• Across the City Council Divide
• Rob Harper (bio)

In early 2019, the city council of Fort Wayne, Indiana, established an annual celebration of its namesake. General "Mad" Anthony Wayne is best known for forcing Miami, Shawnee, and other Native leaders to accept the United States' territorial demands, primarily by torching the homes and crops of thousands of Native people. An array of critics, ranging from local historians to the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, quickly denounced the decision. The resolution's detractors seized on its numerous and sometimes laughable inaccuracies (the text describes events that took place only on the fictional TV show Turn: Washington's Spies) but also asked whether Wayne's real achievements were worth celebrating. Most succinctly, a local graffiti artist tagged the city's replica fort with the words "No Pride in Native Genocide." Meanwhile, the resolution's author, city councilor Jason Arp, proclaimed that his critics "don't care for America or American history" and were "just not patriotic." On social media, one supporter replied to the Miami nation, the region's's original occupants: "White people have history too. We won get over it. You would still be in the stone age if it weren't for us."¹

In recounting the uproar, journalist Charlie Savage argued that his hometown had become a front in the "Culture Wars," with jingoistic self-identified patriots, echoing then-President Donald Trump, squaring off against those calling for an honest reckoning with America's white supremacist past. But both the anti-Wayne spray painter and the anti-Miami Internet commentator remind us that the dispute over Anthony Wayne is also part of a high-stakes debate over the place of Indian nations in the present-day United States. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, headquartered over six hundred miles from its ancestral homeland, carried weight in the city council debate at least in part because the United States recognizes it as a sovereign native nation (Miami people still living in Indiana enjoy no such recognition). But in recent years [End Page 222] a far-reaching anti-sovereignty movement has challenged the legal standing of Native nations and called into question their relationships with state and local governments. In 2020, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling upheld the territorial sovereignty of Native nations, but by only a slender 5-4 majority. In any number of local jurisdictional disputes, tribal governments' legal and constitutional authority hangs in the balance.² In this climate, debates over whether to acknowledge Native genocide, or whether Native peoples should "get over it," carry implications that are anything but academic.

What do professional historians contribute to the fray? The record is mixed. For several decades, the field of Native American history has grown prodigiously, both in the number of specialized publications and in the prominence of Native people in major syntheses. Under the banner of #VastEarlyAmerica, early Americanists have expanded their field to encompass the peoples of North America entire, as well as their myriad connections throughout the Atlantic and even the Pacific worlds. Increasingly, specialists seek to elucidate Indigenous peoples' social structures, belief systems, and relations with one another on their own terms, rather than through the lens of their dealings with Europeans. Thanks to Patrick Bottiger's Borderland of Fear (2016), Michael McDonnell's Masters of Empire (2015), and Sami Lakomaki's Gathering Together (2014), among others, we know far more today about the histories that Miamis, Odawas, and Shawnees (respectively) brought to their encounters with Anthony Wayne. Nonetheless, there is reason to question the impact of these insights on early American history writ large. In a 2012 essay, James Merrell lambasted a parade of scholars for disregarding the recent literature and instead relying on stereotype-laden tropes and terminology that elide Native agency and sovereignty. Historians of colonial expansion, he wrote, too often perform a "legerdemain that leaves Indians savages in all but name."³ More...

• 跨市议会分界线
• 罗伯·哈珀（生物）

2019 年初，印第安纳州韦恩堡市议会为其同名举办了一年一度的庆祝活动。“疯狂”安东尼韦恩将军以迫使迈阿密、肖尼和其他土著领导人接受美国的领土要求而闻名，主要是通过焚烧成千上万土著人的家园和庄稼。从当地历史学家到俄克拉荷马州迈阿密部落，一大批批评家迅速谴责了这一决定。该决议的批评者抓住了它无数有时可笑的不准确之处（文本描述的事件只发生在虚构的电视节目Turn：Washington's Spies) 但也问到韦恩的真正成就是否值得庆祝。最简洁的是，一位当地的涂鸦艺术家在这座城市的复制堡垒上贴上了“本土种族灭绝没有骄傲”的字样。与此同时，该决议的作者、市议员杰森·阿尔普宣称，他的批评者“不关心美国或美国历史”，“只是不爱国”。在社交媒体上，一位支持者对迈阿密这个地区的原住民回答说：“白人也有历史。我们会克服它。如果没有我们，你仍然处于石器时代。” ¹

在讲述骚动时，记者查理·萨维奇辩称，他的家乡已成为“文化战争”的前沿，自称爱国者的沙文主义与当时的总统唐纳德特朗普相呼应，反对那些呼吁对美国白人至上主义者进行诚实清算的人过去的。但反韦恩的喷漆画家和反迈阿密的互联网评论员都提醒我们，关于安东尼韦恩的争议也是关于印度国家在当今美国的地位的高风险辩论的一部分。俄克拉荷马州迈阿密部落的总部距离其祖先的家园超过 600 英里，在市议会辩论中占据重要地位，至少部分是因为美国承认它是一个主权本土国家（仍然居住在印第安纳州的迈阿密人没有得到这样的承认） . 但近年来[第 222 页结束]一场影响深远的反主权运动挑战了土著民族的法律地位，并质疑他们与州和地方政府的关系。2020 年，美国最高法院的一项具有里程碑意义的裁决维持了土著民族的领土主权，但仅以 5 比 4 的微弱多数票通过。在任何数量的地方管辖权纠纷中，部落政府的法律和宪法权威都悬而未决。²在这种气氛下，关于是否承认土著种族灭绝，或者土著人民是否应该“克服它”的争论，带来的意义绝不是学术性的。

专业历史学家对这场争论有什么贡献？记录喜忧参半。几十年来，美洲原住民历史领域在专业出版物的数量和主要综合中原住民的突出地位方面取得了惊人的发展。在#VastEarlyAmerica 的旗帜下，早期的美国主义者已经扩大了他们的领域，包括整个北美人民，以及他们在整个大西洋甚至太平洋世界的无数联系。越来越多的专家试图以他们自己的方式，而不是通过他们与欧洲人打交道的视角来阐明土著人民的社会结构、信仰体系以及彼此之间的关系。感谢帕特里克·博蒂格( Patrick Bottiger) 的《恐惧边缘》 ( Borderland of Fear) (2016)、迈克尔·麦克唐纳 (Michael McDonnell) 的《帝国大师》(2015) 和 Sami Lakomaki 的Gathering Together (2014) 等等，我们今天对迈阿密、Odawas 和 Shawnees（分别）与安东尼韦恩的相遇所带来的历史了解得更多。尽管如此，有理由质疑这些见解对美国早期历史的影响。在 2012 年的一篇文章中，詹姆斯·梅雷尔 (James Merrell) 抨击一群学者无视最近的文献，转而依赖充满刻板印象的比喻和术语，这些比喻和术语忽略了土著能动性和主权。他写道，殖民扩张的历史学家经常表现出“让印第安人只剩下名字的野蛮人”。³更多...