to the meat and the heart of the document, it's actually this list of grievances. It's all these things that England and King George III have done that have angered the colonists, and these are their reasons for rebellion.
There is language in our founding document that our founders saw Indigenous people actually as less than human, as savages.
Rebecca Nagle
They're justifying the war that they're already in. And a lot of historians think that list actually has an order, and that the thing that is at the end is actually the most important. You can think of it almost like a crescendo. And that line is about the merciless Indian savages of the frontier and is really about Native people and Indian affairs.
SIVERTSON: So I want to talk more about that, but I do want to hone in on this term, the fact that this celebrated document of record uses a term like savages. What was the intention there?
NAGLE: Yeah, at the time, savages is also this sort of quasi-legal term where Europeans had divided the world into civilized nations and civilized people, and savages, and people who were deemed savage didn't have the same kind of human rights, didn't have the same kind of rights to property, didn't have the same kind of rights under international law, what was forming as international law at the time.
And so that word has a lot of meaning behind it, and what the founders are saying with that word is that the government and the democracy that we're creating, Native people aren't a part of that. They're not on the same status and the same level as we are. They're beneath us is the message that word sends, in a very intentional way.
SIVERTSON: And the colonists accuse the Crown of, quote, "endeavoring to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers," essentially allowing Indigenous peoples to remain on land that the colonists wanted. What was the relationship between England and the Native peoples in America at that time?
NAGLE: Yeah, that's a really good question, and this is something I've actually learned from reading Ned Blackhawk's work and other scholars.
There's this part of the reason that the American Revolution happened in the first place that we don't tell as a country. So we tell the sort of taxation and representation story, but we don't tell the part of the story where actually one of the main drivers of the American Revolution ... was that the colonists wanted more Indigenous land, and England was telling them no.
One of the main drivers of the American Revolution ... was that the colonists wanted more Indigenous land, and England was telling them no.
Rebecca Nagle
And there was history behind that no. And there was an Indigenous-led uprising that had sacked a bunch of British-controlled forts, and England was basically looking at a very costly war, at a moment that it was broke from fighting other expensive, costly wars. And so instead of going to war with Indigenous nation, England decided, "All right, let's make a compromise."
And part of that compromise was drawing this line down the East Coast of the United States and saying, "Colonists, you can't move west of the Appalachian Mountains." And the colonists did not like that.
SIVERTSON: Okay, so this derogatory line about merciless Indian savages is grievance number 27 of 27 against the Crown, as you say, in a crescendo to this particular point.
And you view this particular grievance as a key reason that the American Revolution even happened. Can you explain that for us?
NAGLE: Totally. So after the king issues this proclamation, it's called the Proclamation of 1763, but after the king says, "Colonists, you can't move west of the Appalachian Mountains," there is armed rebellion.
And when British soldiers go to trade and to cement peace accords with Indigenous nations, a backcountry militia attacks those British soldiers. And so this backcountry militia in Pennsylvania, they're not attacking Indigenous people, they're attacking British soldiers to try and prevent those British soldiers from making peace with Indigenous nations.
And so the way that we tell the story of the American Revolution as this sort of drumbeat of violence and conflict and rebellion and escalation happening in Boston over taxes, we talk about the Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, the shot heard round the world years before any of that, colonists were firing guns at British troops over Native land.
And so this idea of colonists rejecting the crown fashioning their own ideas around what they want to see in the continent of North America, that is happening over Native land actually before it's happening over things like taxes. But for some reason, when we tell the founding story of the United States, we leave that part out.
SIVERTSON: Yeah, you say in the first episode of your podcast series, First America, that what's missing from the story of America is the truth. And we're going to be digging into that statement more over the course of the hour, but I'm curious what set you off on this truth-finding mission.
What told you that there was more to the story that needed to be told?
NAGLE: I think as a Native person living in the United States, you're just used to it. It's constant. Whether it's a conversation about COVID or the census or in any kind of political discourse, we're left out of the conversation, and history is the same way.
And almost every chapter of American history, if Native people are included, it's passing mention. And I think as an Indigenous person, for a long time, I had this innate sense that what our country did to Native people, that it didn't just affect us, right? That it affected all Americans, and that it was actually foundational to understanding our government.
Almost every chapter of American history, if Native people are included, it's passing mention.
Rebecca Nagle
But for a long time, that was just a hunch, and I didn't have enough information to piece it together. And it was through working with historians like Ned that I got the receipts and really started to see that it's not that just when we te