Outspoken: How Indigenous people influenced the Founding Fathers

In grievance 27 of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson denounces “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is the undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” For Native nations, those words were more than rhetoric; they helped license a policy of removal and erasure that would define the next century of U.S. expansion. In this Outspoken conversation, we ask historian Donald Grinde Jr. how that clause shaped American attitudes toward Native peoples and what the founders also learned, and borrowed, from Indigenous governments.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices