Hello, Reader,

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. In the weeks that followed, Americans gathered in town squares, churches, coffeehouses, and taverns to hear it read aloud.

We know the phrases they heard: “All men are created equal.” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

But the Declaration did not stop there.

It listed a long train of grievances against King George III, and the last of them charged the King with bringing "the merciless Indian Savages" down on the inhabitants of the frontiers.

That grievance was read aloud too. In every town. To every crowd.

Historian Linford Fisher estimates that Europeans and early Americans enslaved more than half a million Indigenous people within the present-day borders of the United States. Most of that enslavement served one purpose: taking Native land.

What does the American Revolution look like when we count that history as part of it?

What this Episode is About

Indigenous enslavement was not a second story running alongside African slavery. It was something different in kind. Europeans and early Americans enslaved people who lived on land they intended to possess, and that made slavery a tool of dispossession. The American Revolution is where the process accelerated.

We're joined by Linford Fisher, a professor of history and the faculty director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at Brown University, and author of Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History, and Lorén Spears, an enrolled Narragansett tribal citizen and the executive director of the Tomaquag Museum. Together they built Stolen Relations, a collaborative digital database documenting the lives of enslaved Indigenous people.

In This Episode, You'll Hear:

• Why stealing people and stealing land were one process rather than two
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• How the Revolution opened what Fisher calls a permissible space for captive raiding on the western frontier
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• How Dawnland nations weighed neutrality, alliance, and survival during the War for Independence

SUPPORT FOR THIS EPISODE COMES FROM The Massachusetts Historical Society's new exhibition 1776: Declaring Independence, traces how the Declaration grew from private letters and draft manuscripts into a document that echoed around the world. On view through December 19,2026 Learn More

Go Even Deeper The History Explorers Club is a historian-led membership community for curious adults. It features live conversations with historians, monthly club calls, and a community that finds meaning in the past.

💬 Join the Conversation

Has learning about Indigenous enslavement changed how you view the American Revolution? If so, I'd like to know how.

📨 Email: liz@benfranklinsworld.com​

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Happy Exploring,

Liz