The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Chapter 5 explores the history of the relationship between Black Americans and Indigenous people. Miles opens the chapter with a discussion of the Treaty of Hopewell, a document signed shortly after the American Revolution. Following the war, Indigenous people were still populous; they were also angry as they watched white colonizers overtake and destroy their land. The treaty, which was formulated at the Hopewell Plantation, a site of slavery, placed the Cherokees under the protection of the American government, while also promising that the Cherokees could maintain a hold over their land—a promise, Miles notes, that has been repeatedly violated. Also included in this treaty was the agreement that the Cherokees would release any Black captives.

Using this treaty, Miles describes the complicated historical relationship between Indigenous and Black people in the United States. These two groups have both felt the weight of white oppression and violence: “African Americans and Native Americans share the highest incarceration and poverty rates in the country, as well as the lowest high school graduation numbers” (139). While Miles explores how colonists displaced and enacted violence against Indigenous people, she also asserts that their experience was vastly different from enslaved Black people.