Indigenous civilizations with agriculture, trade networks, and complex governance systems thrived across the Americas before European colonizers arrived.

Europeans develop a culture of conquest through the Crusades and colonization of Ireland, creating methods later exported to the Americas.

Columbus arrives in the Caribbean claiming land for Spain and returns to Europe with gold and enslaved Indigenous people.

Ulster-Scots settlers bring Calvinist covenant ideology and settler-colonial experience from Ireland to British North American colonies.

Colonial militias develop irregular warfare tactics targeting Indigenous civilians, burning towns, and scalp-hunting for bounty payments.

General George Washington orders Continental forces to destroy Haudenosaunee settlements and leave their territory in total ruin.

The United States is founded and the Treaty of Paris ignores and excludes all Indigenous nations from its terms.

The Louisiana Purchase doubles US territory without the knowledge or consent of the Indigenous nations living on that land.

Andrew Jackson builds a military career waging wars against Indigenous peoples and implements a sweeping policy of forced removal.

Congress passes the Indian Removal Act, enabling forced removal of Indigenous nations east of the Mississippi to designated territory.

The US Army marches the resistant Cherokee to Indian Territory in winter and roughly half of those marched perish.

The United States invades and defeats Mexico, annexing vast northern territories that are home to numerous Indigenous nations.

Colorado volunteer soldiers massacre Cheyenne and Arapaho people held at Sand Creek reservation, mutilating bodies, with no soldiers prosecuted.

US troops intercept Lakota civilians attempting to surrender and massacre Big Foot and most of his people at Wounded Knee Creek.

The American Indian Movement and allied Indigenous groups organize the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan and march to Washington DC.

Pool 1 traces the defining arc of US history through an Indigenous lens, from thriving pre-colonial civilizations to European invasion and the founding of the United States. It follows the development of irregular warfare by colonial militias and the policies of genocide embedded in the US government from its earliest days. Key turning points include the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears under Andrew Jackson, showing how forced removal was central to US expansion. The pool continues through the annexation of Mexico and the Sand Creek and Wounded Knee massacres that defined the violence of the Indian Wars era. It concludes with Indigenous activists marching to Washington to demand recognition of broken treaties, showing that resistance never ended.

The headline story of US settler colonialism and Indigenous dispossession.

The Mayan civilization develops corn cultivation, advances in astronomy and mathematics, and establishes complex city-states in Mesoamerica.

England's colonization of Ireland introduces scalp bounties and racial supremacy ideology that settlers later bring to North America.

John Smith threatens and then attacks the Powhatan Confederacy when they refuse to supply Jamestown settlers with food.

Puritan settlers near Plymouth Colony wage a war of annihilation against the Pequot Nation, burning homes and targeting civilians.

Settler-rangers wage scorched-earth campaigns against Cherokee villages during the settlers' independence war, expelling Cherokees from their homelands.

The Muskogee Red Sticks are defeated at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and forced to accept terms of total surrender.

The Seminole Nation fights three separate wars against the United States and is never definitively defeated or forced to sign a treaty.

Spain establishes Franciscan missions across California, bringing rape, torture, and mass death to Indigenous peoples of the region.

Anglo settlers in Texas secede from Mexico after Mexico abolishes slavery, leading to the Battle of the Alamo.

Congress passes land acts transferring millions of acres of Indigenous territory to settlers, land-grant universities, and railroad companies.

The US government directs the mass killing of buffalo herds to force Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains into economic dependency.

The General Allotment Act divides reservation lands into individual parcels, transferring surplus land to settlers and devastating Indigenous landholdings.

The Indian Reorganization Act ends the allotment policy and formally validates Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination under New Deal reform.

The Indians of All Tribes occupy Alcatraz Island for eighteen months, drawing national attention to Indigenous rights and land claims.

The UN General Assembly passes the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples after decades of sustained Indigenous advocacy and organizing.

Pool 2 examines the specific events and policies that drove colonization forward across centuries, opening with the flourishing Mayan civilization and the European practices of conquest that were later exported to the Americas. It traces key colonial conflicts like the Pequot War and the Seminole Wars alongside the devastating California missions and the forced dispossession of Southeastern nations. The pool follows the expansion of US power through major land acts and the deliberate destruction of the buffalo economy that crushed Plains nations. It then charts the legislative assault of allotment, followed by a partial reversal under the Indian Reorganization Act. The pool ends with two landmark moments of Indigenous assertion: the Alcatraz occupation and the passage of the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Significant battles, policies, and acts of resistance that shaped Indigenous history.

Dunbar-Ortiz poses her central question: how acknowledging the reality of US history can work to transform modern society.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy establishes a consensus-based democracy with women holding political authority and choosing community representatives.

The Aztec empire is overthrown after a three-year war led by Cortés, ending one of the Americas' largest Indigenous civilizations.

European peasants dispossessed of their communal lands become land-hungry settlers lured to North American colonies with promises of property.

The Scots-Irish arrive in British colonies already experienced as settler-colonialists and form the backbone of Washington's Continental Army.

Shawnee leader Tecumseh organizes a pan-Indigenous resistance alliance and advocates against Anglo culture's destructive impact on Indigenous communities.

William Henry Harrison destroys Prophet's Town and defeats Tecumseh's unprepared alliance, becoming a celebrated frontier hero among Anglo-Americans.

Tecumseh is killed at the Battle of the Thames, severely weakening the pan-Indigenous resistance movement he had built.

James Fenimore Cooper's popular fiction creates heroic settler characters that romanticize and normalize genocidal colonialism for US audiences.

The California gold rush brings mass violence and starvation to Indigenous peoples, drastically reducing the Indigenous population of California.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull lead Sioux and Cheyenne fighters to defeat and kill George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn.

The Ghost Dance spreads as a form of spiritual resistance, and US authorities respond by placing Sitting Bull under house arrest.

The National Indian Youth Council organizes fish-ins in Washington State, securing a major court victory protecting Indigenous treaty fishing rights.

Lakota people and AIM activists occupy Wounded Knee for more than two months, pressuring the government to end the termination policy.

Dunbar-Ortiz calls on all people to support Indigenous education, honor treaties, restore sacred lands, and pay reparations to build a just future.

Pool 3 focuses on the pivotal decisions and revelations that reshaped the struggle between Indigenous peoples and the expanding United States. It begins with Dunbar-Ortiz's own central argument and traces how pre-colonial Indigenous governance and European economic dispossession both set the stage for what followed. The pool charts the arc of Tecumseh's pan-Indigenous alliance from its inspiring formation to its tragic collapse, and shows how popular fiction then rewrote that history to serve the settler narrative. It continues through the catastrophe of the California gold rush, the famous Indigenous military victory at Little Bighorn, and the spiritual defiance of the Ghost Dance movement. The pool ends with the Wounded Knee siege and Dunbar-Ortiz's call to action, connecting the violence of the past directly to the responsibilities of the present.

Key decisions, discoveries, and moments of resistance that changed the course of history.