The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

“Trouble the Water” fiction by Barry Jenkins

“Sold South” fiction by Jesmyn Ward

Indigenous peoples held a dynamic position in the early American economy as they were the procurers of fur, which was a profitable trade. Still, the American settlers also perceived them as a threat. In 1785, Cherokee Leaders met with Commissioners at the Hopewell Plantation in South Carolina and signed the first Treaty of Hopewell. Native peoples would get protection from the United States and an agreement to prohibit citizens from settling “westward or southward of the said boundary” (138). The Cherokee would return all US prisoners and property taken during the Revolution. That “property” included enslaved peoples. Indigenous Americans were not oblivious to slavery, even as they came to the Hopewell Plantations. They understood that while they were not white and did not benefit from the privileges of being so, there was a distinction between Indigenous and Black peoples. To secure protection from the United States, Indigenous peoples were forced to act within the American racial hierarchy. Both these populations continue to experience the consequences of the United States’ brutal and violent treatment of them while having a complicated relationship with each other.

After the colonists won independence, they realized they had a problem.