Beyond 1492: The Real History of Native America

It's going to be very difficult for you to wrap your mind around what I'm about to tell you. At least, it was for me. When Europeans colonized the Americas, they killed so many Indigenous people that the climate changed. Now, remember that after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, it is estimated that 90% of the Indigenous populations were killed by systemic violence and disease. And so a group of researchers from University College London started to study this rapid population decline and realized that huge swaths of farmland and vegetation were abandoned.

As a result, plants and flora regrew on such a massive scale and removed so much carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas from the atmosphere that the planet's average temperature dropped around negative 0.15 degrees Celsius between the 16th and 19th centuries. Forget cars and trucks and planes and burning fossil fuels changing the environment. It is plausible that people were changing the planet long before that from killing.

So when we think about the depth and breadth and scale of the Indigenous Holocaust, understand that the impact was literally felt across the globe. Now we are going to cover a lot of ground quickly in this short episode. So strap on your seatbelts, but I just wanted to start with the impact of Native genocide, because that is a term that is still highly debated in highbrow academic circles. But, what else do you call it? There was the targeted killing of Indigenous ethnic groups and systemic violence on a mass scale. There was an intent to destroy as we can see, journalists and writers, and government officials in American history echoing public sentiment.

Take the words of Thomas Jefferson and 1813, when he said “This unfortunate race, who we had been taking so much pains to save and civilized have by their unexpected desertion. And peroneus, barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.”

Sounds like an intent to exterminate. Since the word exterminate was used by a high ranking U.S. official. We can also look to the words of California governor Peter Burnett in 1851, who said, “the world extermination will continue to be weighed between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.”

Or another one I came across said “These Indians will in the end be exterminated. They must soon be crushed. They will be exterminated before the onward, march of the white man.” So when we talk about manifest destiny, this is what we're talking about. You can read the words. Of what they were clearing the land for. Who it was being cleared for? And what that clearing entailed. The extermination of Indigenous peoples. Now history books are still in a state of denial about this and they uplift and sanctify Christopher Columbus as he discovered, quote-unquote, the Americas. A lot of people don't like him. A few of his statues were toppled in the 2020 protests sparked over the racial injustice and police killing of George Floyd.

But he still holds a sacred place in the national narrative. We hear how he stepped onto the fertile soil of Hispaniola and planted the flag for the Spanish Royal crown. But. It wasn't a newly found land the Taino and Arawak we're already there. They called the land Ayiti. The land of high mountains. Now many books still trivialize the lives of those people already in America, the white Western narrative remains the dominant narrative. And yes, we hear about significant figures like Sitting Bull and Sacagewea, but where is the real conversation about the larger indigenous contributions to modern America?

Those are some of the things we're going to talk about today. Everyone, welcome to another episode of The Humanity Archive Podcast. I am your gracious host, Jermaine Fowler. And today I have a story from history that you may have never heard before, but even if you have. You’ve never heard it in the way that I'm going to tell it. Today, I'm going to talk about the real history of native America. Now let's get in to it…

There is a problem with our history in America. Textbooks don't go deep enough. The marginalized are erased from the national narrative, the raw truths of our collective past overlooked. Honest history books are still being banned. Historical myth is taught over historical reality, and that is where The Humanity Archive comes in. Here we tell the stories of the historically unheard. And I know what it's like to feel frustrated about the lack of diversity in history. In public education. So here we search through the archives to find truth in the human experience.We look at the history behind the headlines to understand how the past affects the present. And by being here, you are continuing your journey as a lifelong learner, exploring the experiences of humanity to enrich your life and transform the world. 

Now, before I get going, this episode is sponsored by my first online history course, Beyond 1492, The Real History of Native America.

This podcast is inspired by the course, the course dives much, much deeper than this podcast episode. So you won't want to miss it. 

In the course I survey and electrifying chorus of native writers and scholars and leaders in an urgent and powerful lecture on the history of native peoples.

What are you going to understand when you’ve finished this? The history of genocide and white supremacy and race as it applies to the Indigenous experience in America. Number two, you're going to understand Indigenous resistance movements from colonization up through the present. Here is what I need you to do right now. Pause this episode, and go to www.thehumanityarchive.com. Click on the course tab and sign up for beyond 1492.

So again, that's www.thehumanityarchive.com. Just click on the courses tab and sign up for beyond 1492.

Now we're going to go to the year 1958; the Ku Klux Klan started passing out flyers to organize a gathering at Hayes pond in North Carolina.

This community was mostly populated by Native Americans of the Lumbee Nation who had recently gained recognition. And remember, this wasn't long after the 1954 brown vs. board decision to desegregate public schools. So the Klan was angry, and they decided to put their hoods on and burn some crosses and cause some terror, you know.

They wanted to, “remind Indians of their place in the racial order.” The rally was organized by a man named James W. Catfish Cole. And he'd called for 5,000 Klansmen to descend on the town. But recruitment must not have been going quite that well during that year, 1958, because only about 50 to 100 people showed up to the rally.

And this is where the Klan underestimated the people they were trying to terrorize. You see the Lumbee Nation at the time had about 55,000 members. One of the largest Indigenous nations in the U S at the time. And these are a people who had been fighting and fighting and fighting for years already for official recognition.

So they weren't in any kind of mood to be terrorized. And the Lumbee showed up to the Klan rally 500 members strong, and they were armed with pistols and rifles.In the heat of the night, the Lumbee surrounded, the makeshift platform, the Klan was speaking on and there was  pushing and shoving and in all the confusion and excitement one of the Lumbee shot out the only floodlight and everything went dark.

Outnumbered and terrorized the Klan fled. More shots rang out. Some of the Klansmen even left their wives behind. Others tried to get away so quickly in their cars they drove into ditches and had to be pulled out later. In the end, no one was killed and there were only a few minor injuries, but the Klan never tried to bother the Lumbee again.

“We had to do what we had to do. If we hadn't done it, they will have soon been in our front yard,” said one of the Lumbee Nation members, Lee Ancil Maynor. This is just one of so many stories that have been cast aside, but that show how Native Americans were also fighting battles of resistance against racism and oppression during the Civil Rights Movement. 

The Battle of Hayes Pond is a more modern story of Native resistance when so many Native histories end around 1900. And so that is why, in my course, Beyond 1492, I make it a point to include stories like this. And stories of pre-Columbian North America. But even when we think about America after 1492, I think about how there have been some huge misconceptions. People tend to have this idea that in 1500s, 1600s and 1700s there were just these continuous and consistent tribes and Indigenous states.

But let's talk about language for a minute. And as I was thinking about this episode, I thought about the use of the word tribe. So I try to be careful with it, but so many people died on such a massive scale that by the time we get to the 1500s and 1600s, a lot of times we were looking at groups who'd recently banded together because their whole worlds had been obliterated.

Now, back to the word tribe. That's one of those words used by the colonizers as the opposite of advancement. So still, to this day, that word is just thrown around. And it's thrown around whether we're talking about a group of 20 people, where it might apply. Or whether there is a group of 10,000 people. So a word like community or chiefdom or nation would definitely be more appropriate in a lot of the instances where tribes used.

Here's another fact, most people don't know about native American history. Who do you think was the first person recorded to have crossed the full breadth of north America? Most people are going to say, Lewis and Clark. And their expedition in 1803. No, that would be wrong. 100 years before Lewis and Clark, a Yazoo Indian made the same transcontinental journey. Starting from Mississippi, Moncacht-Apé traveled as far as Southeast Alaska.

Maps based on his journey paved the way for Lewis and Clark is a matter of fact, they carried a book with them, titled the history of Louisiana, which chronicled Moncacht-Apé’s journey. But our kids don't hear about Apé in school. They learn about Lewis and Clark, and that is how Native American accomplishments are whitewashed.

You know, as I'm recording this during National American Indian Heritage Month, I wonder why hasn't a month that began all the way back in 1990 done more to correct the record? Why hasn't it opened the door wide for these untold stories? Sadly, we have been denied a popular understanding of America's Native heritage. We are in great need of new perspectives and insights. Ones that conveys Indigenous stories and humanity in exquisite and convincing ways.

A true acknowledgment that American history began. With indigenous peoples long before Columbus ever caught wind in his sails. And that is what I've tried to do here with a few stories that I have told today, the perspectives that I've offered. And that is why I put together my course Beyond 1492, The real history of Native America. And on your own, I hope that I have enticed you to read and search and find out more about how we got to the Standing Rock protests. More about how Native people have the highest poverty rate in the U.S. What is the history behind these headlines? How did we get here?

That is it for this mini-episode, everyone, I or to just wanted to share a few stories, but in my next podcast, we'll definitely take a deeper dive and be back to a full episode. But remember, I need your support for my very first online history course to make it a success. So go to www.thehumanityarchive.com Click on courses.

Join up for Beyond 1492, and the bonus, and the workbook that you're going to get when you sign up. There's also a lot of free workbooks on my website. One where I give a list of native American history books that you can read, that one's free. I just want to thank everybody for listening. Thank you for being here and I'll be back with another full episode soon. See you next time.