Comprehensive Notes on 19th-Century American Indian History

Page 1 – Setting the Stage

• Lecturer’s scope: events of the $19^{th}$‐century (the $1800$s) as preparation for the $20^{th}$‐century (the $1900$s).

• Three comparative maps for $1800$:

  • Map 1 – European territorial claims

  • Spanish: most of the continent

  • British: what is now Canada

  • French: scattered—Great Lakes, New Orleans, Pacific NW

  • United States: Atlantic seaboard → across Appalachians → Ohio Valley

  • Map 2 – Political reality: hundreds of sovereign Indigenous nations

  • Circled regions = tribes with long contact histories

    • Southwest coast: Kumeyaay, Acjachemen living alongside Spanish

    • Great Lakes & Mississippi: Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk & French fur traders

    • North Atlantic: Iroquois, Abenaki & British/U.S. colonies

  • Map 3 – Early U.S. expansion corridors into the Indigenous interior

• Key analytical points

  • Diplomacy of equals – $18^{th}$-century Europeans treated tribes as nations, signed formal treaties, & were often contained militarily by tribal power.

  • Reading maps critically – present-day borders projected onto the past (e.g., Lakota territory drawn with modern U.S./Canada/Mexico lines) can mislead.

• Two major Indigenous powers dominating the interior ca. $1800$

  • Comanche – economic & military control of much of present-day Texas

  • Lakota – control of the Great Plains

• Limited Euro-American penetration of the interior

  • Lewis & Clark expedition not until $1805$

  • Oregon Trail not blazed until the $1830$s

• Tribal diversity & commonality

  • Diversity – hundreds of languages, cosmologies, kinship structures, population sizes, political organizations (clans, councils, confederacies, empires)

  • Economies – mixed: hunting, fishing, foraging, agriculture, inter-tribal & trans-Atlantic trade

  • Mobility spectrum – seasonal mobility ⇄ permanent urban-scale towns

Page 2 – Globalized Tribes & Shared Cosmologies

• Since the $16^{th}$ century, Indigenous peoples had been tied into the world-system: diplomacy, trade, warfare with Europeans routine.

• Tribes sometimes allied with European powers against other tribes to advance their own interests.

Creation Narrative 1 – Sky-Woman Falling (Potawatomi/Algonquin/Iroquois)

• Retold by Potawatomi scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass.

• Sequence

  1. Sky-Woman tumbles from the Sky World through a shaft of light, clutching seeds.

  2. Geese create a cushion of wings; a Great Turtle offers his back.

  3. Diving animals seek mud; only the tiny Muskrat succeeds, dying in the effort.

  4. Sky-Woman spreads the mud on Turtle’s shell, dances in gratitude—Turtle Island (North America) grows.

  5. She plants her seed bundle; the brown earth turns green; animals & plants flourish.

• The story embodies:

  • Reciprocity & gratitude

  • Personified nature = extended family

  • Co-creation by humans and non-humans

Creation Narrative 2 – Spirit of the Salmon (Nez Perce/Yakama)

• Creator convenes animals & plants to gift powers to pitiful incoming humans.

  1. Salmon first—offers his body as food.

  2. Water second—offers to house Salmon.

  3. All others donate gifts; afterward Creator bestows speech on humans & commands them to speak for voiceless animals.

  4. Tribal feasts still serve Salmon & Water first = remembrance of First Foods.

• The narrative also illustrates:

  • Natural world as kin

  • Human duty of guardianship

Comparative World-Views

• Indigenous cosmologies – reciprocity, non-hierarchical human–nature relations, generational continuity via oral tradition.

• Abrahamic (Judaism–Christianity–Islam) – hierarchical, patriarchal, world as property to dominate.
  → Different ecological & social ethics emerge from each paradigm.

Place-Based Sacred Geographies

• San Francisco Peaks (AZ) – Hopi & Diné (Navajo) sacred mountain.

• Black Hills (SD) – Lakota & Northern Cheyenne.

• Mauna Kea (HI) – sacred to Kānaka Maoli.

Page 3 – Industrial Revolution & U.S. Expansion

• Industrial Revolution: England $\approx$ $1760$s → U.S. by $1790$.

  • New firearms, railroads, telegraph = exponential military & logistic power.

• Louisiana Purchase $1803$

  • U.S. bought France’s nominal claim to lands Mississippi → Rockies (but tribes controlled region).

  • Signaled intention to reach the Pacific.

• Settler-colonial ideology

  • Roots: “City upon a Hill” Puritanism + American Exceptionalism

  • By $1840$s fused into Manifest Destiny (“God wills continental conquest”).

  • Gold Rush $1848$ accelerates migration.

Indigenous Armed Resistance (“Indian Wars”)

Federal Removal & Genocide

• Indian Removal Act $1830$ → forced marches west of Mississippi (“Trail of Tears”, $1830$s).

  • Cherokee legal challenge failed; U.S. law steeped in racism.

• California Genocide $1846$–$1873$

  • After Mexican–American War; U.S. broke newly signed $1851$ treaties, denied land rights.

  • State‐funded militias massacred villages, enslaved children (labor for mining, ranching, agriculture).

  • Legislative disenfranchisement + cultural erosion = near annihilation; later ideological erasure (“romantic” myth of vanishing Indian).

• Genocide in international law (post–World War $2$) covers: mass killing, forced relocation, birth suppression, child removal, cultural destruction.

  • Contemporary issues—pipelines, child-adoption, MMIW (Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women)—extend the legacy.

Page 4 – Reservation Era, Assimilation & the Ghost Dance

• Reservation & Incorporation (turn-of-the-century):

  • Low-value lands; privatization schemes (allotment), missionary work, boarding schools.

  • Indigenous population split: reservation residents vs. urban/rural under-class wage laborers.

Ghost Dance Movement

• Wodziwob (Paiute, $1869$, Great Basin)

  • Vision of earthquake removing settlers; ceremonial Ghost Dances to reunite living & ancestors.

• Wovoka (Paiute, $1889$ solar eclipse)

  • Blends Christian millenarianism (Book of Revelation) with earlier prophecy.

  • Ghost Dance spreads continent-wide (Pan-Indianism).

• Catalysts:

  • Scorched-earth warfare by U.S. Army

  • Buffalo extermination

  • Bureau of Indian Affairs intrusions

  • Treaty violations & settler encroachment

• Lakota adaptation $1890$

  • Kicking Bear militarizes movement → Ghost Shirts (bullet-proof belief).

  • Sitting Bull joins → BIA panic → Sitting Bull killed.

• Wounded Knee Massacre $1890$

  • Army attempts weapon seizure; skirmish → Hotchkiss guns unleash fire

  • >$150$ Lakota (incl. women & children) killed; $25$ U.S. soldiers killed (friendly fire).

  • Marks symbolic end of armed Indigenous resistance on the Plains.

Page 5 – New Imperialism & Historiography

• New Imperialism (late $19^{th}$ C.) – industrial empires carving Africa/Asia.

  • U.S. mirrors model: takes Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Guam $1898$ (Spanish–American War).

• “Westward Expansion” = U.S. Empire

  • Historiography often divorces frontier from global imperial story to naturalize U.S. possession.

  • Lecturer’s argument: Continental conquest is the through-line connecting Old (Iberian) Imperialism → New Industrial Imperialism.

• Modern U.S. built on triad: Indigenous land theft + African enslavement + immigrant labor.

  • Extracted value financed cities & capitalist economy.

Indigenous Modernities & Ongoing Agency

• Indigenous peoples adapted, resisted & reformulated modern culture (inside, outside & between U.S. structures).

  • Example previewed in Lecture $1$: Society of American Indians (Progressive-era pan-tribal advocacy).

• Present struggles (oil pipelines, adoption law, Palestine solidarity, etc.) trace to the same historical structures.

Reading assignments in course modules supply further detail; next lecture continues into the $20^{th}$ century.

The main arguments presented in the notes revolve around the reinterpretation of U.S. "Westward Expansion" as a form of U.S. Empire deeply connected to both Old and New Imperialism, rather than a natural process. This expansion was predicated on a triad of Indigenous land theft, African enslavement, and immigrant labor, which financed the U.S. capitalist economy. The notes emphasize that Indigenous peoples were powerful, sovereign nations that engaged in diplomacy as equals with European powers well into the $18^{th}$ century, and were integral to the globalized world-system long before widespread Euro-American penetration of the interior.

A significant argument highlights how the Industrial Revolution's advanced military and logistic technologies (firearms, railroads, telegraph) combined with a settler-colonial ideology (rooted in "City upon a Hill" Puritanism and American Exceptionalism, culminating in Manifest Destiny) enabled rapid U.S. expansion, forced removal, and genocide against Indigenous populations. Despite these pressures, Indigenous peoples consistently resisted, adapted, and reformulated modern culture, maintaining their agency through armed resistance (e.g., "Indian Wars"), spiritual movements like the Ghost Dance, and pan-tribal advocacy.

The notes also contrast Indigenous cosmologies (characterized by reciprocity, non-hierarchical human-nature relations, and oral tradition) with Abrahamic worldviews (hierarchical, patriarchal, viewing nature as property), demonstrating how these differing paradigms led to distinct ecological and social ethics. Overall, the lecture argues for understanding historical events, like the Wounded Knee Massacre, not as isolated incidents but as part of a continuous legacy that extends to contemporary Indigenous struggles.