so that's a long way of saying i don't know, but time tell anything else. all right. then we'll wrap up the lecture for the day. let's take a break and we will do our discussion of the readings afterwards. sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen can receive a weekly schedule of upcoming photo lectures and more. newsletter today to watch american history to be ever said life for anytime only suspend the org/history. >> assistant professor at the university of california and this is my first in person conference since the pandemic

and giving a conference paper sitting alone in my apartment and wonderful to put it in person and putting the conference accommodating all of the varieties in which they chose to participate. i want to thank raymond who can't be here today to the roundtable is one to focus on the civil war in the west in 1862. year when the republican party succeeded and some of passing some of its original campaign promises abolishing slavery in the

district of columbia and the western territories as well as passing the homestead act. it achieved legislative victories that would help the union win the war like the direct tax act of 1862 establishing the first federal income tax. this was the year when the fighting and the civil war took a particularly bloody turn with the battles of shiloh and antietam among others. when it seemed increasingly likely that france or england might recognize the confederacy. and when the congress and later lincoln recognized what many african americans free and enslaved had known all along that. this was a war over slavery not just over union. and of course the war in the west is even more complicated and well, i'm sure be the subject of much of what will be discussing in today's roundtable. all of these decisions events have shaped the world that we live in today. and so it seems particularly apt

160 years later to think about this year together in this roundtable. as you might notice our ranks are somewhat diminished. unfortunately gwen wasserman had a family emergency and couldn't come to the conference at all. ari coleman unfortunately had his flight canceled and if you're wondering what airline it was it was united and wasn't be able to get here in time for this roundtable. they both asked me to say how disappointed they are to not be able to be with us today. so what we're going to do is ask our two the two members of our roundtable to share some thoughts. i'll introduce each of them before they speak and then we will open the floor up to a broader discussion and i really hope that we'll be able to do that as a conversation. so first up we have manukuruka who is an assistant professor of

american studies and affiliated faculty with women's gender and sexuality studies at barnard college. where he has taught since 2014 his work centers a critique of imperialism with a particular focus on anti-racism and indigenous decolonization. he teaches courses on the political economy of racism us imperialism and radical internationalism indigenous critiques of politically economy and liberation. he's the author of empires tracks indigenous nations chinese workers and the transcontinental railroad, which was published in 2019. right i want to echo the thanks to the organizer of the conference, which i know is a huge amount of work, especially in these conditions and also to ray lane and i feel kind of sheepish because it feels like the from here the big 1862 doesn't feel so big. so i hope we can have a just a a

discussion with everyone in the room. thanks so much for making the time to join us. so in my remarks today, i plan to focus on 1862 as a moment of escalation in the destructive power of the us in the world linking the wartime expansion of us military power with the development of us financial institutions, and i'm particularly interested in the relationships between the war or military and financial power in the west so-called and in the caribbean and the links between these two spaces. in its wars in occupations against the seminals which up until that point where the most expensive wars that the us fought until the civil war and wars at the us was militaryly defeated and also against mexico the us war economy had tied

together the production of arms in new england with the stabilization of slavery in texas in the deep south. by the early 1860s the war economy marked a confrontation between northern merchant capital which required a protected national market for its further growth and southern agrarian capital which required international exports to ensure its future. merchant and insurance capital based in new york city and the connecticut river valley began, the war paralyzed and divided undertaking a transition from cotton to a diversified portfolio of investments across ranching agriculture mining and industry. as you expected rapid us victory over the confederacy was thwarted by a series of battlefield catastrophes the legal tender act passed on february 25th, 1862 authorized 150 million dollars in us treasury notes the so-called greenbacks, which eventually

increased the 450 million with an additional half billion dollars in war bonds. raising funds to support military power over land and sea which would be necessary to defeat the confederacy. it provided a windfall for industrial and military contractors launching the careers of robber barons of the coming period in a further effort to raise war funds and in the face of bitter political polarization the revenue act which lincoln signed into law on july 1st, 1862 established both the first federal income tax and the first tax on inherited wealth and the agency, which would eventually become the irs. these laws in turn set the stage for the series of national bank acts past annually between 1863 and 1866 which formed a national banking system giving the us federal government the ability to issue war bonds and authorizing the federal government to regulate and tax the commercial banking system. on april 19th 1861 lincoln had

issued a proclamation of blockade against southern ports. the naval blockade was necessary to stop the flow of capital weapons and consumer goods into the confederacy. it was a coercive policy to break the alliance of new york merchants with southern planters, which was running goods by a nassau, bermuda and havana. the us navy began the civil war with 42 ships in active service by the end of 1862. this would increase to 384 ships and by the end of the war the us had the world's largest navy. this navy provided the muscle for an expanded monroe doctrine in the decades following the war with active us interventions against caribbean and central american nationalist movements in the service of ensuring us returns on investment. in cuba over the coming decades the us would leverage political economic and eventually military pressure to support an alliance

of agrarian and finance capital that was based in north america. at the close of the 19th century the cuban revolution would seek to overturn this pressure. two days after the passage of the legal tender act on february 27th, 1862 the us executed nathaniel gordon cyan of a respectable main family. gordon was captain of the slave ship erie, which had been apprehended the previous august at the mouth of the congo river carrying a cargo of 897 african captives. this is the first and only time the us executed someone for participating in the slave trade. six weeks later on april 7th 1862 the british and us concluded negotiations on the leone's sewer treaty, which effectively ended us sanction for participation in the slave trade to cuba and brazil in dubois's analysis.

this ended us participation legal us participation in the atlantics and the atlantic slave trade. 1862 also saw a transitions in us assertions of power over land. on july 1st 1862 the same day as the revenue act lincoln signed the pacific railway act into law the act chartered the union pacific railroad and provided land grants to the union pacific and the central pacific railroad, which is chartered in the state of california. in these corporate land grants the us congress violated treaties at its signed with indigenous nations along the path of the railroad the railroad companies use these land grants to raise capital to fund the construction and maintenance of the roads. and these real infrastructure that they built. you know raise capital through this finance it moved resources out and it moved troops in. and these real develops took place in a on a global stage the

end of the year would see the completion of the first the end of 1862 would see the completion of the first rail line in algeria built by the french and the spread of the rail network and restaurant western india built by the british. on july 2nd the day after he signed the pacific railway act lincoln signed the moral act. establishing the structure of the modern us public university through land grants. the moral act was another aspect of continental imperialism. by opening university education to small property owners the act deep in the class collaboration that has shaped settler colonialism. in the analysis of gerald horn by organizing higher education around modern disciplines producing graduates and engineering accounting administration and management. the university's produced by the act would train in educate the cadre of corporations and a rapidly modernizing and expanding state. the political economy of our own era of crisis continues to operate within the constraint

set in place by land grants to corporations and universities over these two days in 1862. at the end of the year on december 26th the us executed 38 dakota prisoners in what remains the largest official mass execution in us history. in historical context of the railway act in the land-grant act the mass execution was another kind of assertion of land-based power. involve the transition in relating to north america as a space of war to a space of policing a transition which remains unfinished in our own day. read together. we see the prioritization of the rights of corporations over and against international treaty obligations. the expansion of land and sea-based military power was accomplished through the expansion of finance of finance capital. this in turn set the stage for subsequent developments such as territorialization vigilantism and the abrogation of treaty

obligations that provided the context for the sand creek massacre on november 29th. 1864. in the subsequent period following the defeat of the confederacy and the demise of the southern plantocracy the war finance nexus fueled the condensation of us power between the, mississippi and california and in the caribbean. the definitive break in the alliance between northeastern merchant capital and southern slaveholding capital around shared investments in cotton led to the development of finance capital investing in industry. by the end of the 1880s us finance capital had in economic terms, nx cuba controlling the production of sugar and mining operations burning down old growth forests to establish massive sugar estates building rail and road networks to transport raw and finish materials and importing thousands of seasonal workers from haiti and jamaica. have spoken about two executions

in 1862 as windows into the transitions in place during that year. i'm particularly interested in how the defeat of southern agrarian capital was accomplished not through a revolution in land relations, but instead through a new alliance between finance capital and agrarian capital particularly on the plains of north america and in the islands of the caribbean. i want to end by calling our attention to the saudi execution of 81 prisoners this past march 12th followed by the us shipment of a significant number of patriot missiles to saudi arabia on march 21st as reported in the wall street journal. while the saudis report that they are unable or unwilling to rapidly increase oil production to offset sanctioned russian oil for consumers in europe. this is taking place as we witness rapidly unfolding experiments between countries seeking to trade in currencies other than the us dollar. in these recent developments we can see we can also see

assertions of power over c and land and attempts to stabilize the petrodollar to project a future for us power. the world remains caught in the grip of the war finance nexus thank you so much. our next panelist is jimmy sweet. who is an assistant professor of american studies at rutgers his current book project the mixed blood moment race law and mixed interest during dakota indians in the 19th century midwest analyzes the legal and racial complexities of american indians of mixed indian and european ancestry with the focus on kinship family history land dispossession and citizenship. is dedicated to indigenous language revitalization and preservation and as research is driven by a need to understand the full effects of american

colonialism on indigenous americans and how those consequences influence native people today doing so with the hope of contributing to the continued fight for indigenous sovereignty and the healing of indigenous communities, jimmy. homidakeby chanteo said not the achieves up, you know, that was a formal dakota greeting. i said hello my relatives and thank you for coming to this my mic not working. that working out. all right. okay. i'll start again. we have the time obviously we've a short few people. i said how many doc efe chante which they are not page use up, you know, and that's a formal dakota greeting and it means hello my relatives and i shake your hands in a good-hearted manner, you know handshaking is a really a big deal and dakota culture and when i was invited to this panel, i intended to talk about the us dakota war of 1862, which is much closer to my area of expertise, but tuna two of the panelists.

we're already going to talk about that which unfortunately they're neither of them are here today. but my thinking lately has been turning a bit more broadly from the from the us dakota war more broadly in scope and and in the time period to think more about native people in the west particularly during the civil war years. so 1862 and the civil war years is a particularly. horrible moments for native americans. i would i would say it's in this moment where the us government really goes all out and makes it you know the full policy to dispossess native people of their land and replace them with white settlers. this really wasn't something new the us and other colonial powers in north america have been carrying out genocide and and dispossession of native american

people for hundreds of years. but the civil war acted as cover for american lawmakers to explicitly make native land dispossession of a policy of the federal government and so in 1862, we've heard about the the congressional acts of that period the homestead act the pacific railroad act the moral act even all of these were legislation that focused on a dispossession of native people and not you know, the dispossession of sovereign indigenous nations, not just individuals but sovereign indigenous nations, and these are sovereign nations at long predates the existence of the united states, but this was a policy intended to remove them from their homelands and replace them with white settlers. in the same years during the civil war. we also see the creation of a

large number of territories, colorado, nevada and the dakota territorial governments were created in 1861, arizona and idaho in 1863 and then montana in 1864 a huge swath of the american west then was now, you know government presence and administration was now dramatically increased over this huge swath of native american territory in native american lands, which all these things coupled together this legislation the creation of these territories was really all about using the what was going on in the civil war has covered to dramatically overtake indigenous land. i mean that had always been kind of the practice unfortunately of you know, the american government and other settler colonial nations and their southern colonial powers before then, but it really kind of ramped up at this moment. and and we also see the the ramp up in violence in this particular moment in 1862. so some of the ones some of

these are better known like i mentioned the us dakota war of 1862, you know was was a major war that depopulated the state of minnesota and resulted in you know hundreds of settlers dead hundreds of native people dead and thousands of native people displace from their homes and eventually removed from their homeland in minnesota and one of our commenters who wasn't able to make it today professor gwen. westerman is actually a descendant of one of the 38 men at least one of the 38 men executed on december 26th. 1862, and i wish she was here to really to give what i know was going to be kind of like a powerful talk about that. but that's one of the better known ones at least you know for historians are there's a decent historiography of that. another one is the sand creek massacre in 1864 in colorado. most people have heard of that, you know, and there's some some historical literature on that as well. but there are many many other

moments of violence in this particular period in the civil war years particularly in california under what was what's known as the california genocide which was going on for a decade or two before the civil war and continued after but was a particularly bloody time during the civil war. so for example a lot of these are lesser known there, there was the the bear river massacre in idaho of where the us army massacred 280 shoshone men women and children. there was another massacre around the same period in california where settlers it wasn't even the military this time. it was local settlers rose up and murdered probably about 300 jana indians in california, and these are just a name a couple, you know of you know, the more extreme ones but so many of these massacres and these kind of violence was going on in the west during the civil war years

and many of them are just completely unknown like particularly those in california just completely understudied you know, and there's people who are more expert on california than i but the native population of california was greatly reduced something something like 75 80% i believe not just in the 1860s but on a little bit broader broader timeline in the 19th century from i think something like 300,000 to like 30 to 50,000 or something like that and it's through largely through this settler violence that was going on. but anyway back to the us dakota war in the aftermath of that general john pope, who after the u.s. dakota were it went on to that. it was broader in the country i think it was like 300,000 to 30

or 50000 or something like that largely through the violent going on but back to the u.s. dakota were, in the aftermath general john pope who was the commander of the department of the northwest as a result of the war he wrote to one of the subordinates in september 1862 writing about his thoughts about the dakota people. ...the confederacy and on the

american side. that gets us to president lincoln. the reality is he did little to nothing to curtail violence toward native people during his tenure. he did nothing to curtail the suffering and the territory. he's all native people as a threat to whitee settler expansion. he perceived the future of the u.s. as one in which indigenous

people would be swept aside and white settlers would occupy their homeland and that's why we have that legislation mentioned earlier. his political appointees. it wasn't just something from his administration. it was quite common in administrations before and after this. these were politicall appointees and that worked in dc with the office of affairs. they were not appointed because of the skills or abilities or for the responsibilities of the federal governments. they were appointed purely for

political reasons and so often they had no experience whatsoever and they were there to make money. that was a huge problem with theseindian agents and other wos regularly stole money and supplies that was meant to go to native people as treaty supplies or to be distributed to native people very often these lincoln appointees were skimming off the top or sometimes from the top all the way through to the bottom and that's one of the causes of the u.s. dakota war, the dakota people starving to death because the local politicians in the state of minnesota were often worked for

the government as part of the ofindian service. this is what is going on during the lincoln administration so lincoln and his appointees were most interested in concentrating people on reservation land and taking their land for settlers mansions and if authorities or militia groups felt it was necessary to genocidal violence to achieve that they did so and we've seen that with various others of thesese massacres. so often they write of lincoln being too busy in the civil war

to do anything to help native peopleno or to carry out policis protective of people and their land but rather lincoln was the architect of his administration and of the policies of his administration, the actions that his appointees and people carried out. in this period i'm looking forward to a good conversation but i think there is kind of a twofold issue. one is a matter of scale. we need more small-scale and

large-scale work. there is a decent literature and some work on the massacre and notes of the members who couldn't make it today has a beautiful book and horrifying the trauma that is in their of the massacre but they had other circumstances and were not able to make it unfortunately. now i lost my train of thought. so there's some historical work on things like that with so many of these other moments of violence have gone understudied or in some cases not studied at all and that's about it. that's one issue we need more people to study these things. these particular events that are going on in the civil war

period. we also need more work that takese these events and gives a broader interpretation and understanding of why and how these things happen and how they relate to the civil war and what's going on in that period. before the talk i had lunch with geoffrey who had a recent book come out surviving genocide. wey are awaiting the second volume which we might be waiting a little while but it brings that to a later date that is just one example of the important work being done and there needsf to be more figuring out what happened to get more into the meaning of this how

these episodes relate to the creation and issues of reconstruction or the lack of reconstruction. that's it and i look forward to our discussion. [applause] s >> thank you both for such fascinating talks. it's given us a lot to think about. i'm going to exercise and ask the first question. after that we will open up the floor to audience questions so a quick reminder to go to the microphone in the middle of the room and take the time to think about what kind of questions you want to ask. there's probably going to be a

lot. these fascinating talks make the case for why study in the west end looking broadly is important and i'm going to follow up on the points on the historiography because both talks are getting us to think more expensively. there's been a lot of debate about how to do that. elliott west had the framework of greater reconstruction, to think about the west end the south together as a period of federal control, some limitations argueur thinking abt the united states as a whole during a time of this postwar nation and i'm curious if you

have any comments about how or to expand on the comments you already made about how we think about what's happening in the south and the textbook depiction in relation to everything else and you've talked about that. we talked about the expansion prompted by the civil war but i'm curious to hear you reflect more broadly about how we might think of the united states as a whole in this period and whether we should at all. >> that is a great question and one i would need to think about a littles bit more. what's going on in the west is different than what's going on

in the eastern civil war period. it's garnered the vast majority of the attention during this period and there is great work the past couple of decades about battles between the confederacy and the united states and bringing up these particular moments there's a growing historiography of the civil war asphalt in indian territory which saw numerous battles like one of the most fought over in terms of troops onke the ground

and thens in our discussion before this we were using that reconstruction for what we thought was going on at the same time the united states was constructing and expanding their ceempire on these other nations than the one place that needed reconstruction in the indian territory was not. lincoln had no real interest helping the people suffering then and we were talking tens of

thousands who were refugees in the territory as a result of the war flooded into kansas and things like that and not much was really done after that. the second half of the panel, an expert on lincoln and his administration might have more pertinent to the thoughts but those are some of the things i'm thinking about right now and what that would look like. >> i've been interested in turning back to learn from the debates in the 30s among the radicals and interpretations in the civil war as a revolutionary period and the nature of that revolution devoid of analysis is the most revolutionary moment,

genuinely revolutionary priest by the general strike of the enslaved and there were other analyses at thehe time in the period in the 30s of course in the depression where it's just the systemic crisis, social and politicalxp all kinds of experiments and working class organizations and out of that moment, people were reinterpreting reconstruction to a bruzual revolution. maybe that sounds over the abstract but it speaks for the political demands of our moment in some ways, and interesting in interestingways with the antn movement experiments and mutual aid and food distribution.

and also, with the lessons we are learning more broadly hopefully in indigenous histories, understanding the history and i think one question for me is the question of land and property if we go with the latter interpretation of the civil war as a bruzual revolution that essay between what becomes industrial finance capital and southern agrarian capital, so it seems like there is a landed component to it, the familiar, similar kind of pressures and other parts of the world in developing nations, countries that are developing capitalism. cuba itself in the coming decades there will be periods of time where a nascent industrial capitalist class within cuba would've tried to assert its own interest and transform policies

basically more protection so that there could be more domestic production and we are thwarted at every turn. but of course in reconstruction across north america, we see a different set of patterns and play where there is a kind of strengthening of business. there's never a question of agrarian except in the pockets of the south that we learn from the boys but agrarian reform across the expanded the united states is not really on the table. the opposite. the expansion of the industrial capital and t finance capital is achieved through the expansion of private property claims on land and the expropriation of indigenous lands. so i will leave it there.

>> thank you so much for responding to that. i think the issue is key for us to be thinking about. and i love that idea of deconstruction. maybe we need to have a deconstruction, book about the construction to go along the masterpiece. we look forward to questionsro from the audience. if you have a question, please go to the middle aisle and ask away. after hours with of critique of lincoln it pushes a lot of buttons that needed to be pushed so thank you for your comments. i'm wondering about the comment or the observation of the civil war as the cover for this. it seems that sort of implies a

certain now we can do with no one's paying attention. and i just want more motivation. more evidence as opposed to just coinciding with the civil war. and also we see, there is no work as a counterfactual but they would still o be some of these policies might distill well be taken, so the role of the civil war and these policies and then as a graduate of the land-grant university uc berkeley, i'm part of this land confiscation and training of engineers and reorienting capital and that's all true, important observations. but it seems to me that there are other things that occurred with the moral act for example, so how do we balance the a critique of this whole cost of native americans into the other

things that did arise from this development. >> i think you are right that my comments were probably a little too strong a word. in some of the evidence we do have for instance of making nevada estate when it didn't even, it wasn't even near the threshold that was usually necessary like i think it was a number like 50,000 or 60,000 were something rather than not counting native people i think they only had ten. they didn't have southerners or something toay tell you you cant move for that. that's one piece of evidence. it's probably a little bit of a strong word.

to get to the second point thinking about the moral act and the land-grant institutions and of course in the united states we tend to look at those as a really important point because that does create these institutions that do a lot of good in terms of education. everyone's had the ability to get that kind of education and particularly agricultural land things like that. so so often so many of the things we look at [inaudible] there was a recent article by country times that came out a

couple of years ago about the moral act and the way that they dispossess native people so also the public university. new jersey didn't have any public land so they basically used that's like the legacy of so many things in the united states so the next panel and somehow i am managed to get roped into that as well. again we look at these important

documents but neither of those had native people at mind. we have to recognize what it did to people and then comes a host of other things like starvation. i guess what i'm trying to say is we need to kind of critique a little bit but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't see them as important anymore but rather things that need to be explored and addressed and possibly re- dressed for people and what that

would mean. you've got opportunity to give two plugs, the article robert to wrote about in the land-grant colleges and if anyone wants to their way. that does a good job looking at the landryn institution that dd happen in the territory on into the way that's benefited makes for a complicated story so the not very complicated story are great things to look if you haven't already. >> if i could jump in briefly on this idea that the civil war is covered and i think i understand

not necessarily but it is i context. and number two, concrete ways. i talk about the expansion of the navy bit to talk about the the army that a number of divisions and officers. it wasn't going to disband. it was a hugeck for gentile. then there is the investments in. i think the civil war is the context. maybe not covered but i don't know about a counterfactual we can imagine all kinds of scenarios with the way that it actually unfolded had been in this way. it's also interesting to read

some of the accounts of the soldiers themselves who. being sent to these places to fight under very difficult, scary prison conditions and they left records. we signed up to fight the confederacy. we signed up to defeat. why are we being sent to attack another nation. that's not what we are here for. so there's contradictions also in the historical record and in terms of universities there's also contradictions there. these are contradictory. i'm not a historian of education but let mebe give you the german higher education in this period that is also modernizing and developing and it's of course another state that is rapidly developing an advanced capitalism in the economy which

looks very different. there might be differences in these two countries. >> what a fascinating comparison. the next question. >> thanks very much for these remarks here. i want to think about 1862 is the beginning of a decade in which the united states as a nation state radically transforms its understanding and exertion of jurisdiction both in the south and in the west and just think about that, all the things you talked about from 1862. we take that all the way forward tof the advertisement act and te treaty making a decade later

similarly asserting centralist federal authority over critical matters that have been understood it to either be a nation to nation or state based on local. and in that context also we are making a national citizenship out of the disparate elements. citizenship as the aspirational form. the place where the divergence becomes clear as you say.

in the west they need to finance capital to reduceou the acreage and did not, allotment is the tool of conquest rather than the forms thattr there is a contradictory conversation about land inr this period so i'd love to hear your thoughts about any of that and thanks for provoking those ideas. i think those are really -- i would love to hear you talk more about that. those are great connections. thisri may be random but hearing

you talk drawls my mind and the question of culture, this is the era. with the set of land as the relationships that kind of eclipse a certain radical possibility. i wondered in the last the kind of patterns that your trucking out, what kind of. iki don't have an answer for th. i'm just thinking with you with those comments you made. i really appreciate that.

just the threat that you laid out for us. for my own research writing about citizenship in minnesota territory and early states of minnesota where it was so contradictory where it became kind of partisan but where democrats were using to use them but for political purposes, so for instance when 1849 was created created a territorial

legislator and one of the things it did is n enfranchised native people of specifically mixed white and native ancestry. there were those that served in the minnesota state legislature. there were so many of them and the white legislators they were all democrat they were called the moccasin democrats because their connection. this fascinating debates on the evee of statehood of hutu and

franchise. but anyway, it's very obvious that they were only interested in financing because they knew that they were on their side and if they were not going to vote for them they were not going to have interest. you can see how something that works really good was intended for political purposes and another 1862 connection from every session between 49 and 62 had some may legislators. thes populist parents against native.

at thatpl particular moment shifted the thinking. to get to the ideas of citizenship it's fascinating because there were debates at thee time like these are native ancestry we should consider them white for purposes like this in these weird moments of racial creation but it was short-lived and obviously had a political purpose that i seem to understand that they were interested in citizenship. that was in the legislation native people of mixed ancestry should devote. only if they are civilized and by doing so they create a centralized. from the right it was meant to

mean assimilated into american tculture. i don't want to dwell too much on this but you can see in these interesting cases citizenship grows to mean different things toto different people and how it can be used to the benefit and other times it didn't. going the other way with the reconstruction. the citizenship is really in

limbo and up in the air and murky until the citizenship act but there were votes and having a father that is that a citizen or white or mixed or something. they can also be a member of the u.s. sovereign nations. so very controversy where any that i came before the end of genesis sovereignty was a detriment to the expansion and they would fight it. in this case. it gets to the contradictory nature of all these things ongoing in a particular period.

we have seen in the last few years how freedom seekers or protectors can shift the way we think about things. and i get stuck on the word massacre because on the one hand, massacre implies helpless, innocent, being killed for no reasons. of but in fact indigenous women and children pose a threat to just by existing and we don't think of the question from that

angle. what other words are worth thinking if we are going to rewrite the historiography overr the narrative of this period and we want it to travel. >> i share about i don't want to say ohht version but massacre doesn't feel like the right term. i think another way of lookinger at this is the concerted military strategy this sunday massacre this is how the u.s.

fights. the u.s. attacks civilian homes and civilians and their food sources and water resources. so, maybe i don't know strategy is a good word just to place. in the case where there's a big investigation and this wasn't supposed to happen according to the federal government but this is part of a pattern that goes back for centuries. >> thehe debate over.

i understand i can see how it does leave a foul taste inyb yor mouth. it doesn't always fit in other cases. the reason native american native americanhistory why it'so important is it was an encounter to the term battle where so many would want to turn sam creek or wounded me a battle and massacres like switching this around this wasn't a battle between the military forces that met on a battlefield. they were not attacking armies of native american they were attacking villages, people with majority noncombatants on purpose to kill them, drive them away and destroyed the food supplies as you were saying

knowing full well that would result in the starvation. i think that's why it's useful to combat the idea like these things were battles but there probably is a better term. as historians we always strive to use the best terminology and you're right that is one that needs more examination. >> it's been really thought-provoking and i want to say there's a way to think about what happened with the us-mexico war as an example of the kind of total war or what you want it

but it is a targeting of civilians and children and homes and villages and so on. i was interested in the way that you are talking about capitalism.s i feel like one of the themes of enthe conference has been thinkg different kinds of powers and the immigration policy and thinking about that in relation to the colonialism but there's something about what you're talking about with capitalism and capitalist actors that helps us understand the u.s. empire

more broadly. can you talk about what this moment and what we see afterwards because there's something very particular about the moment and how we think about the colonialism and the way that it changes over time. >> i really appreciate that question and i think they are related. it can help us understand.

the huge expansion of military power accompanied by a huge expansion of not just financial power but finance capital and the institutions, a securities market. this requires new irrationality's. people with money have to just make these decisions. people had to b develop that. these are some of the most. it requires new techniques and measuring probabilities, measuring the future.

this expansion of both finance, investments and the institution alongside. one of the things that to me is interesting is that i turn into and they argued that it is a stage and did the development of capitalism. do boys in his article is explaining why the first world war broke out and is afraid that the dividends. this suggests there's a return on investment, that is the

transformation and posing over north america and expanding into the caribbean the last quarter of the century we see these patterns that play much earlier than they were assessing them and in some ways north america anticipates patterns elsewhere. for example the network that i've studied and written about. one of the things that is really interesting to me studying u.s. history is how it anticipates thee modern imperialism. i think there is a link over

time. if we look to the continents, roads look to the railroad construction taking place across north america as a model for how the british empire should capture control over the african continent. to the people that made their wealth in those regimes and are now at the heart of silicon valley here in the united

states. i mentioned this in the comments i gave it is the nexus. thatea is the core. >> this particular moment was about the modifications of native land. to make native land a commodity that's something that is a product and that is bought and sold so many of the treaties and the federal government and these of these nations were land a thesession treaties and a majory were fraudulent in some way.

he was in exchange and that is very much the part of the american settler colonial project was to commodified indigenous lands for the most part. just like human beings have always done all over the world. of those tribal nations their economies were based on reciprocal kinship obligations. as of the most important thing you could do for this make --li they were not commodities or capitalism and those kind of

things. that is what the relationship was between these united states, trying to commodified the native land and turn it into a project to make money or expand on to those kind of things. >> we have a little bit more than ten minutes left so those tthat have remaining questions please come up and share your questions all at once and then we have the last ten minutes or so to let them reflect on those questions. i would love to hear some of the ways in which it is the tie-in of the army and the slaveowners.

what role does this play, how do we link these stories in ways thaty explains both? >> any other questions? we will get them all. >> in the current environment that we see in addressing complex and controversial history on the national and statewide level particularly for someone like myself, if anyone would get a comment on how to address these complexities. >> anyone else? is that the conversation we were having earlier on complexity?

men are thriving on both sides of that army. that would be great to hear about. >> she brought up lincoln and indigenous people. what about the threat to the union if we add up everything you described confederate treaties and indian territory, extensive warfare plus the war e that 7,000 union troops diverted then a broad question related to that to what extent does there need to be a distinction between the fight against indigenous sovereignties and the alternative american

sovereignties that the confederacy represents itself as. >> these events going on did theyey have any direct impact going on in the way they played out? >> last call. interesting questions for the last ten minutes or so. >> okay there's a lot there. >> i can quickly just jump in. on the emancipation proclamation, very quickly i will say i think it's very interesting to. obviously they have more rights

as people than most of us do and it is directly traced to the '14th amendment so there's something it's a refusal. remember slavery itself was a form of real estate so your abolishing or making slavery illegal but keeping real estate and i think that plays out. a southern pacific and santa clara was about the taxation of the railroad company so what kind of taxes are they liable for running along the land that's been granted to it.

with that of course then is related to the radical promise of reconstruction in the south and experiments. the question of how to address this in public education is profound and a beautiful one. i don't, as someone that doesn't have experience teaching. i think it comes back to the question about the language used for example massacres like what language areat we using. i once had a senior colleague who taught european medieval history observed my teaching in ase u.s. survey and rights that the purpose of the survey is to create a shared identity which

in a way i think i was doing just not the shared a common identity my colleague at the time would have preferred me to be doing. there's a lot of questions and i will try to be brief. it's an important question. we need to understand how. we need work on the intersections of african-american and native american history like elaina roberts, great book or the recent book kind of in afro indigenous history.

i heard what it is. last year i worked with of the the newjersey historical commisi teach at rutgers for a conference on. we got a number of questions from educators, it was virtual but it had questions like how do we teach this. i felt horrible because i didn't know how to answer the question and i feel that is something that asro academics, we should probably be.

it's something i think we all need too work on. question about native men fighting on both sides. particularly like in the indian territory, thousands who joined the confederacy, like most famously. the men who fought on the side of the u.s. army who joined minnesota volunteer regiments to fight against their own people, some of them joined to fight

againstr the. i think there's a lot more work to be donevi in terms of native service in the war but also. being a threat to the union army, of course. there were thousands of troops and that in response they had to create a new department and lincoln then exempted the governor of minnesota from sending his quota. i thinki it is a great question

and one we need to think more about. i don't know how i'm going to answer that. but that is so native people work. that's why they are fighting it but also they didn't mean to be a threat. the u.s. didn't have b i to exp. this is what was going on. thee troops were going into thee all of the place. maybe in some cases the sand creek they were under no white flag. that is something that needs to be thought about more. in the last question to think about things that were going on inow the west and how they impacted the east. that's also another important question but i don't have an answer to that. the native connection served in theno civil war.

they were captured integrated to become union soldiers and presented to the great plains and later the confederacy. bute it's interesting just i don't quite have an answer to but certainly something to think about it. >> thank you both so much for such fascinating comments and to everyone in the audience for participating and this really fascinating w discussion i don't think we answered all the questions but we made a lot of progress. if you would like to stay with us to talk about this more just to stay around for the next part of this roundtable. ..