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Painting of the Sand Creek Massacre by Robert Lindneux, c. 1935.

Happy Native American Heritage Month From the Army That Brought You the Trail of Tears

After 170 years of armed attacks, forced relocations, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Native Americans, the U.S. military wants to celebrate.
by Nick Turse via The Intercept on November 28, 2024
An art installation that evokes the Hollywood sign with the phrase "Indian Land".

Contest or Conquest?

How best to tell the story of oppressed peoples? By chronicling the hardships they’ve faced? Or by highlighting their triumphs over adversity?
by Daniel Immerwahr via Harper’s on October 11, 2022
Map of British colonies of North America in 1776.

Colonial America Is a Myth

Rather than a “colonial America,” we should speak of an Indigenous America that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial.
by Pekka Hämäläinen via TIME on October 10, 2022
Sesationalized painting of Native Americans about to scalp a white woman. The Murder of Jane McCrae by John Vanderlyn, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

“White People,” Victimhood, and the Birth of the United States

White racial victimhood was a primary source of power for settlers who served as shock troops for the nation.
by Gregory Rodriguez via Contra Mundum on June 9, 2022
Poster for HBO documentary "Exterminate All the Brutes," featuring a human skull painted to look like a globe.

We Must Burn Them: Against the Origin Story

"History​ is written by the victors, but diligent and continual silencing is required to maintain its claims on the present and future."
by Hazel V. Carby via London Review of Books on May 26, 2022
English painting of Pocahontas by Simon van de Passe.

The Moment That Changed Colonial-Indigenous Relations Forever

How a massacre on March 22, 1622 irrevocably shaped relations between Indigenous Americans and English colonists.
by Peter C. Mancall via TIME on March 22, 2022
Painting of the first Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving is a Key Chapter in America's Origin Story

What happened in Virginia four months later mattered much more.
by Peter C. Mancall via The Conversation on November 22, 2021
Cherokee leader and Louisiana governor shaking hands

The Cherokee-American War from the Cherokee Perspective

Conflict between American settlers/revolutionaries and the Cherokee nation erupted in the early years of the Revolution.
by Jordan Baker via Journal of the American Revolution on July 29, 2021
A sculpture depicting George Washington and the Seneca leader Guyasuta staring at each other.

‘Our Father, the President’

George Washington's fraught relationship with Native Americans.
by Susan Dunn via New York Review of Books on March 15, 2018
California gold miners, ca. 1850–1852.

A Gold Rush of Witnesses

Letters, diaries, and remembrances shared on JSTOR by University of the Pacific reveal the hardships of day-to-day life during the California Gold Rush.
by Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on April 23, 2025
John Quincy Adams
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Are You Not Large and Unwieldy Enough Already?

John Quincy Adams challenges the idea of an expanding American frontier. 
by Andrew C. Isenberg via HNN on April 23, 2025
Indigenous girl among a line of U.S. peace commissioners.

American History Needs More Names

Identifying Sophie Mousseau from a Civil War-Era photo helps us understand our complex past.
by Martha A. Sandweiss via Zócalo Public Square on April 21, 2025
Engraving by Samuel de Champlain of himself and his Algonquin allies attacking the Iroquois.

An Expanding Vision of America

Major new books about the peoples who lived in North America for millennia before the arrival of Europeans are reshaping the history of the continent.
by Nicole Eustace via New York Review of Books on March 6, 2025
Signatures on a treaty.

The Treaty on the Severn River

Baltimore is Native American land — that's the first thing I want you to know.
by Emma Katherine Bilski via Contingent on November 30, 2024
Illustration imagining Karl Marx sitting on a ranch in Texas.

Marx Goes to Texas

Drawn to communities of German socialist expatriates in the area, Marx once considered making his way to Texas.
by Ryan Moore via Protean on August 11, 2024
A drawing depicting the 1637 massacre at the Pequot village of Mystic.

Tribute and Territory in the Pequot Country

Seventeenth-century maps and conflicts in colonial New England.
by Alice King via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on July 17, 2024
Book cover of "The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920."

Expanding the Boundaries of Reconstruction: Abolitionist Democracy from 1865-1919

Sinha enlarges the temporal boundaries students are accustomed to by covering the end of the 19th century into the Progressive era with the 19th Amendment.
by Erik J. Chaput, Russell J. DeSimone via Commonplace on July 16, 2024
An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on June 11, 2024
A herd of bison.

A Panoramic View of the West

A sweeping new history examines many untold stories of the American West in the late nineteenth century.
by Bradley J. Birzer via Law & Liberty on December 13, 2023
original

Beyond Dispossession

For generations, depictions of Native Americans have reduced them to either aggressors or victims. But at many public history sites, that is starting to change.
by Ed Ayers on December 6, 2023
Bison drinking from a pond.

How the Iron Horse Spelled Doom for the American Buffalo

From homesteaders to tourists to the U.S. Army, railroads flooded the Great Plains with people who saw bison as pests, amusements, or opportunities for profit.
by Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan via Literary Hub on October 16, 2023
Illustration of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

The True History of 'Custer's Last Stand'

We're talking about the Battle of Little Bighorn all wrong.
by Olivia B. Waxman via TIME on June 25, 2023
Illustration of flag against burning city backdrop

Did George Washington Burn New York?

Americans disparaged the British as arsonists. But the rebels fought with fire too.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The Atlantic on January 31, 2023
Painting depicting the U.S. Army and American Indians signing the Treaty of Greenville, 1785.

How the (First) West Was Won: Federalist Treaties that Reshaped the Frontier

Treaties with Britain, the Confederated tribes, and Spain revealed that America was still dependent on the greater geopolitics of the Atlantic World.
by Brady J. Crytzer via Journal of the American Revolution on December 29, 2022
A painting of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.

The Treaty of Ghent: Annotated

The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, an oft overlooked conflict that continues to shape the politics and culture(s) of North America.
by Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on December 23, 2022
Painting, a portrait of Thayendanegea, depicting a a Native American in a red and orange headdress.

Do We Have the History of Native Americans Backward?

They dominated far longer than they were dominated, and, a new book contends, shaped the United States in profound ways.
by David Treuer via The New Yorker on November 7, 2022
Picture of the statue of Black Hawk.

Remembering Black Hawk

A history of imperial forgetting.
by David R. Roediger via Boston Review on March 1, 2022
Occupation of Alcatraz; sign reads "Indians Welcome"

The Past and Future of Native California

A new book explores California’s history through the experience of its Native peoples.
by Julian Brave NoiseCat via The Nation on January 24, 2022
Illustration of Paxton Gang attacking indigenous people.

Colonial Civility and Rage on the American Frontier

A 1763 massacre by colonial settlers exposed the the irreconcilable contradictions of conquest by people concerned with civility.
by Matthew Wills, Nicole Eustace via JSTOR Daily on January 23, 2022
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Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Mapping the Homestead Act, 1863-1912

Year-by-year maps of homesteading claims and the dispossession of Native Americans.
by Robert K. Nelson, Justin Madron, Julius Wilm via American Panorama on January 18, 2022
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