Merciless Indian Savages | Episode 1

Rebecca Nagle (0:00)

Rebecca Nagel. Here, Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can hear episodes of First America early and ad free by signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and other binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find Pushkin Plus on the First America Show page on Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm slash plus.

Let's get into it.

Ned Blackhawk (0:34)

Where do you want to park?

SPEAKER_3 (0:36)

Shake?

SPEAKER_4 (0:36)

Park?

SPEAKER_5 (0:36)

Great?

Nick Estes (0:36)

I think you have to park in here.

Rebecca Nagle (0:38)

The four is that way.

On a cold day in January, I visited Fort Snelling in Minneapolis. I was there with my friend Nick Guestis. He's a history professor at the University of Minnesota and a citizen of the Lower Bural Sioux tribe.

Nick Estes (0:56)

This is the historic Fort Snelling. A walk closer to it.

Rebecca Nagle (1:02)

Can you just describe what the fort looks like?

Nick Estes (1:04)

Well, the fort has a guard tower and then there's a wall that surrounds the entire fort.

Rebecca Nagle (1:10)

There's a series of Next to the historic buildings are modern day trash cans. To let you know, this is a tourist attraction. School kids come here on field trips.

Nick Estes (1:21)

This is a sacred site for Duckoaded people, which was later appropriated by the US military to build their fort. So look at that bald eagle.

Told you were going to see one. Yeah, I wish the United States never appropriated the eagle.

Ned Blackhawk (1:42)

Do you hear?

Nick Estes (1:46)

Look at it, he's coming right towards us. I mean, I don't know, man, I don't know how you can't believe in the power of this stuff because those things happen for a reason.

Told you we were going to see one.

Rebecca Nagle (2:04)

The history of what happened at Fort Selling is significant to the Dakota people, and that history is acknowledged at the site, but you have to go and find it.

Nick Estes (2:15)

It was like a healing site right over here.

Rebecca Nagle (2:17)

It's next to an underpass down a long set of stairs on the edge of the woods. Any subscribe what the memorial looks like?

Nick Estes (2:29)

Yeah, so it's a like a camp circle, but in the center it looks like there's prayer tize, sage, tobacco, et cetera, wrapped in cloth, and they're also prayer ties in the trees that surround us.

Rebecca Nagle (2:46)

Who do you think left the purer chase in the trees?

Nick Estes (2:49)

I was assuming it's the descendants of those who experienced that genocide.

Rebecca Nagle (2:56)

Over sixteen hundred Dakota people were held here during the winter of eighteen sixty two.

Nick Estes (3:02)

This is the area actually where the concentration camp was actually at Duco to people, people who dared to stand up to the United States were put into a concentration camp and all kinds of atrocities happened.

Rebecca Nagle (3:20)

The concentration camp was just one part of a broader campaign to expel all Dakota people from the state of Minnesota. The campaign also included death marches, massacres, bounties placed on Indigenous heads, open air prisons, and mass executions.

Nick Estes (3:38)

There was a lot of malnutrition, purposeful starvation. There were reports of women being raped and violated.

You know, it's a sight of horrors.

Rebecca Nagle (3:54)

Do you think most people who come to the spot, do you think that they come here to honor the atrocity happened here.

Nick Estes (4:01)

No, they're doing winter sports recreation.

I mean you can see right here. You can see these parallel tracks people cross country ski through this area.

Rebecca Nagle (4:12)

While we were standing there, some hikers walked by, Hi walking around for its Snelling with Nick, it felt like this perfect metaphor for our country, all our terrible history. It's there. We just don't know how to talk about it.

This all started as a conversation between Nick and me about four years ago. We were frustrated, well, I was pissed at how Native people are erased from the story of America. We wanted to tell the history of the United States with Native people written back in. I wanted to correct the record.

SPEAKER_5 (5:00)

Go up here.

Rebecca Nagle (5:00)

Ooh oh, okay. When we were in the car, Nick's phone rang.

Ned Blackhawk (5:03)

I'm gonna I've called me.

Nick Estes (5:03)

Somebody got shot.

Rebecca Nagle (5:05)

He pulled up the news on his phone.

Nick Estes (5:08)

Breaking witnesses report a woman was shot in the face by ICE while trying to flee in central Minneapolis.