The Great American Turkey
The turkey was semi-domesticated and kept in pens in the American Southwest some 2,000 years ago—but not for the reason you think.
Making Scents of Jesuit Missionary Work
The use of sensory stimulants like incense gave Jesuits a common framework with the North American nations they encountered on missionary trips.
The Fight for Native American Voting Rights
Despite the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, Native American activists have had to repeatedly take their fight for voting rights to Congress.
Andrew Jackson’s Speech on the Indian Removal Act: Annotated
In December 1830, two months after the passage of the Indian Removal Act, President Andrew Jackson used his annual Congressional message to celebrate the policy.
Indigenous Kings in Londontown
In 1710, Queen Anne of England feted four Native American dignitaries—would-be political allies. Their presence at a performance of Macbeth caused a stir.
Genocide in California
The extermination campaigns against the Yuki people, sparked by the California Gold Rush and statehood, weren’t termed genocide until the mid 1970s.
The Triumphalism of American Wild West Shows
From the 1880s to the 1930s, hundreds of Wild West shows encouraged white audiences to view Native American culture as a rapidly vanishing curiosity.
Native Origin Stories As Tools of Conquest
In the nineteenth century, the Euro-American “Lost Tribes of Israel” theory was one of the most popular explanations for the existence of Indigenous peoples.
Inventing an American Indian Rebellion
False rumors of an alleged Wampanoag uprising on Nantucket Island in 1738 were turned into a story of an Indian rebellion thwarted via a Boston newspaper.
Yale’s Lost Indian Museum
The (now lost) collection of Native American artifacts at Yale College reveals the mechanics and high cost of the settler-colonialist nation-building project.