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Appetite for Destruction

Indigenous Americans knew how to avoid starvation. Colonists were too hungry to notice.
Patricia Hearst in front of SLA flag, 1974; CSU Archives/Everett Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

American Captivity

The captivity narrative as creation myth.

The Invention of Thanksgiving

Massacres, myths, and the making of the great November holiday.
The border of Petersham and Barre, Massachusetts.

‘A Vehicle of Genocide’: These Mass. Towns Were Founded on the Killing of Native Americans

Estimates say that millions of dollars and tens of thousands of acres of land throughout New England were given to soldiers who scalped Native Americans.

The Middle Hutchinson: Elisha, 1641-1717

By leading the risky but eventually successful financial operation, Elisha justified his name.
Detail of a five-shilling Massachusetts Colony note, the only surviving piece of the colony’s 1690 legal tender.

‘Easy Money’ Review: The Currency and the Commonwealth

Saddled with debt and forbidden by the crown to mint money, Boston’s Puritans dreamed up a novel monetary system that we still use today.
Painting of a Puritan family sitting around a table with books.

Read More Puritan Poetry

Coming to love Puritan poetry is an odd aesthetic journey. It's the sort of thing you expect people partial to bowties and gin gimlets to get involved with.
Collage of nature images and transcendentalists' faces, with flowers in Emerson's eyes.

Emerson and Thoreau’s Fanatical Freedom

Why do the Transcendentalists still have an outsize influence on American culture?
1862 newspaper photo, "The Rebel Lady’s Boudoir,” shows a woman and child using human bones as decor.

Sullivan Ballou’s Body: Battlefield Relic Hunting and the Fate of Soldiers’ Remains

Confederates’ quest for bones connects to a bizarre history of the use, and misuse, of human remains.

Why the History of the Vast Early America Matters Today

There is no American history without the histories of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. And this past has consequences today.
Illustration of the Salem Witch Trials, with a "witch" appearing to levitate books

My Witch-Hunt History, and America's: A Personal Journey to 1692

Revisiting America's first witch hunt — and discovering how much of it was a family affair. My family, that is.
Map of Massachusetts colonial frontier

The “Indianized” Landscape of Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, the inclusion of Native American names and places in local geography has obscured the violence of political and territorial dispossession.
Lithograph depicting John Eliot standing in the light and preaching to the a group of solemn, reflective American Indians sitting on the ground

How Plague Reshaped Colonial New England Before the Mayflower Even Arrived

Power, plague and Christianity were closely intertwined in 17th-century New England.
COVID-19 particles with the bill of rights written over them

The Forgotten Third Amendment Could Give Pandemic-Struck America a Way Forward

An overlooked corner of the Constitution hints at a right to be protected from infection.

The Vanishing Indians of “These Truths”

Jill Lepore's widely-praised history of the U.S. relies on the eventual exit of indigenous actors to make way for other dramas.
A painting entitled "The First Thanksgiving, 1621" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (ca. 1932).

A Brief History of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a holiday about food – but it is more specifically a holiday about food’s absence.

Why a Woman Who Killed Indians Became Memorialized as the First Female Public Statue

Hannah Duston was used as a national symbol of innocence, valor, and patriotism to justify westward expansion.
1675 map of New England

Cross-Cultural Colonial Conflicts

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
Pilgrims going to church armed with guns.

God and Guns

Patrick Blanchfield tracks the long-standing entanglement of guns and religion in the United States. Part 1 of 2.
Portrait of William Apess.

The Greatest Native American Intellectual You’ve Never Heard Of

The short life and long legacy of the 19th-century reformer William Apess.

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