Narrator: In June 1783, with the Revolutionary War won, George Washington penned a letter celebrating the birth of a new nation. He described its citizens as the "sole Lords and Proprietors of a vast Tract of Continent," a theater designated by Providence for the "display of human greatness." This vision of an empty, waiting continent, a divine gift to European settlers, became a foundational story for the United States. But this story has a ghost. It erases the millions of people who already called that continent home, whose dispossession was not a footnote to America’s rise, but the very condition that made it possible.

This profound and unsettling contradiction is the subject of Ned Blackhawk's groundbreaking work, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. The book argues that to truly understand America, one must abandon the myth of discovery and instead confront a five-hundred-year history of encounter, violence, and Indigenous resilience that fundamentally shaped the nation.

Narrator: The traditional narrative of American history begins with an act of erasure. The very name "America," coined in 1507 by European cartographers to honor explorer Amerigo Vespucci, frames the continent as a "New World" awaiting discovery. This perspective inherently positions Europeans as the active agents of history—the explorers, the settlers, the builders—while rendering Indigenous peoples invisible or passive.

This foundational myth is powerfully illustrated by George Washington’s 1783 vision of a nation of "sole Lords and Proprietors." In his celebratory letter, there is no mention of the Cherokee, the Iroquois, or the countless other sovereign nations whose lands constituted this "vast Tract of Continent." They are simply absent. This erasure wasn't just rhetorical; it was a necessary precondition for the new republic's self-conception. By framing the continent as a divinely granted, unpeopled wilderness, early American leaders could reconcile the nation's ideals of liberty with the violent reality of conquest. Blackhawk argues that this selective memory is not an accident but a central feature of American identity, a historical blind spot that allows celebratory narratives to exist alongside a history of profound injustice.

Narrator: Conventional history often portrays Native Americans as tragic victims of an unstoppable European tide. Blackhawk refutes this, demonstrating that for centuries, Indigenous nations were powerful agents who actively shaped the course of empires. They were diplomats, warriors, and economic power brokers whose decisions had continental and even global consequences.

A stunning example of this agency is the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. After eighty years of brutal Spanish colonization in New Mexico—marked by forced labor, religious persecution, and violence—the Pueblo peoples orchestrated a coordinated uprising. Led by a religious leader named Popé, they drove the Spanish out of the region, killing hundreds of settlers and priests and burning churches. For twelve years, they re-established their independence and cultural autonomy. This event, which Blackhawk calls "arguably the first American Revolution," fundamentally reshaped the balance of power in the Southwest. It forced the Spanish, upon their return, to adopt a more negotiated and less absolute form of colonial rule. This and other acts of resistance, diplomacy, and strategic alliance-making show that Native peoples were not merely reacting to events; they were making history.

Narrator: The story of the American Revolution is typically told as a story of eastern seaports and taxes. Blackhawk compellingly argues that its true origins lie deeper in the continent's interior, in the violent conflicts between settlers, Native nations, and the British Crown over land and sovereignty.

After the Seven Years' War ended in 1763, Britain tried to stabilize its new, vast territory by issuing the Proclamation Line, which forbade colonial settlement west of the Appalachians to protect Native lands. This policy enraged land-hungry settlers and speculators. In the Pennsylvania backcountry, this resentment exploded into horrifying violence. In 1763, a vigilante group known as the "Paxton Boys," fueled by anti-Indian hatred, massacred a peaceful community of Conestoga Indians who were living under the colony's protection. They then marched on Philadelphia, threatening to kill more Native people and challenging the authority of the colonial government. This uprising, and others like it, revealed the British Crown's inability to control its own subjects on the frontier. The settlers' demand for access to Native land, and their willingness to use violence against both Indigenous peoples and imperial authorities to get it, created a deep rift that was a primary driver of the revolutionary spirit.

Narrator: The U.S. Constitution is celebrated as a document of liberty, but Blackhawk reveals its role as a powerful instrument of colonialism. Forged in the chaotic aftermath of the Revolution, the Constitution centralized power in the federal government specifically to manage westward expansion and "Indian affairs." It gave Congress the authority to make treaties, regulate commerce with Native tribes, and wage war—tools that would be used to systematically dispossess Native nations of their land.

The tragic story of the Cherokee Nation in the 1830s exemplifies this. The Cherokee had adopted a written constitution and embraced American-style farming. When the state of Georgia tried to seize their lands, they took their case to the Supreme Court. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall actually affirmed Cherokee sovereignty, declaring them a distinct political community where Georgia's laws had no force. However, President Andrew Jackson famously defied the ruling, and the federal government proceeded with the forced removal of the Cherokee and other southern tribes on the Trail of Tears. This episode demonstrated a brutal truth: even when the law recognized Native rights, the political and military power of the U.S. government could override it. Over the next century, doctrines like "plenary power" would give Congress absolute authority, turning treaties into disposable contracts and legalizing the theft of a continent.

Narrator: While the nation was consumed by the Civil War, a second, less-acknowledged war was raging in the West—a "total war" against Indigenous peoples. Blackhawk argues that the Civil War accelerated settler colonialism, as the Union used the conflict to consolidate federal power and unleash unprecedented violence against Native communities. Events like the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota, which ended in the largest mass execution in U.S. history, and the forced "Long Walk" of the Navajo to a concentration camp at Bosque Redondo, were not side-shows but central to the project of American expansion.

After the war, this physical violence morphed into a campaign of cultural genocide. The new federal policy was assimilation, perfectly captured by the infamous motto of Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School: "kill the Indian, and save the man." Beginning in the 1870s, the government forcibly removed tens of thousands of Native children from their families and sent them to military-style boarding schools. There, their hair was cut, their languages were forbidden, and they were stripped of their cultural identities. This policy, combined with the Allotment Act that broke up communal tribal lands, was a systematic effort to destroy Native societies from the inside out.

Narrator: The 20th century saw the continuation of assimilationist policies, culminating in the "termination" era of the 1950s and 60s. Driven by Cold War ideology that viewed communal tribal life as "socialist," the federal government sought to terminate its treaty obligations and dissolve tribal governments altogether.

The Menominee Nation of Wisconsin, which had successfully managed its own sustainable timber economy for decades, became a prime target. In 1954, Congress passed a law terminating the tribe's federal status, which became effective in 1961. The results were catastrophic. Their hospital closed, their lands were subjected to state taxes, and their once-thriving mill began to lose money. The policy plunged the community into poverty and social crisis. Yet, this devastation also galvanized a new generation of activists. A young Menominee leader named Ada Deer helped organize the grassroots movement DRUMS (Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders) to fight back. Their tireless advocacy eventually led to the Menominee Restoration Act of 1973, which restored their federal recognition. This victory was part of a larger "Red Power" movement, including the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, that forced a monumental shift in federal policy away from termination and toward an era of Indigenous self-determination.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from The Rediscovery of America is that the history of the United States is inseparable from the history of its Indigenous peoples. American democracy was not born in a vacuum; it was forged in the crucible of conquest. The nation's wealth was built on expropriated land, its legal system was designed to justify dispossession, and its very identity was shaped in opposition to the Native peoples it sought to erase.

Ned Blackhawk's work is more than a revision of history; it is a fundamental reorientation. It challenges us to look past the comforting myths of our founding and see the nation's past, and therefore its present, through the eyes of those who have endured, resisted, and survived. The most challenging idea is that this history is not over. The struggles for sovereignty, land, and cultural survival continue today, demanding that we ask ourselves: what does it mean to live on a continent whose past is not fully acknowledged, and what is our role in building a more just future?