Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History

Indigenous enslavement was a colossal phenomenon of almost unimaginable consequences that ensnared nearly 600,000 Native Americans in North America. In a saga that predates 1619, this double–stealing of Indigenous people and their lands upends virtually every known narrative of American history. Captured Natives, often deliberately misidentified as Black slaves, were used not only on southern plantations, but on small northern farms, and were routinely shipped overseas. While the American Revolution pealed the bells of freedom for colonists, it paved a larcenous trail of westward expansion that decimated tribes and plundered Indigenous lands. Even after Congress outlawed Native slavery in 1867, Americans forced Indigenous children into boarding schools and white homes, where they labored under forced assimilation. This practice was not outlawed until the latter twentieth century, when Indian nations finally secured increasing rights and self–determination. The most comprehensive work of its kind, Stealing America presents a five–century genocidal history, more commonly known as the “American dream.”