Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas by Jeffrey Ostler (review)

The first installment of a projected two-volume history, Surviving Genocide offers a sweeping synthesis of American settler colonialism and its devastating consequences for Indigenous people east of the Mississippi River from the 1760s to the 1850s. Rather than provide a traditional history of “Indian policy” centered on the actions of American officials and bureaucrats, Jeffrey Ostler chronicles the ways that Native nations experienced, endured, and survived the impact of American expansion and its often genocidal “forces of destruction” (6).

Ostler divides Surviving Genocide into three broad parts that move lucidly from the colonial origins of the United States to the events of Bleeding Kansas, seen from the perspective of the dispossessed Kanza Nation. While specialists will be familiar with the broad contours of this story, Ostler’s cross-regional, multinational focus often shows events in rich new lights. His sections on Indian removal, for instance, build on pathbreaking recent work expanding the geographies and chronologies of removal by historians such as John Bowes to unite histories of southern and northern deportations in a much-needed single-volume account of the process and its implications.

Ostler anchors his narrative in two key theoretical concepts: settler colonialism and genocide. Building on an outpouring of recent interdisciplinary, globally focused work by scholars such as Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini, Ostler presents the United States as a settler colonial empire that sought to eliminate Indigenous people in its path to gain their lands for white settlement, industrialization, and cotton cultivation. Throughout Surviving Genocide, he argues that Indigenous dispossession was both a founding principle and “basic purpose” (3) of the United States, central to both American politicians’ and settlers’ conceptions of their new nation. As the title of the book suggests, genocide is also central to Ostler’s story. In recent years, the question of genocide has divided scholars of the nineteenth century: Gary Clayton Anderson’s Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime That Should Haunt America (2014) deems “ethnic cleansing” a more appropriate label for U.S. history, while Benjamin Madley’s An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (2016) argues that the United States did commit genocide in California.

By conducting a wide-ranging survey of American actions toward Indigenous nations throughout the first century of the United States’ existence, Ostler makes a clear and thoughtful assessment of genocide and genocidal intent in key episodes of violence against Native people. He balances detailed demographic assessments, theoretical analysis, and close attention to Native experiences. For instance, chapter 3 offers a thorough discussion of the “just and lawful war” provisions of the Northwest Ordinance that allowed for mass destruction and extermination. Ostler’s conclusion is stark but nuanced: while the United States did not always commit genocide in all its interactions with Indigenous easterners during this period, its actions frequently had “genocidal dimensions” (368), which we cannot ignore. Throughout the book, Ostler bolsters this overall calculation by amplifying the voices of various Native people who believed that the United States was set to assure their destruction, from survivors of the Gnadenhütten massacre in the eighteenth century to Tecumseh and his supporters in the nineteenth. Alongside these declarations, Ostler highlights the lived stakes of violence for Native people, from the personal toll of displacement, rape, and bereavement to the devastating community impact of disease, deprivation, and social reconfiguration. While boosting claims of perceived genocidal intent, these details also serve as reminders of the endurance and strength of Indigenous people who survived American colonialism and outlasted efforts to destroy them in both the East and West.

Close, unflinching attention to these questions is one of Surviving Genocide’s greatest strengths. I did, however, have some concerns about Ostler’s treatment of “civilization” policies in this discussion. In chapter 6, Ostler presents early republic civilization schemes as a contradiction in policy...