Merciless Indian Savages | First America

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1:51Pushkin. There's a sentence in the Declaration of Independence that almost no one talks about. It's the last grievance, the climax, the thing the founders were most angry about. And it isn't about taxes or representation, like we've been told. It's about Native Americans. He has excited the merciless Indian savages, it reads, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding this year. And somehow, for a century and a half, America managed to skim right past that line, or explain it away, or simply forget it was there.

2:37How does a whole country miss a point of its own founding document? That's the question at the heart of a new podcast called First America. It's hosted by Rebecca Nagel, an indigenous journalist and the host of Crooked's This Land podcast. First America reveals the real story of why the colonists rebelled, what kind of government they created, and crucially, how our current political moment was 250 years in the making. We have a word for the stories nations tell about themselves that leave out the uncomfortable parts. We call it a myth. First America isn't interested in myths. It's interested in unveiling how the founders' treatment of indigenous nations and their resistance shaped U.S.

3:24democracy. Here's the first episode of First America. Hear more episodes of First America on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get podcasts.

3:40Where do you want us to park? Should we park right here? I think you have to park in here. The port is that way? Yeah, the port's that way. On a cold day in January, I visited Fort Snelling in Minneapolis. I was there with my friend Nick Gastis. He's a history professor at the University of Minnesota and a citizen of the Lower Burle Sioux Tribe. This is the historic Fort Snelling. Do you want to walk closer to it? Can you just describe what the fort looks like? Well, the fort has a guard tower, and then there's a wall that surrounds the entire fort. There's a series of barracks. Next to the historic buildings are modern-day trash cans to let you know this is a tourist attraction.

4:23School kids come here on field trips. This is a sacred site for Dakota people, which was later appropriated by the U.S. military to build their fort. So, look at that bald eagle. Told you we were going to see one. Yeah. I wish the United States never appropriated the eagle. Do you hear him?

4:52Look at him. He's coming right towards us. I mean, I don't know, man. I don't know how you can't believe in the power of this stuff because those things happen for a reason. 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. It's like a healing site right over here. It's next to an underpass. down a long set of stairs on the edge of the woods. Can you describe what the memorial looks like? Yeah, so it's like a camp circle, but in the center it looks like there's prayer ties, sage, tobacco, etc., wrapped in cloth.

5:47And there are also prayer ties in the trees that surround us. Who do you think left the prayer ties in the trees? I'm assuming it's the descendants of those who experienced that genocide. Over 1 ,600 Dakota people were held here during the winter of 1862. 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 into 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.

6:44There was a lot of malnutrition, purposeful starvation. There were reports of women being raped and violated. You know, it's a site of horrors. Do you think most people who come to this spot, do you think that they come here to honor the atrocity that happened here? No, they're doing winter sports, recreation. I mean, you can see right here, you can see these parallel tracks. People cross-country ski through this area. While we were standing there, some hikers walked by.

7:24Walking around Fort Snelling with Nick, it felt like this perfect metaphor for our country. All our terrible history, it's there. We just don't know how to talk about it.

7:41This 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 Native people written back in. I wanted to correct the record. I think I should just go up here. Uh-oh, okay, I need a merge. When we were in the car, Nick's phone rang. I'm gonna... My wife called me, somebody got shot. He pulled up the news on his phone. Breaking witnesses report. A woman was shot in the face by ICE while trying to flee in central Minneapolis. Earlier that day, a woman named Renee Nicole Good had tried to block ICE agents with her car.

8:29An agent had just shot and killed her. Damn, the photos are really bad. Oh, God. It looks like a deployed airbag. It's just covered in blood. We parked and watched the video.

8:46Wow. Wow. That's awful. That's awful. When I was in Minneapolis last January, thousands of ICE agents were on the ground. 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. 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.

9:24When 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. But then 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.

10:00You'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 Nagel. Goheen dao-do, jilakaya tli-kein-la, citizen of Cherokee Nation.

10:45I didn't go to Minneapolis to report on ICE. I had come to interview Nick. We just happened to be at Fort Snelling the day ICE shot and killed Renee Good. I don't know about you, but I don't believe in coincidences.

11:05I canceled my flight home and stayed to report on what was happening. The next morning, there was a protest back at Fort Snelling.

11:19Because Fort Snelling is also the site of ICE's headquarters in Minneapolis. I was curious why you guys came today, because, I mean, you know, Someone was literally killed yesterday for standing up to ice. So is it scary to be here today knowing the violence? 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. How far are we from the historic Fort Snelling?

12:00I'm just right across Highway 62 here. And do you know what happened there? Oh, no, no, don't ask me those kinds of questions. I'm not good with history. It's a historic fort. It's historic. Yeah, sorry to put you on the spot. I mean, the reason this is all happening here is because of the ice offices that are there, not because of the historic fort. The fort in the 1860s is actually a concentration camp for Dakota people. I'm just curious if any of that history feels relevant to what's happening now. Yes, clearly, you know. But I mean, our state. I mean, just, yeah. I mean, you watch that video.

12:44Thank God that person was there taking the video on their cell phone yesterday. So everyone can see what happened, you know. After leaving the protests, I went back to see Nick Estes at his office. The murder of Renee Good and the history of Fort Snelling are actually inseparable. First of all, ICE is headquartered on the Fort Snelling area campus. Do you know if that's because it's federal land? Yeah, it's headquartered there because it's federal land. And why is it federal land? It's federal land because it was once a military reservation from the Zebulon Pike Treaty of 1805. And that was a treaty signed between some Dakota leaders and the United States government to create a military outpost.

13:36It's not just the same place. The same thing is happening. 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.

14:23And 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.

15:31it can help create a brief, analysis, deck outline, tracker, or workflow. You stay in control reviewing the work and choosing the final result. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans. This is Eric Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery, sometimes about really big things, things you hear in the news. But most times, the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know, I've never seen this happen. I've got skirts, I've got shorts.

16:10Wait, this is true? This is true. Mysteries of every size, each week, This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.

16:26The 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 250th 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. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.

17:15A 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, bayonets, and the twin speakers of the Park Service's PA system, he began reading the Declaration of Independence. 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. At the time of the document's creation, a lot of people were illiterate, and printing stuff was slow and expensive.

18:04So word spread through public readings like this one. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation. I think of the Declaration of Independence like a breakup letter. Our founders are breaking up with George III, King of England. And the Declaration is that part of every breakup, or at least every bad breakup, 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 Georgia's face yelling, and another thing. For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

18:48And so the declaration is basically this long list of complaints. He has plundered our sea. A lot of historians say that list has an order. Ravaged our coast. It starts with smaller grievances. Burnt our towns. And ends with the biggest ones. 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. 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.

19:38Native people are called savages. Alongside those lofty ideals, our founders included their deep hatred for indigenous people. 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.

20:37Late 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.

21:12But for two and a 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? Can you please introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Ned Blackhawk. I went to Connecticut to find out. And what's your tribal affiliation? I'm Western Shoshone. And what do you do, Ned? I teach history. Where? Yale University. I was the first tenured American Indian to teach at Yale. Wait, I just kind of want to back up. Like in the entire history of Yale, you're the first Native person to get tenure here?

21:57Yes, and I'm still the first. Still the only? Tenured faculty member. Is it ever lonely?

22:08Ned 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. Was it kind of like World War Zero? No, it is the first world war. It started as a fight over who would control North America, and it eventually covered the globe.

22:49Great Britain won, and they got 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. All across British North America, colonists are rejoicing. Sermons are being offered in 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 most virtuous and or free. Those celebrations come to a halt in the summer of 1763, when news spreads of an indigenous uprising.

23:35The 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 a new Fort Boston town, England thinks it can push Native nations around. 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. But could you just tell me a little bit more about who Pontiac is? Pontiac is an Odawa leader, and he's fallen into close affinity with a preacher who's Delaware or Lenape named Neolin.

24:24Neolin 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 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 those attacks was particularly brilliant. Some Anishinaabe warriors go to this fort in northern Michigan, as they often did to trade.

25:08But while they're there, they pretend to play a game of lacrosse right outside the fort. And one ball makes it over the fence. And so they asked if they could kind of get their ball returned. And so the fort officials are opening the doors to return the ball that's been taken. And a flood of warriors come in and destroy the fort.

25:35Pontiac's military alliance attacks forts all over the Great Lakes region. Remember, England took over about 13 forts, while Pontiac and his alliance destroy eight. They signal to the English that peace is going to 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. And they decide, OK, we'll make peace with Pontiac. And 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?