Many people who often say, “The United States was built on Native land,” tend to overlook or fail to fully represent the complexity of Native American history. The term “Natives” does not refer to a single, unified group of people who collectively shared one continuous piece of land before Europeans arrived. Instead, the Indigenous peoples were composed of numerous distinct tribes and nations, each with their own cultures, languages, and territories. These tribes often controlled specific areas of land that they had either conquered or taken from other Indigenous groups through various means, such as warfare or negotiation, long before European settlers set foot on the continent.
Before Europeans arrived in America, numerous powerful indigenous tribes engaged in acts of genocide against their rival groups, seized their lands, and enslaved members of other tribes. In many instances, the actions of Western settlers mirrored the practices that Native American tribes had been carrying out among themselves for centuries, often with less extreme violence. Indigenous peoples were involved in killing each other through brutal and sadistic methods long before the first Europeans set foot on the continent.
There is also the intriguing case of the Solutreans, an ancient group of ice-age humans originally from Europe who are believed by some to have traveled to America, possibly as much as 8,000 years before the arrival of the land-bridged Indians. This raises an interesting question: did the later-arriving Indians actually take the land from the Solutreans? It is important to recognize that nearly all land across the globe has been “stolen” or seized at some point in history, whether through military conquest, colonization, or large-scale migrations of peoples. So why is it that only Western countries, in particular, are often criticized or labeled as being built on “stolen” land, while similar histories of land appropriation elsewhere tend to be overlooked or accepted as normal?
- The Beaver Wars (17th Century): The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) fought a series of devastating, expansionist wars against neighboring Algonquian-speaking peoples—such as the Huron (Wyandot), Neutral, Erie, and Petun nations—to control the lucrative fur trade. The Iroquois completely dispersed and heavily depopulated the Huron nation, forcing survivors to flee, scatter, or be absorbed into the Iroquois populace. The brutal nature of Haudenosaunee warfare has led some scholars to classify the Beaver Wars as acts of genocide
- The Sioux and Chippewa (Ojibwe) Wars: For control over the rich wild rice lakes and hunting grounds of present-day Minnesota and Wisconsin, the Ojibwe and the Dakota (Sioux) fought prolonged, bloody conflicts for generations, pushing the Dakota further west onto the plains. Adult male warriors were viewed as active existential threats, tortured and executed. They were rarely adopted immediately and were considered to have forfeited their lives upon capture.
- The Crow and Blackfeet Conflicts: On the Northern Plains, intense competition for buffalo herds, horses, and territory led to persistent, highly lethal warfare between the Crow Nation and the Blackfeet Confederacy, resulting in heavy casualties over decades. Male warriors were rarely taken alive. If they were captured, they were usually subjected to ritual execution or allowed to display bravery before being killed. On rare occasions, a chief might show mercy, give a male captive provisions, and release him.
- The Crow Creek Massacre, occurring in modern-day South Dakota, archaeologists uncovered a fortified village site where at least 486 individuals—men, women, and children—were slaughtered, mutilated, and left in a mass grave, pointing to intense pre-Columbian resource competition and warfare.
