America Loves History

America Loves History

At Least the White Washed Version

Americans love to talk about “freedom.”
America love to talk about “democracy.”
America loves to talk about “the frontier,” but only the version Hollywood created where John Wayne gallops across stolen land shooting nameless “savages” who inconveniently stand in the way of Manifest Destiny™️, a more palatable rebrand of theft and genocide.

What Americans hate talking about is its real origin story. The one that isn’t on the AP History test. The one that isn’t printed on inspirational coffee mugs. The one that doesn’t make anyone feel patriotic, unless your idea of national pride involves cheering for armed land seizures and government-issued bounties on human beings.

Since 1776, the U.S. government launched over 1,500 military attacks on Indigenous tribes.
Not skirmishes.
Not “clashes.”
Not “misunderstandings with settlers.”
Straight attacks. Massacres. Sieges. Forced removals.
Entire nations wiped out so future Americans could complain about property taxes on the land they stole.

Here’s a detail too dark for most Americans to face, something left off of the Fourth of July banners, the U.S. government literally paid citizens to murder Native people.

In 1814, the U.S. Congress decreed:

“We will pay $50 to $100 for each Indian skull surrendered.”

Skulls.
Not prisoners.
Not “captured enemies.”
Skulls.
The United States turned genocide into a rewards program.

If that doesn’t sound like a lot, once you calculate in the 1,924.85% inflation, it comes out to between $1,012.50 — $2025 per head. So yeah, pretty good incentive to go murder entire families and collect their skulls for white psychopath cowboys.

A cash-back system for ethnic cleansing.
The original “American Dream.”

Yet every elementary school textbook magically transforms this into:
“Pioneers encountered resistance as they bravely settled the frontier.”

Bravely?
They had the U.S. Army, federal funding, and literal scalp bounties on their side.
That’s not bravery.