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The Doctors' House in Glendale.

Pieces of the Past at the Doctors House: Glendale, California

How one house can contain larger stories of American migration and growth, reckonings with exclusion, and the advent of new technologies.
by Katherine Hobbs via Public Books on March 21, 2024
A photograph of the Arizona desert at sunset with cacti in the foreground.

I Want Settlers To Be Dislodged From the Comfort of Guilt

My ancestors were the good whites, or at least that’s what I’ve always wanted to believe.
by Natasha Varner via Electric Literature on February 8, 2024
Oil pumpjack in the rural southwest.

Public Universities Are Profiting In Billions From Industries On Stolen Indigenous Land

Extractive industries filling public university coffers on stolen land. Here's how 14 land-grant colleges took 8.2 million acres from 123 Indigenous nations.
by Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, Amanda Tachine, An Garagiola, Audrianna Goodwin, Maria Parazo Rose, Clayton Aldern via Grist on February 7, 2024

Space Isn’t the Final Frontier

Mars fantasists still cling to dreams of the Old West.
by Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith via Foreign Policy on January 21, 2024
Cover of book Seeing Red.

The State of Nature

From Jefferson's viewpoint, Native peoples could claim a title to their homelands, but they did not own that land as private property.
by Michael John Witgen via UNC Press Blog on November 13, 2023
Swale Land, painting by Edward Mitchell Bannister, 1898, depicting nature.

Vacant Unsettled Lands

American thinkers consider what the already occupied West could fund.
by Michael A. Blaakman via Lapham’s Quarterly on October 25, 2023
original

Oregon Trails

After navigating a minor hiccup in our own provisioning process, we set out for the West on what would be our longest trip yet.
by Ed Ayers on October 24, 2023
Bison drinking from a pond.

How the Iron Horse Spelled Doom for the American Buffalo

From homesteaders to tourists to the U.S. Army, railroads flooded the Great Plains with people who saw bison as pests, amusements, or opportunities for profit.
by Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan via Literary Hub on October 16, 2023
Design drawing for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Competition, 1947.
original

A Gateway to the Past

The Arch in St. Louis stands as a monument to contradictory histories.
by Ed Ayers on September 13, 2023
A herd of bison running.

Speaking Wind-Words

Tracing the transformation of the Great Plains to the widespread belief in “manifest destiny,” and weighing the power of words to shape landscapes.
by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder via Emergence Magazine on August 17, 2023
Lithograph of a river flowing from a lake through a prairie with a few houses on the banks and some boats.

The Roots of Environmental (In)justice in the Early Republic

Development and dispossession as a two-pronged conquest.
by John William Nelson via The Panorama on July 11, 2023
A Ku Klux Klan march, late 1800s to early 1900s.

Tracing the Legacy of Southern White Migration

Unlike the Southern whites who moved en masse during the 20th century, these early migrants often had direct, personal ties to the institution of slavery.
by Samuel Bazzi, Andreas Ferrara, Martin Fiszbein, Thomas Pearson, Patrick A. Testa via Broadstreet on July 1, 2023
Illustration of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

The True History of 'Custer's Last Stand'

We're talking about the Battle of Little Bighorn all wrong.
by Olivia B. Waxman via TIME on June 25, 2023
Twin brothers Jonathan and Matthew Burgess.

The Black Families Seeking Reparations in California’s Gold Country

Descendants of enslaved people want land seized by the state returned and recognition of the gold rush’s rich, and largely ignored, Black history.
by Michael Scott Moore via The New Yorker on May 17, 2023
A 1613 engraving of the July 1609 battle between Samuel de Champlain, his men, their Native allies, and Mohawk soldiers.

The Rediscovery of America: Why Native History is American History

Historian Ned Blackhawk’s new book stresses the importance of telling US history with a wider and more inclusive lens.
by David Smith via The Guardian on May 8, 2023
Two Pueblo people hold an American flag at the Ceremonial Cave of the Frijoles Canyon in New Mexico.

Without Indigenous History, There Is No U.S. History

It is impossible to understand the U.S. without understanding its Indigenous history, writes Ned Blackhawk.
by Ned Blackhawk via TIME on April 26, 2023
Senator McCarran greeted by a group of men in front of a plane.

What Nevada Stole from Its Indigenous People

Senator Pat McCarran’s vision for the desert carried a tradition of dispossession into the mid-20th century.
by Taylor Rose via Zócalo Public Square on April 3, 2023
Fort William Henry, 1755.
partner

The Curious History of Ulysses Grant's Great Grandfather

The sacrifice of Captain Noah Grant, during the French and Indian War, may have influenced Ulysses S. Grant, as he decided to rejoin the U.S. Army in 1861.
by John Reeves via HNN on March 19, 2023
Map of Iowa and a drawing of a factory processing corn.

Searching for the Spirit of the Midwest

Was the nineteenth-century Midwest “the most advanced democratic society that the world had seen”?
by Phil Christman via The New Republic on February 22, 2023
Painting of the US army entering the city of Guadalupe Hildaglo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: Annotated

Signed February 2, 1848, the treaty compelled Mexico to cede 55 percent of its territory, bringing more than 525,000 square miles under US sovereignty.
by Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on February 2, 2023
Neon cowboy on I-80 at Nevada’s border with Utah.

The Senate's Anti-Democratic Nature Is Even More Toxic Than I’d Realized

Whole states of the Union owe their very existence to nothing more nation-building than 19th-Century pols’ wanting to add new senators to one side of the aisle.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on January 19, 2023
Painting, a portrait of Thayendanegea, depicting a a Native American in a red and orange headdress.

Do We Have the History of Native Americans Backward?

They dominated far longer than they were dominated, and, a new book contends, shaped the United States in profound ways.
by David Treuer via The New Yorker on November 7, 2022
Illustration of Crazy Horse

How Would Crazy Horse See His Legacy?

Perhaps no Native American is more admired for military acumen than the Lakota leader. But is that how he wanted to be remembered?
by Pekka Hämäläinen via Smithsonian on November 2, 2022
An 1886 illustration of a cowboy and cow camp.

When Texas Cowboys Fought Private Property

When cattle barons carved up Texas with barbed wire in the late 19th century, cowboys formed fence-cutting gangs to preserve the open range.
by David Griscom via Jacobin on October 4, 2022
A street with a sign above it reading "Welcome to San Bernardino."

California's Never-Ending Secessionist Movement — and its Grim Ties To Slavery in the State

San Bernardino County may explore seceding from California. Many of the earliest separatists wanted to transform Southern California into a slave state.
by Kevin Waite via Los Angeles Times on August 7, 2022
Painting of Daniel Boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap by George Caleb Bingham. (Washington University, St. Louis)

The Articles of Confederation and Western Expansion

In settling a rivalry between Maryland and Virginia and preventing individual states from getting into bed with France and Spain, maybe the Articles weren't a failure after all.
by Richard J. Werther via Journal of the American Revolution on June 14, 2022
Sesationalized painting of Native Americans about to scalp a white woman. The Murder of Jane McCrae by John Vanderlyn, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

“White People,” Victimhood, and the Birth of the United States

White racial victimhood was a primary source of power for settlers who served as shock troops for the nation.
by Gregory Rodriguez via Contra Mundum on June 9, 2022
Picture of the statue of Black Hawk.

Remembering Black Hawk

A history of imperial forgetting.
by David R. Roediger via Boston Review on March 1, 2022
Photo of Sitting Bull with an aerial view of the Yellowstone Basin in the background.

How Sitting Bull's Fight for Indigenous Land Rights Shaped the Creation of Yellowstone National Park

The 1872 act that established the nature preserve provoked Lakota assertions of sovereignty.
by Megan Kate Nelson via Smithsonian on March 1, 2022
Herd of bison

Reopen the American Frontier

Let us let the ghosts of the megafauna rise, but let us leave the old imperialists to lie in their graves undisturbed.
by Jason Morgan via The American Conservative on March 1, 2022
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