Stealing America; The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History

 

Title of the book: Stealing America; The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History 

Author: Linford D Fisher

Publisher: Liveright

Publishing Date: 2026

ISBN: 978-1-324-09495-1

Summary:

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."

Author Info:
(From goodreads)

Professor Fisher grew up in the rolling hills of southeastern Pennsylvania. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2008 and joined the Department of History at Brown in the summer of 2009. Professor Fisher's research and teaching relate primarily to the cultural and religious history of colonial America and the Atlantic world, including Native Americans, religion, material culture, and Indian and African slavery and servitude. He is the author of The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America and co-author of Decoding Roger Williams: The Lost Essay of Rhode Island's Founding Father. Additionally, he has authored over a dozen articles and book chapters. He is currently finishing a history of Native American enslavement in the English colonies and the United States between Columbus and the American Civil War, tentatively titled America Enslaved: The Rise and Fall of Indian Slavery in the English Atlantic and the United States. He is also the principal investigator of the Database of Indigenous Slavery in the Americas project, which seeks to create a public, centralized database of Native slavery throughout the Americas and across time

Personal Opinion:

In my opinion this was and is a very important read for US students because it exposes history of European colonialism on Indigenous Nations and it goes beyond what is taught at school. However, a small quibble is the mention of Starving Time in early 1600s; from my understanding, combination of Native Americans besieging the town as well as more gentlemen settlers that saw work as unnecessary is what caused Starving Time. Yet there is no mention of Indigenous Nations besieging the group of settlers and forbidding them from getting food, which makes me wonder what else is left out of the book. The book does match the argument and expands Native History a whole lot than from what most US citizens are familiar with, which I am grateful for. The book is more designed for scholarly readers rather than lay readers. The book is something I would describe as slow decay of Indigenous American sovereignty and a lot of it seems to be the same story. There is also attention to the tribes that participated in raiding and slavery and the catch-22 that they were facing. I definitely don't have the right words to describe the heartbreaking aspect of the book and of the stories that were shared in it In addition to Indigenous nations slavery, there is also focus on African/African American slavery and how the two were and continue to be tied to each other. It is also interesting to see the relationship between Africans and Indigenous nations,  in particular why there is animosity between them. 

This was given for review

4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)