Surviving Genocide Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas

Abstract

In 1778, Lenape (Delaware) leaders informed U.S. congressional commissioners that “it is the design of the [United] States . . . to extirpate the Indians and take possession of their country” (p. 61). According to historian Jeffrey Ostler, the Lenape leaders understood a foundational aspect of U.S. policy: the nation’s westward expansion depended upon the taking of Indigenous people’s lands through genocidal warfare. In the first of a proposed two volumes, Ostler argues that between 1776 and
1850, the United States pursued a policy of genocidal warfare against Indigenous people in what he calls the “zone of removal.” The United States threatened Indigenous people east of the Mississippi River with legalized wars of extermination and acted on those laws. Deliberate acts of eliminatory warfare further endangered Indigenous people through rape, starvation, and disease. Yet Surviving Genocide is more than a one-sided, top-down approach to federal Indian policy and the nation’s westward expansion. Ostler highlights Indigenous voices, perspectives, and criticisms of federal Indian policy. As the Lenape leaders demonstrated, Indigenous people knew that the United States wanted to eliminate them and take their land.