Merciless Indian Savages | First America

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A forgotten line in the Declaration

2:03There'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.

2:42America 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. How 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.

3:12First 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. democracy.

3:44Here's the first episode of First America. Hear more episodes of First America on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get podcasts.

Visiting Fort Snelling in Minneapolis

3:51Where 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 Burrell Sioux Tribe. This is the historic Fort Snelling.

4:23Do 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. School 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.

4:54So, look at that bald eagle.

4:59Told you we were going to see one. Yeah.

5:02I wish the United States never appropriated the eagle. Do you hear him? Look at him. He's coming right towards us.

5:14I 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.

5:24Told 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. What is this? It's, oh, here. Down a long set of stairs on the edge of the woods.

5:50Can 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. And they're 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.

6:26This 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.

7:02There was a lot of malnutrition, purposeful starvation. There were reports of women being raped and violated.

7:13You know, it's a site of horrors.

7:18Do 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. Hi. Hello.

7:43Walking around Fort Snelling with Nick, it felt like this perfect metaphor for our country.

7:49All our terrible history, it's there. We just don't know how to talk about it.

7:58This 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 guess we'll just go up here.

Reporting on ICE and historical parallels

8:22Ooh!

Reporting on ICE and historical parallels

8:23Uh-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.

8:40Earlier that day, a woman named Renee Nicole Good had tried to block ICE agents with her car. An 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.

9:04Wow. 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.

9:39When 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.

10:09You'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. Citizen of Cherokee Nation.

10:39I didn't go to Minneapolis to report on ICE. I had come to interview Nick.

11:09We just happened to be at Fort Snelling the day ICE shot and killed Renee Goode. I don't know about you, but I don't believe in coincidences.

11:23I canceled my flight home and stayed to report on what was happening. Renee Nicole Goode! Yes, Renee Nicole Goode! The next morning, there was a protest. Back at Fort Snelling. ICE go home! ICE go home! Because 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.

11:58I 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? I'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.

12:29It's a historic fort.

12:34It'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. And 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, I, yeah. I mean, you watch that video. Thank God that person was there taking the video on their cell phone yesterday, so everyone can see what happened, you know.

13:10After leaving the protest, I went back to see Nick Estes at his office.

13:20The 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.

13:55It'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.

14:25ICE 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. And 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.

15:04I 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.

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Examining the Declaration of Independence

17:53The 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.

18:25We'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. A 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.

19:06We 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.

19:36So word spread through public readings like this one. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. 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.

20:07If Thomas Jefferson and King George were having it out on the front lawn, Jefferson would have his finger in George's face yelling, and another thing. For imposing taxes on us without our consent. And 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.

20:37And 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.

21:09Native 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.

21:41Britain 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 tea crisis was a spark that ignited a people to order about the nation. The colonists started to see their king as a tyrant. Four thousand troops are now stationed here within our city. Some started talking about independence. United under one continental congress. Late one night, Paul Revere rode his horse to warn militias waiting outside Boston that the British were coming.

22:15The next morning, the militia squared off against the Brits. Shot her ground, the world was fired. And the Revolutionary War began. A year later, our founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia to write the Declaration of Independence.

22:43But 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.

23:01How did we all miss that?

Talking with historian Ned Blackhawk

23:03Can 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? Yes, and I'm still the first. Still the only? Tenured faculty member, yes.

23:34Is it ever lonely? Um.

23:39Ned 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.

The First World War and Pontiac's rebellion

24:04Ned 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. Great 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.

24:36Sermons 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.

25:06The 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.

25:39Rick, 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. Neolin 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.

26:14And 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.

26:26Pontiac 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. But 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 ask 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.

26:57And the flood of warriors would come in and destroy the fort.

27:06Pontiac'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.

27:38The 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, like, England is a global empire, so why wouldn't the king of England want more land in North America? Have you ever been to India? No. Have you heard of the Caribbean? Yes. OK, the English crown governs millions of people around the world. The British colonists in North America are a small percentage of that. The overwhelming economic priorities that the British Empire has in the Western Hemisphere

28:10revolve around places like Jamaica and Barbados, not Virginia or Massachusetts. Is that because Barbados makes the crown more money? Correct. Because Barbados produces large quantities of slave-produced alcohol and sugar that can be consumed across the British Empire. So in the interests of Britain, this global empire, peace with indigenous nations makes the most sense. It saves the crown money. It serves the crown's interests.

28:41To preserve peace, the king of England gives Pontiac and his confederacy what they want. The proclamation line of October 1763 draws this perimeter along the crests of the Appalachian Mountains. The crown promises to keep settlers off their land. So everything east is British North America. Everything to the west is to be reserved for the Indians. While peace with indigenous nations serves the crown's global interests, it angers the colonists because it takes from them what they want most, more land.

29:18Land mania, we might say, overwhelms the colonial system. Gentry leaders, people like George Washington, understood that their lands were becoming increasingly less valuable. People like Washington and commanding their enslaved populations to help bring nutrient-rich soils from the bottom of river beds. Because the fields are so depleted. Because the fields have become so depleted. People like George Washington made money from this thing called land speculation. They'd buy up land that still belonged to indigenous nations to sell for profit once indigenous people were pushed out.

29:54The king's new boundary? It messed up their whole scheme. The boundary line angered regular and poor people, too. People who couldn't afford to buy private property often squatted on indigenous land. Pioneers, frontiersmen, settlers, whatever you want to call them, were already living west of the king's line. And there are numbers of settlers who were forced back east. And they don't like it. And there's this other thing about the king's concession to Pontiac the colonists don't like.

30:25Peace. You have to understand that the colonists have been at war with indigenous nations for most of their lives. And now the king wants to make peace with their enemies. In fact, the British are going to give them ammunition. They're going to trade with them. They're going to recognize them. Hey, wait a minute. Didn't we just fight with you to control this world? To help cement peace with Pontiac, England arranges to bring gifts and supplies. This was how diplomacy between indigenous nations and European powers worked back then.

30:57Eighty supply mule trains are coming. Massive, actually, logistical undertaking, if you think about it. At Pittsburgh awaits these traders who are going to take these goods to Pontiac's confederate. The colonists organize a militia, basically a band of angry white men with guns, and attack the convoy. The first shots of the American Revolution are fired in March of 1765, when one of these backcountry militia groups known as the Black Boys attacks a British force, escorting trade goods to Pontiac.

31:29They're not attacking indigenous people. The Black Boys are attacking British troops. They say things like, we are willing to die to disrupt and destroy these relationships. So before the colonists are willing to die for lofty ideals like freedom and liberty and independence, they are willing to die to stop the crown from making peace with indigenous nations. And we know why they are willing to die for this cause.

32:01Because they wrote a song about it. The Black Boys create an anthem, and that anthem calls Native peoples the enemies of mankind. I asked Ned to read part of it for me. On March the 5th, in 65, their Indian presence did arrive. But when this property is designed to serve the enemy of mankind, it's high treason in the amount. What does that line mean? It means that the British trading policies of supplying Native peoples are

32:36supporting the enemies of not just settler society, but mankind more broadly. The Britons committing treason, not to the crown, but to humanity as a whole. And so this vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for mankind, the first time mankind is being articulated that I'm aware of, is in deeply anti-indigenous settings. Hating indigenous people, seeing us as less than human,

33:10helps the colonists come together and form a unified identity. It helped them come together to fight for independence. I do believe that the start of the fall of the British Empire in North America began on the Pennsylvania frontier. The sense of lawlessness, or essentially fashioning one's own self-governing principles, principles, and practices, this is happening in Pennsylvania before it's happening in Massachusetts.

33:41We teach the origins of the American Revolution as this drumbeat of violence and protest happening in Boston over taxes. But years before any of that, colonists are firing guns at British troops over Native land. And to my knowledge, that Black boy's history that we've been discussing has yet to appear in any U.S. history textbook. Why we can't tell that story is a mystery to me.

34:11Before I left Yale, I gave Ned a present. You want me to open this? Yeah. You may or may not want it.

34:24Declaration of Independence shot glass. Thank you so much. What does it say? We the people. What to you does that shot glass represent if we think about how Americans think about their history?

34:43I wanted to say something that is easily digestible. Goes down smooth. I think we as a country are losing a real sense of understanding about our nation's past. The Declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered sentences and paragraphs about Enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it.

35:14Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence in the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it? Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself. I'm mad that Native people have been written out of the story of the Revolution. But I'm also baffled by it.

35:45I mean, it's kind of wild, right? It's not like you have to dig through the archives to find out that hunger for Indigenous land drove the Revolution. It's right there, in the Declaration of Independence. In one of our country's most famous documents. In one of the most famous documents in all of human history. But somehow, no one knows about it? It feels like a magic trick. Like making a rabbit disappear into a hat. And when I started this project, that's what I thought I was up against.

36:19The pervasive and systemic erasure of Native people from U.S. history. I thought the thing people couldn't see was me. My community. And then I started to realize what's missing from the story of America. It's bigger than that. After I left Minneapolis, I kept hearing politicians say the same thing. What is happening right now in America is fundamentally un-American. This is just so un-American. I understand where this comes from. It comes from the part of the Declaration of Independence we were taught.

36:51The all-men-are-created-equal, life, liberty, and happiness part. But when we tell the whole story, the truth of how and why our country was founded, the present moment doesn't feel like a contradiction. Violently rounding people up. Putting people in detention. Even shooting anyone who gets in the way. Our government has done this before. Not once. Not twice.

37:22Many times. We just don't talk about that history because it happened to indigenous people. I keep hearing people go to Nazi Germany or Putin's Russia to try and understand the rise of fascism. We don't need to leave the United States to understand the horrors of authoritarianism. It's right here, in our own history. And if we want to root that authoritarianism out, we have to know where and how it started.

37:55If we think we can win by defeating one leader, it will be like pruning a weed. It will only come back stronger. I thought what was missing from the story of America was Native people. But then I realized without us, that story is wrong. What's missing from the story of America is the truth.

38:21I want us to know how we got here. Because without that, we will never find our way out.

Preview and credits

38:29Coming up on this season of First America. Are you guys big Chiefs fans? Hell yeah. Yes. Chiefs on three. One, two, three. Chiefs!

38:45I feel like that's going to happen a lot. Do Native Americans still exist? Maybe. I don't really think so. So the entire plan for funding the federal government was acquiring indigenous land and selling it. You were running for your lives. And you saw behind you everything you knew being burned down. What democracy rounds an entire ethnic group up at gunpoint and puts them into a concentration

39:16camp, like not a strong democracy, not a durable democracy. I would say not even a democracy. It's not. It's not a new thing. This is what we've done. We're good at this.

39:34If you like what you're hearing, please leave a review. It's one of the best ways to help listeners find this show. You can also support First America by subscribing or sharing episodes with your friends. First America was made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation and the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project. Additional support came from Indian Collective, First Nations Development Institute, Yahavia Tam of San Manuel Nation, Borealis Philanthropy, and Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective.

40:04Our fiscal sponsor is Red Media. I dreamed this project into the world in collaboration with an amazing group of Indigenous scholars, including Maggie Blackhawk, Fond du Lac Ojibwe, Ned Blackhawk, citizen of the Team Oak Tribe of Western Shoshone, Phil Deloria, descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux Tribes, and Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. I, Rebecca Nagle, citizen of Cherokee Nation, also reported, wrote, hosted, and executive produced the show.

40:35First America is produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries. Our managing producer is Amy Westervelt. Senior producer and sound designer is Brendan Baker. Our story editor is Audrey Quinn. Jules Bradley, Kim Nettervi-Petersa, and Jordan Gaspore are our producers. Our editorial consultant is Connie Walker, citizen of the Okanese First Nation, fact-checking by Naomi Barr. Our partnerships director is Lindsay Crowder. Our development consultant is Jenny Lawton.

41:07Our theme song is by Raven Chacon, who is Denae. Scoring by Laura Ortman, citizen of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, and Raven Chacon. Artwork by Kelly Gonzalez, citizen of Cherokee Nation. The team at Pushkin is Greta Cohn, CEO, Eric Sandler, chief strategy officer, Grace Ross, VP of business development, Morgan Ratner, director of marketing, Owen Miller, content delivery associate, Kira Posey, creative partnerships manager, Jordan McMillan, social media manager,

41:38Brian Strabinick, senior analytics manager, and Jake Flanagan, production council. One last thing before you go. You know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work. With your permission, work in ChatGPT can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high-quality documents for your team or clients.

42:13Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work faster with ChatGPT work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work. Liberty was never just a word. It has guided every American endeavor for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 semi-quincentennial coin and medal program from the United States Mint celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition

42:48releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov slash semi-q. We spend hours deciding what to buy, but there's a split-second decision that can make or break a sale. Do you have the trust to hit buy now? Now, Agentic Commerce is testing that moment more than ever. And that's where PayPal comes in. With 25 years of checkouts, 400 million consumer accounts globally, and the benefit of purchase

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