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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durinpool. Now we're returning to a subject we kind of lightly touched on a few weeks ago and then we
We got embroiled in the origin stories of the founding fathers and the American War of Independence. But I'm really glad that we're going back to this now because, William, I mean, we sort of started the whole series predicated on this idea that America as a notion is founded on the belief that there was almost an empty country, which people came into because
fought for and settled on and how the West was won, etc, etc, etc. But there were people here before the British arrived, before even the Vikings arrived, before European intervention in this continent. And the person who's done as much as anyone to
rewrite this history. There's been an amazing wealth of scholarship, as Anita and I have been discovering in our book stacks over the last two or three weeks. But we're particularly pleased to have with us today Kathleen Duval, whose wonderful new book, Native Nations, a Millennium
in North America, rewrites the history of America from a completely different perspective to the one it's normally presented in, and certainly the one that I think Alitra and I were both brought up with as personified by John Wayne Weston. Kathy, welcome, and thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.
really struck me reading your wonderful new book was, well, two things. First, the massive diversity that you present of these native nations, as you call them, but also the oddly optimistic sense that you emphasize the survival. I mean, everything we've ever read about this has always been a story of heartbreak, bury my heart, a wounded knee. It's always sort of, you know, the end of the end of the end. And yet you start very clearly with the point that these nations have survived, that they're there today, that they have their memories and they have their accounts, and we've got to go and listen to them.
That's right. That's exactly the main point of the book. And one of the things I just really wanted to do for readers was to span out and say, okay, you've probably heard of Indian removal and the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee. Those are all true and they are all terrible parts of Native American history and American history. But Native American history is much, much longer than that. Native Americans have been in North America for at least tens of thousands of years, but
And they're still here today. They're still here today, not only as individual Native Americans, but also as Native nations. There are almost 600 federally recognized tribes in the United States today, in addition to state recognized tribes and tribes, of course, in Mexico and Canada. So they're
I really wanted to show readers this long and continuing history. When you use the phrase native nations, are you talking about what have either two been referred to as tribes? I mean, is that what a native nation is? That's right. That's exactly right. And one of the things I try to do in this book is to move away from some of that sort of anthropology kind of language like tribes that's sort of inherent in it.
imagines that native polities, to take a sort of more neutral word, have been more primitive than polities from other places in the world. And so, you know, nation has this sort of connotation that it got in the 19th century that, of course, doesn't fit native nations for all times. But I think it's one of the things I noticed as I was reading colonial documents is that when English or the French or the Spanish
got to the Americas, nation was the word that they used to describe those peoples because in the 15th century and the 16th century, nation to Europeans meant a people that has the same root as native, right? A people and their place, a country. When European explorers looked at native people, they saw polities, they saw very organized polities and called them nations.
importantly, Native Americans call, many of them call their tribes today, nations. They also use the word tribes, but many of them have nations in their official names, and some have even recently changed to nation as their official name. So it seemed like the word to me that fits today best, but also that fits the distant past best, and really is just another reminder that
These are real polities. These are self-governing entities from long before Europeans got here. Give us a picture, Kathleen, a very gentle sketch of what's going on in North America when Roanoke, the first English settlements,
arrive on the seaboard? What is the full extent? How many different nations? What's the size of the population? Right. So in, say, 1500 or so, one of the things I say in the book is that we can't know the population numbers at all. But what we do know is that Native Americans lived just about everywhere on the continents of the Americas.
They certainly had their own nations and the sort of terminology of the day with borders, this myth that Europeans come in with, or I would say maybe more create over time for their own purposes, that Native Americans don't really own land. They don't really settle land. They're just sort of migratory. And therefore, of course, that their land is up for taking. None of that is true. Native Americans in Hollywood.
hundreds, at least, of different nations. More than that, if you get down to sort of the town and community level, lived across the continent. And in an earlier era, a few hundred years before that, there had been huge cities. But by the 1500s, most of those had fallen and people were living in sort of more spread out ways for a variety of reasons.
These are distinctive native nations or tribes, but genetically, what does their genetics tell us about their story and their prehistory and how they come to be here? Well, that is very contested these days. I mean, there's a general sense that in the far, far distant past of human history, they came...
came in the direction from Asia. But exactly how and when is very contested. It used to be the story that, and this is definitely part of the truth, that in the time of the last great ice age, there was land between what's now Siberia and Alaska. The Bering Straits was a land bridge. Exactly. Bering Strait was the Bering land bridge.
And that there were people who hunted there following the very large mammals of that era and ended up on the American side. Probably not, you know, one day deciding to cross, but eventually ending up what became separated and is now the Americas. And definitely there are some Native American ancestors who came that way.
But archaeologists have been finding all kinds of different evidence for how long ago and by what means people came. And there were clearly sort of more boat people who came in sea vessels. In which direction? The way archaeologists talk about it is all from Asia, but boats can take you in any direction the current is going in.
And so I think that is a question that will have many new answers coming to it over the coming decades as archaeologists do more and more work. And I should also say there are Native American tribes who say, you know, that is not a problem.
the relevant question our people have for all intents and purposes always been in the Americas. We talk about following the footprints over land or sea, how these people got here. But also, I mean, I just indulge me for one second because there are clues and whispers in language as well today that I just wanted to point out that there are words that we use every day without thinking that their etymology goes right back into these ancient histories of an ancient people. So words like totem, papoose, tomahawk from these indigenous languages
cultures but also you have words like squash that big vegetable that I can't stand eating skunk raccoon barbecue I didn't realize that was another moose the word moose is also moccasin okay I could have guessed that but anorak as well all of these words anorak is also what's the root of how does that go
Somewhere cold, I'm sure. Well, speaking of somewhere cold, igloo, well, that's not surprising, but chocolate, caribou, husky, pecan, as in pecan nuts, you know, all of these words. Right. Hurricane. Hurricane. I mean, there are all of these words, which I love looking at that kind of etymology that kind of also just gets forgotten like so many of these stories. Let's talk about
So these very ancient people who have lived here for, let's say, thousands of years before the Europeans come. Cathy, can we just pursue that just for one second? If you had to take apart from your vast reading, which you've done most recently for your book, when would you place the first signs of settlement? So I think I would say 40,000 years. That is about the age of the oldest site that's been dated, probably.
But I would say that with the caveat that it seems that every time I look, there's a new article that has found an older site. And one of the
Really dramatic findings has been some of the oldest sites are deep south into South America. In Chile, there's very early sites. In Chile, right. Or in Pennsylvania on the east coast of North America. So the fact that the oldest sites are not anywhere near the Bering Strait or even maybe the Pacific Ocean is, yeah, means that there's more to be found, maybe much older sites to be found.
And the thing that surprised me most in your book and in David Wengrove's wonderful Dawn of Everything is that the large scale urban sites in North America, which had never entered my ken at all until last year. Tell us about some of this, particularly Cahokia, which sounds fascinating, which you write very beautifully about. About a thousand years ago, there were...
large civilizations, great cities, centralized economies in many, many parts of North America, and really quite comparable to civilizations in other parts of the world at the time, including Western Europe. Cahokia, for example, Cahokia is a site that's in
Present-day Illinois, right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. So right in the middle of the United States today. Cahokia was a central city, but also was part of a larger civilization, the central city in a larger civilization. At its height, its height was in about 1100. Its main city had more than 10,000 people in it, which doesn't sound like a huge city, but was comparable. But it compares with London at the same time.
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. And it had many, many satellite cities around it, neighborhoods that made the population much larger than that beyond the central city. The city itself had a central plaza that was the size of about
30 football fields around that central plaza. And in other places, including in its satellite cities, it had large pyramids, but they're flat top pyramids. So the point was to put buildings, palaces and temples on top of those pyramids. Are they influenced by the, you know, we're very familiar with these great big pyramid cities in Mexico and with the Aztecs and the
Maya and so on. Are they influenced by that? Do they precede that? They could have been influenced by it. The timing is such that the influence could have gone either way. Archaeologists used to really puzzle about this. How could information about this have gotten across the deserts of northern Mexico? But archaeologists have begun finding great cities in northern Mexico as well. So I think in future years, we'll find out even more about the trade of information as well as goods that may have influenced both central Mexico and
and what's now the United States. I'm bursting to talk about one of those Mexican sites, the Chaco Canyon. But before we get to that, when you say pyramids, I mean, I just want to give an idea of what these things are. We're talking about structures that are sometimes 10 stories high with these enormous flat terraces. But
In Illinois. I love it. Do we know if the purpose of these was for worship or for astronomy? Because they are very much aligned with the skies and the stars, aren't they? Right, right. So there's definitely a combining of supernatural and religious reasons with political reasons. And they're
Cities, they're certainly different from each other and they change over time. And there's lots that we really don't know about them. But in general, what seems to be true is that over time, these became in most places a site for the elite, for a sort of political and religious elite movement.
to lead ceremonies on. These are fairly hierarchical societies for the most part, religious ceremonies that probably were only for the elite by some point, and also palaces and sort of think about this social differentiation that you can see from some people who live, you know, 10 stories high on top of one of these mounds or pyramids and sort of the common people who live below. Cathy, why don't we know about this? This is radically new to me, and I read a lot of history. This is completely new.
think one of the reasons is, and the Southwest is a bit different, but one of the reasons is that Cahokia, and there were cities like this, not quite as large as Cahokia, but cities like it and that were modeled on it, all
around the Mississippi Valley, which is basically today's southeastern and Trans-Mississippi and somewhat northeastern United States. It's a huge region. They built on top of these pyramids, they built with wood for the most part. And those structures don't exist anymore. So if you see Cahokia today,
It looks like hills, right? It looks like very large grass covered hills. And in fact, there were geologists, American geologists in the 19th century who argued that these were not human made at all. Glacial moraines or something. Right, right. I think they've been made by a glacier instead of actually made by human beings and once were the centers of cities.
Now, in the southwest, there are ruins that do exist because the building materials were more lasting. It's not as well known as it should be, this sort of urban era. Can I throw in my tuppence worth? Because I've become obsessed with the work of one archaeologist, actually. She's absolutely brilliant and has blown my brain 10 ways till Christmas. Patricia Crown, who's been looking at this one site, Pueblo Benito in the Chaco Canyon.
in New Mexico, which is again this huge Medan thing that we would talk about and very complicated permanent structures that are built around. But what I was fascinated with is she could find whispering in the dirt, these examples of things that told of a very complicated religion and philosophical structure with people who traveled thousands of miles away from different native nations
to come and all congress here in this one place, in this one permanent site and permanent city, and bringing with them things that just don't grow natively around these here parts. I mean, maybe you can tell us more about this, but I was loving this idea of these cylindrical jars which have chocolate in them and splashes of chocolate on walls because they've been poured as libation for the gods or bits of turquoise or feathers from birds, from things.
thousands of miles away who can only have been carried on foot by people who decided one day they had to go to Puebla Benito for some reason. Now, what were the reasons and what was the religion and the thought process behind these places? A lot of this we just have to sort of reason from the evidence because we don't have sources that tell us exactly
what they were thinking, but there were certainly pilgrimages to these places, people who saw them as sacred and worth going maybe once in a lifetime, maybe more frequently. But there was also trade and there were traders who crossed the continent bearing products that other peoples wanted. There was probably trade that one city or civilization might trade with a neighboring one and get from that neighboring one
Things from farther away. So sort of point to point to point trading rather than people who carried those products the whole way from wherever they came from to another. But you're right, like seashells have been found in places far from the oceans they came from, right? From the water, right?
I mean, I don't know whether this is because it's hard when you've got so many gaps to try and fill in those gaps. And I'm always fascinated how historians and archaeologists do this. But this creation myth of these people believing themselves to have crawled out of the earth, almost being birthed out of the earth. I mean, the whole of Puebla Benita is sort of built and these painted caves, which are also found in New Mexico, tell a creation story of people climbing out of
into the sun from the earth. So these are very much earth gods who come and then walk upon the land. Is that something that's common to all of the native nations or something very specific to New Mexico?
I think it's pretty specific. The Kiowa creation story talks about being created out of the earth or out of a log as well. But there's huge diversity in where people say they came from. Some have migration in their creation stories. And then some creation stories tell about being created out of this urban era. There are some creation stories that talk about being created after the urban era as a reaction and a de-urbanization. So it really just depends.
And farming and agriculture, and as we know it, I mean, are these things happening thousands of years ago? Absolutely. And in fact, these urban civilizations that we've been talking about, they would be impossible without very large scale farming. Yes, you can't have 10,000 people in one place without settled agriculture and large surpluses. Exactly. So around Cahokia, there are farms and farms and farms just stretching for miles and miles. Which are described...
by early Spanish accounts, early conquistadors who come north describe great plenty. Absolutely. Right. Right. And they're coming through at a time when most of these cities have fallen. Cahokia has fallen quite some time before the Spanish explorers come through. But there are still sort of moderate sized cities left. And the Spanish explorers, you know, they're coming from Spain, a place where cities are early, early modern sized. They're not huge.
And they absolutely recognize these places as urban. And certainly the farming is something that, for one thing, can feed an army of several hundred people when, say, Hernando de Soto crosses the American Southeast. Which is in what date? Between 1539 and early 1540. So one of the things which totally blew my mind and made me look again at all this stuff was your
idea of these great cities, which then sort of decide that they don't want to be great cities, that they choose, in your account, to return to the land and to leave these great centralized cities behind. Talk about the end of Cahokia. Why is it deserted? So what happens is, sort of as we kind of try to piece it together from archaeology and oral history, the great cities of North America, north of central Mexico,
They're possible, as I said, because of this agriculture. This large scale agriculture of this era is possible because of the medieval warm period. So the planet at the time has especially the latitudes that are now the United States and Western Europe that
the planet has warmed, which was a good thing in that era. It made agriculture, especially large scale agriculture possible in what's now the United States and much of Western Europe as well. But then what happens in the 1200s is the medieval warm period ends. There's a
century or so of terrible drought, but also sometimes flooding, it makes that kind of large agriculture much more difficult, especially in what's now the American Southwest, which is a desert. And then we slide into the Little Ice Age, which as its name implies, is not like the last Great Ice Age where we talked about the Bering Strait being land, but it is considerably colder than the medieval warm period. It's pretty nippy. Yeah.
Right, right, right. And so the growing season is shorter. Weather also, relatedly, for some reason, is less predictable. It becomes harder to feed that many people on the scale in the ways that cities like Cahokia have been doing. In some combination of those climate changes and sort of human decisions...
Cahokia and eventually other cities of the Americas north of central Mexico fall. In Cahokia, for example, over time, the leaders, it appears, start to take more and more power. There's some signs possibly of human sacrifice and definitely cracking down on the people and the people respond.
At Cahokia, most of the signs that we can see, at least in the archaeology, are of people just leaving, like groups of people leaving the region, maybe going back to the places that their ancestors had lived, that they'd moved from to join Cahokia. And then oral history also backs that up, that people who came later, the descendants of these great cities, looked back on the era of cities as actually kind of the wrong path, as a time that had encouraged people
leaders that were too powerful, had encouraged tyranny, and had also made it harder to make a living. What a strange mirroring this is, though, of the very reasons that people left Europe, looking for religious freedom, freedom from persecution, freedom to live their own lives, freedom from famine, whether potato famine or any other kind. We're going towards a break. And after the break, now that we've established that there is a great, rich,
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Welcome back. So we're talking to the wonderful Kathleen Duval about her book, Native Nations. And we have jumped forward now from those early roots. We've seen the deep roots of the many indigenous nations in North America. And we're now going to jump forward, if you like, where we left the American Revolution and Maya Jasnoff last week. Kathleen, give us a view of what's going on there. The great cities have crumbled. We're in a very different era.
But one of the things that struck me in your account is that it's almost a cliche that the Europeans brought massive amounts of disease and terrible microbes that wiped out the indigenous peoples, both north and south. But you
But you say the word mass graves, that in your view, that it wasn't like it was a complete die out. Yeah, I think that's right. And so I guess if I were saying it sort of the most straightforwardly, I would say there isn't evidence for that kind of mass die out and that the evidence that's been presented for it is so thin and so selective that it isn't persuasive. And what I think
It's really important to understand is that it isn't disease alone that destroys native societies. This is a time when epidemics can wreak havoc anywhere, right? It's before antibiotics, before vaccines. China has vaccines earlier, but everywhere else.
And epidemic diseases are hard on many populations, but the times where disease really has a terrible impact on a native society is when it's also compounded by other things like war, slavery, the kinds of things that have other reasons for death, but also make it harder for native societies to do the same kinds of things that everybody else would have done in the early modern era to deal with disease, quarantine and basic nursing.
Those things are less possible in times of disruption, war, being kicked off your land, right? And then so disease hits harder in those areas. So paint a picture. The last Brits have left New York. The loyalists are all now making their way to Halifax and elsewhere. It's a world turned upside down, William. A world turned upside down. What's the situation of the Native Nations at that point in history? They're still controlling most of America. Right.
Absolutely. So if you think about it, it is at this point almost 300 years of Europeans being in the Americas. And yet, if you look across North America, Native nations control almost all of it.
There are a few Spanish posts in New Mexico, starting to be in California, in Texas, a couple in Florida. There is French New Orleans and a couple other French posts there and in Canada, of course. And then there's this new United States, but it is just hugging the Atlantic coast. 13 states from Massachusetts to Georgia, and those are all Atlantic coast states.
even if you look at a map of the area, even the map of what people in the new United States think their territory is, which is bigger than what the Spanish or most native nations think it is. If you look at, say, the state of Georgia, it is about a third the size of even the state of Georgia today, not counting all those other states that don't even exist at all that today are west of Georgia. So,
It's a pretty small country, certainly compared to what the United States will eventually be. But, and this is what is already frightening Shawnees and Cherokees and others who live right on the border of the United States as it was in 1776, 83. It is a population that even in the previous period, in the colonial period, had begun to double every generation. And now after having defeated the British and the American Revolution, the people of the United States have
are certain that they have won Western land and also politically believe that individual land ownership by its citizens, by its male citizens, is essential for a republic. Republic is a controversial thing to start. And one of the answers to questioners, people who think maybe a republic isn't the right way to go, is the citizens of this republic, common men who get to vote in this republic in 1776, they're going to own their own farms. They aren't going to have a boss. They aren't going to have a landlord.
But those farms, if they're gonna happen, and with this population that is doubling every generation, those farms are gonna come out of Shawnee and Cherokee and other native land.
Yeah. And what is ironic, and this was something that we commented on at the time, is that while the British were there, they were signing treaties to keep the expansion down. And that's part of the reason that Americans hated British rules. Who the hell are you to tell me I can't have my own farm and I can't run my own ranch? And particularly go beyond the Appalachian Mountains. That was the boundary the Brits wanted to keep. The line of protection was drawn by the British in many ways. And once that was gone, and once that was sent packing back over the Atlantic...
it does turn into a free fall. You talk about an anxiety though from the Shawnee and the Cherokee people and the others who are living on this borderland, if you like, of expansion. Do they ever think that it will happen and that they can stop it?
they do think they can stop it. And they know that one of the ways to do it is by making more allies. So Shawnees and Cherokees and others in this era, early era of the United States, they worked very hard on making alliances with one another, with other nations that are right on the border with the United States, with the Spanish and the British who are still on the continent and have weapons. And so the Spanish actually secretly provide weapons to the Muscogees and other nations who are fighting the United States.
And then some of them go west and try to convince that if you sort of go back to our painting the picture of the continent, most of the continent is still Native Nations. And in fact, it's still Native Nations who have not been affected by the United States at all and are not right on its border. So Shawnees and others go west and say to Western Native Nations, there's this huge threat growing on the Atlantic coast. We should all band together to fight it. And Western nations just they really
don't believe it. They've seen these handfuls of French people and Spanish people sort of walk across their land and occasionally have a trading post and they don't seem powerful and they don't seem threatening and they kind of don't believe these stories. It's incredible that there could be a people this
And in reverse, looking from the point of view of the new nation sitting in Pennsylvania, say, what's the attitude of people like Thomas Jefferson? They've written this mighty document that we discussed in the last episode talking about an empire of liberty. Does that liberty extend to the people who actually live in three quarters of this continent? Yeah.
of think it does and that early generation of Jefferson and Washington they imagine that Native Americans will be part of the nation but they don't
They imagine Native nations being neighbors on the continent. They certainly think the West will still be controlled by Native Americans. That isn't really even in their mind's eye yet, but really believe that Shawnee and Cherokee and other land needs to be part of the United States. It's right there. It's so close. It's so valuable for farming. They imagine then that Native Americans can become citizens in the United States. Oh, really? They think that they'll be equal and equal?
They do. I mean, sometimes they say it in ways that makes you think from their language, maybe equal is not quite what we mean by equal, but assimilated for sure. Yeah. Now, that isn't what native nations want at all. And yet George Washington, even before 1776, is pushing to settle, as he calls it, the Mississippi Valley. He's seeing it as land where he can make a lot of money. He's parceling and selling it. It doesn't belong to him.
but he's doing it, isn't he? George Washington is a speculator. As you say, he is making money off of claiming and dividing land and building roads to get to that land for smaller farmers. And at the same time, they know it belongs to Native Americans. And so they have this sort of duality in their minds that it's going to become part of the United States. It just has to become part of the United States for their vision of the United States to
continue. But Native Americans will get to be Americans and that'll be better for them, right? Losing their nations, why do they want to be primitive people anyway? They could become as good as we are, right? Do you have in the cities on the seaboard by this stage, by the 1770s,
Do you have populations from the Native Americans who are wearing frock coats and owning land and going about their life as members of this community? Yes, exactly. So we've been talking about nations still on the border and farther in the West. But right, there are Native people who
live surrounded by colonists, some of them by this point intermarried and may be losing or have lost their Native identity. But there are also quite large pockets of Native people who are still in their own communities in New England, in Virginia, in North Carolina. And are still there now. And are still there now. Right, right. So we're going to talk about Indian removal. But these are mostly peoples who then were not removed and managed through a variety of ways to keep a little bit
bit of land, but also to keep their communities alive and keep their historical memory of being Native people alive. We've talked about Washington. We should bring in another founding father here. Let's talk about Jefferson and manifest destiny. There's a clear line between Jefferson's empire of liberty and the 19th century ideas of manifest destiny and leading into what eventually will be just bald-faced white supremacy. Shall we say the whole
quote from which Manifest Destiny comes from, the Democratic Review. It is, and I quote, "...the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent, allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. This land is our land." I mean, to coin a song that many of your kids learn at school, this land is our land, is what this is, isn't it? God intended it for us.
So we're just going to take it. That's right. For the US, it begins with Jefferson's Empire of Liberty. There's a shift between him and then what you quoted from the 1840s and that complete Manifest Destiny idea. Jefferson sort of cloaks it in this Empire of Liberty. It's going to be better for everyone if we pull them into
our republic. By the 1840s, Americans aren't really saying that anymore. They are just saying non-white people are not as good as white people and their land should be ours. By Jefferson's era, is there still anything left of the notion of a noble savage? Are these just savages in his view, or are they people who are noble and have something to add to his new republic? Yeah, there's so many things to get out of Jefferson's writing, right? But one of the most striking things is the difference in the way he writes about
Native Americans, and he writes about only men in that case mostly, but Native men and Black men and Black women, right? He, I mean, he does still have this idea of the noble savage of Native Americans as maybe being doomed, right? Sadly, not going to exist like that for much longer, which is a myth that runs throughout American history.
But also being kind of pure Republicans as well, sort of small, small R Republicans as having this natural nobility. Whereas when he writes about black Americans, it is, I mean, it's as racist as it can be. We've read some of those extracts and we have judged them vile. Let me tell you, we have thought about it and we think them to be pretty vile.
So, Kathleen, tell us now, the Republic is born, the Brits shoved up to Canada and off back to the Caribbean and beyond. What is the approach of the new Republic? Is it to expand immediately over the Appalachians to seize this land, to evict peoples, to pull them in within them? What's the approach? Basically, the United States is broke, doesn't have a army to speak of. And so in the early United States,
leaders have to literally pick their battles. And so there is a major war that happens and continues into the 19th century for the Ohio Valley. There are American soldiers who go to the Ohio Valley during the revolution, see how fertile it is, see the farms of Shawnee and other women and
Tell us about the Shawnees. Oh, yeah. So the Shawnee, they're in the Ohio Valley. There was a spreading out of the Shawnee in earlier times, but by this period, they've convened back in the Ohio Valley. They have built this really prosperous place in part by building new alliances and building on old alliances with other native peoples, with the Delawares, with the various Anishinaabe peoples, with Miami's, Illinois peoples, and just have some
what in response to colonialism and the growing British colonies and then United States, they've built up a region, a huge region south of the Great Lakes and in the valley of the Ohio River that is a place of shared hunting and lots and lots of farming and trade. And so when the
the American Continental Army marches through there. During the war, they see a place that they want for their own farms, literally the farms of Shawnee and other Native women. So that's where most of the Indian warfare is by the United States in this early period. And the Shawnee were not signees of the Treaty of Paris, 1783. They kept out of it. So they're not guarded by its terms. Yeah, no Native nations are invited to be part of it. And there are Native nations who fought
on both sides. None of them are invited to Paris. None of them are parted to the treaties. They declare that they're not having it. The chief, and I want to say his name correctly, Captain Johnny Kekewa-Plethe. Did I have a good start with that? You did very well. Is that right? Thank you very much. No one's more surprised than I am. But he
He sort of declares that we are strong, unanimous and united in determination to defend this country. And by this country, he means all the land, the Shawnee land, which is north of the Ohio River. And they're going to fight. That's right. They're not having this. They're not going to roll over. Talking about united, he means the Shawnees and...
And there are other allies in that region, yeah. And they've purposely made these strong alliances. And a similar thing is happening in the South, though it's a little bit behind with the Muscogees and the Cherokees and others trying to do the same thing in the South. My knowledge of all this sort of period, and certainly my picture of it visually, comes very much from kind of last of the Mohicans, which is
A little bit earlier, isn't it? It's the Seven Year War. It's the 1750s. But is that the kind of world we're talking about? Is it a lot of these guys will have good rifles, will be very au fait with 18th century warfare, will know the techniques, have maybe fought with either the French or the British at some point in the various wars? That's exactly right.
both North and South. And these are, you know, it's scores of tribes that have that kind of experience. And yes, they've been living near the English and the French and the Spanish colonies for a long time. And they're fully armed. And as we saw in that movie, but also in real life in the Seven Year War, they win battles that they're used to using the geography. They know how to fight in the forest. They've got all the techniques for what we today would call guerrilla warfare. And that they have many advantages over other
18th century regiments marching blindly into the forests. And in fact, the Shawnees and their allies in the Ohio Valley, they defeat two entire U.S. armies that come west to try to defeat them. That's not part of our history. Yeah. No, it's not.
Let's not just dismiss that in one minute. These are armies that have chased the British out. You know, they've just won independence. And they're led by the same generals who are leading troops under Washington. So how is it that they are defeated? What is the kind of warfare? Is it asymmetric in numbers that there are just more...
Yeah, how does it work? Well, so I would say the numbers are somewhat equal, but in both cases, the army marches into an ambush. They come deep into the Ohio country before having any real engagements. And this is mountains and forests. That's right, yes, over the mountains and then into the Appalachians. And one of the generals is Arthur St. Clair, who is a veteran of the Revolution. And George Washington gives him instructions, he says in his letter to St. Clair,
Beware of surprise. He says, I have fought Indians before. Beware of surprise. He says it more than once in this letter, but St. Clair doesn't pay any attention to Washington for some reason, unwisely. And marches in, doesn't put out many guards at night. And Shawnee's and their allies just sweep in and destroy them. With tomahawks, with rifles, with both?
I was wondering about rifles. So they have armaments, which they've got from my enemy's enemy is my friend. So the Brits must have left a few weapons. Yeah, that's right. And in fact, for a little while, the Spanish and probably the British, too, are providing gunpowder and musket balls. Can I just say, beware of surprise is about as useful in a letter as... Just be careful. Just be careful out there. Just be careful out there. I mean, I'm not sure.
I'm sort of a little bit with Sinclair. What the hell does that mean, Washington? A little more detail. What? I never thought about it that way. You're exactly right. I've always been on Washington's side in this, but I think you might be right. Don't be caught by surprise. Okay, I'll pack some extra socks. It's just not useful. That's it, really.
So after this, we then get the Louisiana Purchase. That's 1803. Tell us about that. Yeah. So French Louisiana, what the French claimed as Louisiana was gigantic. Think about what's now the United States, both sides of the Mississippi River. It's the whole Mississippi Basin. So it's basically, it's almost the Appalachians to almost the Rockies. It's
the whole middle of what is now the country. That's a good chunk of territory. It's such a good chunk of territory. The French have like 10 guys there right now. Not really. I mean, New Orleans has a substantial population. But other than that, the numbers of French people there are tiny. But they claim it. And Europeans believe that it's French.
Step back to the Seven Years' War. French lose the Seven Years' War and in the very complicated negotiations ending that war, the eastern half, everything east of the Mississippi goes to Britain and everything west of the Mississippi goes to Spain.
Then in the American Revolution, Britain loses a lot of that. It's contested whether it loses it to the United States or to Spain. And then Napoleon comes to power in France. He can do whatever he wants with the Spanish king. The Spanish king hands Louisiana back over to Napoleon in 1800 or so. And Napoleon...
Really intends to actually colonize French Louisiana this time. Sends a huge number of troops. They're supposed to stop by Haiti on the way to put down this little rebellion that turns out to be the Haitian Revolution. Yes, our friend Toussaint Louverture, yes. We've had a wonderful episode on him with Napoleon not acting honorably at all. The principles of the French Revolution have been left far behind at this point.
But to jump back to Louisiana, those troops never make it to Louisiana. And so Napoleon decides he's got too much on his plate and he sells the colony of Louisiana to the United States. For how much is it? 10 million is the number I've heard. I mean, I think it's sort of a handshake with a man called James Monroe who's going to be important to us later. That's a bogus.
It is a steal. But Napoleon's, you know, just got Haiti on his mind at the moment. While it is a steal, it is definitely money that Jefferson doesn't have. Right. Yes, they're still working out their lines of credit with the Dutch and stuff. So in all these things, obviously,
these things are on the never, never. Anyway, look, what is the impact, though, on the people who suddenly have the land sold out from underneath their feet? The salmon comes down, sold. Louisiana, what about the people who've been living there? What happens to them? Within the next couple of decades, it's really devastating. The first immediate impact they find is that Spanish and the French are
that those sources of weapons, among other things, is gone, right? Once there are Spanish or French office holders there. And so it's much harder to fight the United States. And you're a long way from Canada too. Just large, large numbers of white Americans coming on to native land west of the Appalachian. It
surprisingly soon starts coming to Louisiana. Now, what Jefferson wants to do with Louisiana, what Jefferson thinks at the time is that Louisiana is so far from here and so large, and we have so much other land, we are going to need it for our people for many generations. And so he comes up with this idea, the long term plan is assimilation of Native people, the short term plan as he comes up
with it for the next generation or two is we persuade, and this is where we start to hear hints of what will become forced Indian removal in another generation. We will persuade Native Americans that it's in their interest, persuade Cherokees, persuade Shawnees, it's in their interest to move
West of the Mississippi River to a place they have never lived so that they can keep being their own nations, keep hunting for a little while, another generation or so to give them a little more time to assimilate. And so Jefferson and his administration start to work to try to persuade native nations east of the Mississippi River to move west.
Yeah, I mean, never has that word persuade done so much heavy lifting, shall I say. Let's find out in the next episode what happens to those who are not persuadable. If you want to hear that episode right here, right now, all you need to do is go and join EmpirePodUK.com. A steal, not quite the Louisiana purchase, but also a terrific bargain.
If you're part of the family, you will get to hear all of these episodes right now. And if you're not, just wait for the next installment. But till the next time, thank you, Kathleen, so very much. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Durham.
And there you have it. Dr Al Bamawe is not responsible for the death of Lord Harmsen. British Podcast Award nominee for Best New Podcast. We simply must ask ourselves who planted the idea in Lord Harmsen's head that he was stung by a bee? Who was in the hospital garden that very morning to do so? And who was sleeping with his wife? British Podcast Award nominee for Best Fiction. Dr Sir Michael Wynne Stanley.
British Podcast Award nominee for the Listener's Choice Award. Officers, take Dr Sir Michael away. Show him to himself. He can do with a lie down. He's been a busy little bee. APPLAUSE
Oh, please. Okay. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What? It wasn't recording. Oh, what? Stupid, stupid mic. Everything okay? No. Why not? The adventure didn't record. We only have the end. But that was the best adventure yet. Yeah, I know that.
From Goalhanger. The breakneck series Gen Z is hooked on, says the Times. Oh, OK. Got it. Let me hold your weight. OK, I'm going to do No Carb November, so I might be a little heavier than usual. Shut up and get on with it. Very funny, mildly sweary and hugely popular, says the Guardian. OK, OK. I'm on. Excellent. All right. Not that bad. Not at all.
Sherlock & Co. The Adventure of the Red Circle begins Tuesday the 20th of August. Catch up with the show now wherever you get your podcasts.