I Have Questions: Learning About Indigenous Studies, Lesson 2
As I explained in Lesson 1, I will spend the summer learning more about Indigenous Studies. I chose this topic for several important reasons. First, I know very little about it. Second, I have some experience in looking at other marginalized cultures, namely Arab American and African American. Third, I want to ensure some support and accountability so that I don’t get stalled or overwhelmed in learning something new.
This week, I decided to read An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Having read A Disability History of the United States by Kim Nielsen, I am familiar with the ReVisioning American History series. The series, launched by Beacon Press, traces American history through lenses that have thus far been ignored. Beacon Press also boasts a track record of trustworthy and complex public scholarship, which matters as I dig into sources.
Why history? As a literature scholar and enthusiast, I did think about whether I should dive into a novel or a collection of poetry first. Certainly, that would feel right. But, my lack of knowledge stayed my hand. Literature, like any other cultural artifact, does not exist outside the context in which it is produced. So, any interpretation of that literature must account for relevant histories, cultures, and knowledges. So, I start with history.
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States shifts much of what I was taught about US history. Dunbar-Ortiz begins by re-mapping the land we call the United States. She points out that this land was divided differently before European settlers arrived: Indigenous people had their own sovereign nations, roads (many of which we use today), and geopolitical rules. The myth of American settler colonialism is that the land was barren. When I was told anything about Indigenous folks before European incursion, I learned that the land was in the hands of mostly disorganized, migratory groups and civilizations (Mayan, Aztec, Inca) were the provenance of what is now called Mexico. This is simply not true.
Dunbar-Ortiz’s work clarifies that the attempted extermination of Indigenous people was an ongoing project with global cooperation. British, French, and Spanish forces collaborated to wipe out Indigenous people as a way of ensuring access to the land. There was Indigenous resistance at every turn including alliances between Indigenous nations and military and diplomatic offensives to drive out the settlers. Dunbar-Ortiz describes the first presidential administration’s failure to conquer the land we now know as Ohio. Washington allowed settler militias to maraud and terrorize the Iroquois and Seneca peoples, so that land could be sold to settlers. Those sales constituted the revenue for the new government.
In reading this, my questions were: why wasn’t I told this? And, what makes the myths I was told so believable?
Answering that was pretty easy once I considered Andrew Jackson. Dunbar-Ortiz’s delineates how his career paved the way for the military and cultural conquest that abets the myths we call history. In chapter six, “The Last of the Mohicans and Andrew Jackson,” Dunbar-Ortiz traces Jackson’s military career from its beginnings: Jackson was admitted to the bar in the Western district of North Carolina (later, Tennessee), performed legal work on disputed land claims, worked to make Tennessee a state, was elected as a US Senator, and then became a judge in the Tennessee Supreme Court. His legal work on disputed land claims allowed him firsthand knowledge of how to acquire Chickasaw Nation land. And, he did. After amassing his fortune, he took command of the Tennessee militia (remember what militias were allowed to do), began military campaigns against the Muskogee Nation, and participated in the Seminole Wars.
Jackson’s campaigns bode well for his political career. Dunbar-Ortiz draws on several historians who understand Jackson’s military career as a consequential element in his bid for president. Historian Alan Brinkley noted that Jackson’s “political fortunes depended on the fate of the Indians — that is, their eradication.” Ordered by President James Monroe, Jackson goes on to fight as a US General in the Seminole Wars (1817–1858). During this time, the Office of Indian Affairs was established (1824) and was placed in the Department of War. Institutional structures tell us much.
Just to be clear, the Choctaws and Chickasaws living in the southeastern part of the land were surrounded by colonial powers: Spanish to the south and east, British to the north and west. In addition to the military assault, they were also mired in the burgeoning US trading world, forcing them into debt. The end result: a combination of military force and economic terrorism forced them to sell their land.
Here’s the thing: these military incursions, Jackson’s presidency (1829–1837), and the economic warfare all connived to attempt to exterminate Indigenous populations. Many of these folks survived and their descendants are displaced, but still living. Yet, the idea that there are no more Indigenous folks is so pervasive. Why?
Enter literature. Specifically James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. This book, one of four in the Leatherstocking Tales series, revises the history of the land. At its center is a fictional Indigenous person, Chingachgook, who is the last of a fictional Delaware Nation. At the end of the series, the white settler friend of Chingachgook, Natty Bumppo, dies as he looks back upon land that has been settled and conquered. Given the relationship between Chingachgook and Bumppo, Bumppo’s version of history and the presumed way forward seemingly has the blessing of his Indigenous friend.
I taught this book before, in an early American literature class in 2010. I regretted assigning it because it was long and terribly written, but I stayed with it because it taught an important lesson about history. My rationale for that decision stays with me because I didn’t quite realize how much The Last of the Mohicans defined a generation. It was a best-seller in its time. For those who were politically aware, it justified military action against the so-called dying nations. For those who grew up under its mythology, the book seduced them into believing that the settlement of the western parts of the land were inevitable and necessary. That seduction is ongoing.
In order to do its mythologizing work, Cooper’s novel mobilizes the prerogative of literature, that is, the audacity to make things up, sometimes to nefarious ends. First, Cooper makes up an Indigenous nation. Any author has a right to do so. But, this made-up Delaware Nation avoids any collision with reality, thereby making it easier to elide the real sovereign nations that were under attack at the time of the novel’s publication. The imagined nation allows distance between the events of the day and the novel, suggesting a harmlessness that is itself fictional. Further, making up a nation allows Cooper to mock the traditions, knowledges, and cultures of existing nations. He never has to learn a thing about them to write them. The literary marksmanship of a colonizing pen.
Second, The Last of the Mohicans romanticizes the relationship between Chingachgook and Bumppo. Their friendship suggests that Native nations were all too happy to relinquish control and power. Friendship, as a powerful metaphor for the joining of nations, makes permissible all the atrocities committed by people who are represented by Bumppo and justifies the degradation of those represented by Chingachgook. A romantic sensibility animated by friendship makes Chingachgook’s death, like the deaths of those he represents, tragic on a smaller scale. Again, the friendship allows the novel (and the novelist) to mock the lived realities of existing Indigenous nations. He never has to learn a thing about their grief or the ways it was brought to pass.
Several thoughts arise for me. First, what to do about the $20 bill? On the one hand, folks have been lobbying for Harriet Tubman’s face to be on it. As a Black person living in America, I used to wholeheartedly endorse that idea. Learning about Andrew Jackson makes me wonder if another face might be appropriate? An Indigenous face, perhaps. It must be said that would be a meaningless gesture given all the atrocities he committed. It may also be an unwelcome one. Regardless of who’s face replaces his, we need to reckon with how we literally trade currency that places value on the visage of a genocidal warmonger.
Second, what do I do about teaching history in my classes? Because I teach African American literature, I often have to provide brief synopses of American history to help contextualize the work for students. Have, thus far, troubled those histories very little. When I teach next time, the plan will be to provide history from Indigenous perspectives, reminding students that the dominant history should not be taken for granted.
