In 1830, afraid that white missionaries were aiding the Cherokee in their effort to resist giving up their lands, the Georgia state government made it illegal for white people to live within Cherokee Nation territory without a license from the government. Samuel Austin Worcester – raised in Vermont and trained Read more
Researched and Written by Sarah Handley-Cousins Produced by Marissa C. Rhodes and Sarah Handley-Cousins In 1923, Zitkala-Ša, a Dakota woman, wrote an unpublished essay titled “Our Sioux People,” tracing the U.S. government’s relationship with the tribe. She described a scene where delegates from the Pine Ridge reservation met with Mr. Read more
In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize – or didn’t care – that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Read more
Anyone who’s read or seen Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible likely remembers Tituba, the enslaved woman who sets off the 1692 witch panic in Salem, Massachusetts. In literature and history, she’s been depicted as both a menacing Barbadian voodoo queen and a Black feminist touchstone. Who was the real Tituba? Read more
Malintzin is by far the most controversial figure of the 1519 Mexican invasion. Was she a traitor, or a feminist national hero? Was she the mother of Mexico, or the Eve-like bringer of Mexico’s original sin? Was she a collaborator, bystander, or victim of the Spanish? In terms of her Read more
Like many of the Spanish conquistadors who made their way to the Americas, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca joined an expedition to explore “Florida” in search of glory and, ideally, an encomienda of his own. (“Florida” is what the Spanish called all of the land around the Gulf of Mexico, Read more
Wherever you have a military, you will have sex. Whether it’s an occupied city, an encampment in a theater of war, or a military base here in the United States, anywhere you have a large population of young men, stationed away from their girlfriends and wives, you will soon have Read more
In 1996, two college students stumbled upon some skeletal remains in the Columbia River in Washington. The body, it turns out, was the oldest ever found in North America. In order to understand the story and controversy of the Kennewick Man, also known as The Ancient One, we need to Read more
Dr. Carson was wrong in his characterization of the American slave experience. On this episode of the History Buffs Podcast, Drs. Earls and Handley-Cousins discuss the force and violence of population transfers in both the Atlantic Slave Trade and the U.S. Indian Removal Act.
It’s our annual #Thanksgiving episode – and this time we talk about some regionally varied ways of giving thanks, and feasting for Thanksgiving.