Military Might | Episode 4

Summary

First America – “Military Might” (Episode 4)

Original Air Date: July 13, 2026
Host: Rebecca Nagle (Pushkin Industries)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how early conflicts between the United States and Native nations fundamentally shaped American military policy, national identity, and the evolution of the federal government. Focusing on the wars with the Myaamia (Miami) and their allies—the Tawawa Sipiwe alliance—the episode reveals that the origins and future of American “military might” are inseparable from U.S. campaigns of expansion and violence against Indigenous peoples. The conversation features Native historians and community leaders, connecting the past to present-day realities facing Native people and American politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Founders’ Military Vision vs. Today's Reality

[01:47 – 05:15]

• The episode begins by contrasting America's current immense military power with the intentions of the founding fathers, who distrusted standing armies after seeing British troops oppress civilians.
• Rebecca Nagle: “Our founding fathers didn't want a big centralized military... At one point, the United States only had 80 enlisted men... If that's how it started, how’s it going now? The White House has unveiled a record shattering Pentagon budget request of one and a half trillion dollars.” (03:17)
• America’s trajectory toward massive military spending is positioned in direct opposition to foundational ideals.

2. The First Big Post-Revolutionary Conflict: The US vs. the Myaamia Alliance

[05:15 – 13:34]

• After the Revolution, the young US wanted to expand into what is now Ohio—Myaamia homelands. The Myaamia and allied nations (Tawawa Sipiwe alliance) mounted fierce resistance.
• George Ironstrack (Myaamia historian): “We called [the Americans] the Mishimalsa, or the Big Knives.” (08:02)
• Harmar’s expedition is detailed: poorly prepared American troops invaded, burned crops, and destroyed records, but were ambushed by Native forces in the “Battle of Kikayonghe.” Over 200 American casualties; the campaign failed.
• Rebecca Nagle: “The Americans aren't just fighting Myaamia soldiers... They're attacking civilians, burning villages, destroying food, leaving the people to starve.” (11:47)

3. St. Clair’s Catastrophic Defeat & the Birth of American Militarism

[13:34 – 23:22]

• General Arthur St. Clair leads a second, larger US force; his initial attacks focus on capturing Myaamia women as leverage. The women give misleading “names,” showcasing forms of resistance.
• Kara Stross: “And one that's maybe my favorite is Keithwia, which literally just means ‘what?’” (15:37)
• The decisive battle (St. Clair’s Defeat) saw the alliance encircle and devastate US forces—over 80% casualties, nearly a thousand dead.
• Rebecca Nagle: “This one battle effectively wiped out the US army.” (22:09)
• The U.S. government responds by abandoning its anti-army principles, constructing a new, large professional force: the Legion of the United States.

4. Mad Anthony Wayne & the End of Indigenous Military Resistance

[25:44 – 32:31]

• Wayne patiently advances, building forts (including Fort Recovery on the bones of US dead), eventually escalating the toll of war to a point unsustainable for the Indigenous side.
• George Ironstrack: “The American military can just throw more soldiers at it. The alliance... didn't see soldiers as expendable in that way, because the harm done to the community... is too high a price to pay.” (28:06)
• Rebecca Nagle: “They have no idea how hard people fought and the... difficult decisions they had to make to not fight anymore. It would have been easier to die... And we're here today because of that.” (30:56)
• Recognition that adaptive resistance, not only direct conflict, was crucial to Native survival.
• Bowen Yang: “We are still here. Therefore, I would argue we won those battles. What adaptive resistance argues is that it's possible for Native people to intentionally change the way they're living in order to resist certain aspects of American imperialism.” (31:03)

5. Lasting Legacies: "Total War" & Modern US Militarism

[33:56 – 36:44]

• The US’s approach to Indigenous wars laid precedent for “total war,” targeting civilians and cities, and for the President waging war without Congressional approval.
• Stefan Auni (Williams College): “If you center native indigenous history, that kind of total warfare is there from the very beginning... the possibility for indiscriminate violence, the killing of non-combatants.” (34:03)
• The “savage exception”—the idea that wars against Indigenous peoples were exempt from normal rules of war—becomes a precedent for later U.S. conduct (Vietnam, War on Terror) and the prevalence of undeclared wars.
• Rebecca Nagle: “That 15 year war between the United States and the Myaamia, it had a long lasting impact... It is why we have a centralized military, why the President can fight wars without congressional oversight, and why those wars have been plagued by human rights abuses.” (36:44)

6. The Living Legacy & Cultural Revitalization of the Myaamia

[38:53 – 45:15]

• The Myaamia were forcibly removed to Kansas and Oklahoma; the trauma included language loss and near-destruction of community. But ongoing revitalization efforts have rebuilt their cultural, linguistic, and territorial ties.
• Kara Stross: “In the late 80s, Myaamia people did not know any of our language. We didn't even know the word Myaamia... Our language was lost, and we are reclaiming it entirely from documentation.” (41:23)
• Doug (tribal member): “It wasn't until the cultural revitalization that I really started to become Myaamia... What this space does for our community is that our children and grandchildren will be able to grow up Myaamia. They will be born Myaamia.” (42:46, 43:08)
• Intergenerational ties and transmission are now possible again, a source of strength and healing:
  • Kara Stross: “As this revitalization process happened, as our family got involved... it was almost like [my grandmother] could relax. Like, she knew there was other people who were picking that up and would keep going with it.” (43:54)

7. Conclusion—The Split Legacies of Violence and Survival

[45:15 – 48:19]

• The US side of the story is about building military might through violence; the Myaamia side is about enduring, adapting, and protecting what matters—even when unjustly attacked.
• The episode ends at a lively community gathering in Oklahoma, showing the lived power of Myaamia revitalization in action.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Rebecca Nagle on the shift from anti-militarism:
  “So that whole vision of not having a big army, our founding fathers decided to let it go. They needed an army not so different from the one England had. They needed the army of an empire.” (24:44)

• On the “savage exception” in war—Stefan Auni:
  “In the quote unquote, savage war, the rules of war did not need to apply as much.” (34:38)

• Bowen Yang on indigenous loss and resistance:
  “Military resistance wasn't the way forward. But there were lots of other forms of resistance... and we are still here. Therefore, I would argue we won those battles.” (31:03)

• On women giving fake names while captive—Kara Stross:
  “One that's maybe my favorite is Keithwia, which literally just means ‘what?’ The Americans had no clue. They’re just writing down phonetically what they were hearing.” (15:37, 16:00)

• On intergenerational survival—Kara Stross:
  “Remembering that there were people who tried their very hardest to remember and pass along what they had, and what they had was very little... as our family got involved... she could relax. Like, she knew there was other people who were picking that up.” (43:48–44:31)

• On the stakes of war—Bowen Yang:
  “The harm done to the community by that loss of life is too high a price to pay. And so a lot of folks who were connected to the Alliance a little more loosely, they left after this battle.” (28:06)

• On survival vs. justice—Rebecca Nagle:
  “When I look at the decisions of my ancestors, what I see them fighting for is survival.” (31:46)
  Bowen Yang: “I would just add that I don't think they were fighting only for survival... It’s... with the goal of providing a path forward for something better for their children and grandchildren.” (32:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:47] – Contrasting Founders’ Military Vision & Massive Modern US Military
• [05:15] – Introduction of the Myaamia and their Alliance
• [10:30] – General Harmar’s attack and defeat
• [13:34] – St. Clair’s invasion, focus on captured women and St. Clair's Defeat
• [22:09] – The devastating US casualties and aftermath
• [24:44] – The Congressional investigation & creation of the Presidential Cabinet
• [25:44] – Introduction of “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the new era of professionalized US military
• [33:56] – Stefan Auni on “total war” and the “savage exception”
• [38:53] – Modern Myaamia land repurchase and cultural revitalization
• [41:23] – Language loss and painstaking reclamation
• [43:08] – Intergenerational impact and cultural continuity
• [45:15] – Final reflections on violence, endurance, and survival

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Tone & Language

The conversation is deeply grounded, respectful, and layered with Native perspectives. Rebecca Nagle’s narration is poetic but direct. Insights from Native historians and community members are conversational, often blending humor, gravity, and resilience.

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Summary Conclusion

This episode challenges commonly held American myths about the military by centering Indigenous experiences and resistance. The story demonstrates that America’s rise as a military superpower is rooted in its wars against Native people—wars that shaped everything from the size of the army to the power of the presidency, as well as notions of who “counts” as a victim of war. Yet, from profound loss and forced adaptation emerges a story of survival: the ongoing efforts of the Myaamia and their allies to recover land, language, and community, ensuring that Indigenous people remain a vital, present part of the American story.

Transcript

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[Rebecca Nagle]

Rebecca Nagle here. Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can hear episodes of First America early and ad free by signing up for Pushkin Plus. You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks and other binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find Pushkin plus on the First America show page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin FM plus. Let's get into it. There's this famous painting about the end of the Revolutionary War. In the painting, George Washington is standing in the middle of an official looking room, surrounded by a sea of white. A sword swings from his hips and in an outstretched hand, Washington is holding a piece of paper. It's his resignation letter. Normally someone Quitting their job isn't the type of thing memorialized in a painting. But it was an important moment in American history. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the Continental army disbanded. The soldiers that had fought and won the war went home, including Washington. Our founding fathers didn't want a big centralized military. You have to remember, British soldiers occupied colonial towns. They shot and killed people in the streets. Our founders thought a big military would lead to the abuse of power. So the army they did keep around was small, tiny, even. At one point, the United states only had 8, 80 enlisted men. If that's how it started, how's it going now? The White House has unveiled a record shattering Pentagon budget request of one and a half trillion dollars. President Trump called on the U.S. yesterday

[Bowen Yang]

to boost military spending in 2027 by

[Rebecca Nagle]

more than 50% to $1.5 trillion. So it sounds like he's planning to go in and take that Nobel Peace Prize by force. Today, the United States spends more money on our military than any other country. It feels like we're constantly at war. And whenever we finally end a conflict.

[Bowen Yang]

The last US Troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan, ending America's longest war.

[Rebecca Nagle]

A new one starts. The US And Israel launched strikes against Iran, with Donald Trump urging Iranians to take over the government. How did that happen? How did we go from founding fathers who didn't want a big military to having the most expensive, most powerful one in the world? You're listening to First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. From Pushkin Industries and Critical Frequency, I'm your host, Rebecca Nagle. Gohi Tawandon Jalakayetli Keila, citizen of Cherokee Nation. On the heels of the American Revolution, the young government wanted to expand and they had their eyes set on the land that is now Ohio. But the tribes there were pushing back. The war that came next forever changed two nations, the United States and the Myaamia.

[Bowen Yang]

Let me take my glove off so

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

we can actually touch the Naamaihua Sepiwe,

[Bowen Yang]

but it's frozen over completely in this spot.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I'm with George Ironstrack. He's a historian and educator at the Myaamiya center and a citizen of the Mya tribe of Oklahoma. Their name for themselves is Myaamia.

[Bowen Yang]

So I'm touching solid ice, which I'm not going to walk on because it'd be a classic, you know, George falls in and dies story.

[Rebecca Nagle]

We're standing in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana.

[Bowen Yang]

We're looking at the Na mehua Sipiwe, the St. Mary's River. And up here, it's still almost completely frozen over from the really big cold spell that Kish Kayonge had. It's not, like, thick enough.

[Rebecca Nagle]

While George was careful not to step on the ice.

[Matt Rogers]

Oops.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Sorry.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I almost fell in.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Oh, no.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Okay, I wanna take a step backwards. Why do you still like to come down to the river itself?

[Bowen Yang]

The landscape all around Kikayonge has been so built up.

[Rebecca Nagle]

In the late 1700s, this was the capital of Myaamiya Nation.

[Bowen Yang]

But when you come down to the level of the river, there's less disruption.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What does it feel like?

[Bowen Yang]

It just feels right. Like, it feels like home. I just feel like whole as a person when I come to these places.

[Rebecca Nagle]

For the Myaamiya, this place was home. It was where their ancestors were buried, where their stories and teachings told them they belonged. Why did Americans want this land?

[Bowen Yang]

I mean, financially, they needed it. After the American Revolution, they just needed money. The farmland is really rich. It's really good soil, which still, to this day, is some of the best

[Rebecca Nagle]

farmland in the United States and at Kikayonge. Am I saying that right? Do you guys know how many people were living there at the time?

[Bowen Yang]

An estimate would be like, 5,000 people,

[Rebecca Nagle]

which is, like, a pretty big town on the continent of North America at the time. Like both Native and European. To fight US Expansion, the Myaamiya formed an alliance with more than half a dozen indigenous nations. In English, this was called the United Indian nations, or the Northwestern Confederacy. But in Myaamia, it had a different

[Bowen Yang]

name, the Towawa Sipiwe Alliance.

[Rebecca Nagle]

US Leaders started to worry this alliance was strong enough to get in their way.

[Bowen Yang]

The Mishimalsa. The Americans come to see Kikayonge, so our capital city. They come to see that as, like, the center of this conspiracy. And so they believe that to bring this resistance to an end, they need to invade that center and build a fort.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Can you say the name for the Americans again?

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Yes.

[Bowen Yang]

So we called them the Mishimalsa or the Big Knives.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What was the United States willing to do to build a fort in Kikayonghay? It turned out to be harder than they thought. Like the Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It would take three American generals to build that fort. The story of the first one after the break.

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[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Really?

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

At a playground?

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Wow, your search can really get that specific.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Really?

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

And you just put in your info and boom. Car's in your budget.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Mom needs a second.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Honey, you can really have it delivered.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Mommy, I think your kid is walking up the slide.

Kyle.

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[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Really? Auto trader. Buy your car online? Really?

[Rebecca Nagle]

The first American general to try and build a fort in Kikayonghe was named Josiah Harmar. He was known to drink a lot, but also to punish soldiers for small infractions like a rusty weapon. At first, Harmar didn't have much of an army to lead. But remember after the revolutionary war, the U.S. army was less than 100 men. And so the federal government gathered up more soldiers and sent General Harmar about 300. Since the army was so small, over 1000 militiamen came to help out. And together they headed north to Kika Yonge.

[Bowen Yang]

Their goal was to leave that village struggling to survive the coming winter.

[Rebecca Nagle]

By the time Harmar got there, most Myaamia people had fled.

[Bowen Yang]

But then there's some small skirmishes that occur, but it's not really a battle. But they very quickly occupy the town.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Americans quickly turn to destruction. In one day, American soldiers burn 20,000 bushels of corn. 20,000 bushels. Like, I can't. I have no concept.

[Bowen Yang]

And that the corn isn't just food, right? There's, like, a relationship with that plant. Like, we have stories that talk about, if you, like, mistreat that plant, there's, like, there's bad outcomes for you.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Americans aren't just fighting Myaamiya soldiers on the battlefield. They're attacking civilians, burning villages, destroying food, leaving the people to starve. In the chaos, a trunk that contained, basically, the National Archives and of the Myaamiya people was burned. To this day, there are parts of their history that they don't know.

[Bowen Yang]

We have a story. It's our oldest historical narrative called the coming out story. But the stories of what came before that are lost to us.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The American soldiers thought they'd won, but Myaamia warriors had been watching them from a distance, and they saw the Americans

[Bowen Yang]

looting because Myaamiya people are wealthy. Through the fur trade, we could gain wool, blankets, silver, jewelry of all different kinds. Myaamiya people love to bedazzle ourselves. So you can imagine in the panic of leaving, a lot of those valuables were left behind.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Myaamiya warriors decide to use the Americans greed against them.

[Bowen Yang]

They sprinkled the ground with trinkets and then waited for the militia to start picking everything up. And then they hit them with an ambush.

[Rebecca Nagle]

By the end of the fighting, that small force that the US scraped together, over 200 of them are killed or wounded.

[Bowen Yang]

And like disorder and panic spreads everywhere, and that terror spreads. And so Hamar decides that they should probably just leave. Like, he's not going to be able to build a fort today. We call it the Battle of Kikayonghe because that's what it is. It's a battle of our city, of our capital city.

[Rebecca Nagle]

History books call it Harmar's defeat because instead of building a fort at Kikayonghe, Harmar and his men retreated. At this time, A man named Major General Arthur St. Clair was in charge of the Northwest territory. That was the area of land the US Was fighting to control. He was a wealthy immigrant from Scotland, and he was not ready to give up.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, it's kind of classic office politics. You give the order, and the guy you tell to do it doesn't do it well, so you're like, fine, I'll just do it myself. And it just goes even worse.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And so about a year after Harmar's defeat, the United states sent the second general to attack Kikayonghe, General Arthur St. Clair. Congress had created a brand new regiment and gave St. Clair about twice as many regular soldiers. And like they did the first time, members of state militias joined in. They all gathered at a fort on the edge of Myaamia homelands to try and weaken the alliance. Before his main attack, St. Clair sent out smaller raiding parties. In those raids, about 80 Myaamia women were taken captive.

[Kara Stross]

So at a time where they were trying to peel off aspects of the Myaamia confederacy, they were using these women and children, really, as pawns.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is Kara Stross. She directs tribal relations at the Mya Mia center. Kara says the Americans made a list of the women's names.

[Kara Stross]

And so we have a list of names like Amechunzakwa or Akwe Konga, but there are also names that were given that now that we look back and recognize, like, these names make no sense. And so that's names like on dishe Alapilo literally means look that way is a command. Like, if you knew Myania language, you know, this is a command of something. Chika kwe wa PA me look nearby. Or one that's maybe my favorite is Keithwia, which literally just means what?

[Rebecca Nagle]

But they added the person marker onto it.

[Kara Stross]

So they literally just took the word what and then made it into something that sounds like a name.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Myaamia women knew their names would be used to coerce Myaamia leaders, so they gave fake names.

[Kara Stross]

And the Americans had no clue. Right. They're just writing down phonetically what they were hearing.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Do you find humor in it? Yeah, in a way.

[Kara Stross]

I think it does feel like this has to be one of the worst experiences of these Mya Mia women's lives. Right. They're in the middle of warfare. That's total. Right. They're being used as pawns, and yet they have the strength to do something, to push back on that and to do it in a way that's pretty humorous.

[Rebecca Nagle]

At the same place where the Myaamiya women are being held captive, St. Clair gathers a fighting force of about 2,000 men, and together they head north to Kikayonghe.

[Bowen Yang]

St. Clair, when he heads north, it's with a bigger group, but they move a lot more slowly, and he doesn't always know where he is. And so in the End. The decisive battle of this invasion happens near the headwaters of the Wapashikisiwi, the Wabash river, what is today Fort Recovery, Ohio. But St. Clair actually thought he was on the St. Mary's River.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Oh, so he didn't know where he was.

[Bowen Yang]

He didn't know where he was at all. He was way off.

[Rebecca Nagle]

St. Clair may have not known where he was, but the Tuawa Sipewe alliance did. This time they don't want to have the battle near a village where homes can be destroyed. And so they headed out from Kikayongh to meet the slow moving and lost American army. George had me join him at the battle site today. It's in a small town in Ohio. Oh, he wants me to park right here.

[Stefan Auni]

Okay.

[Rebecca Nagle]

St. Clair's defeat, 1791, where my producer Kim and I parked was right in front of a historical marker. I could read it through the windshield.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Wow.

[Rebecca Nagle]

As American settlers pushed west, conflicts resulted in attempts at peaceful settlement failed. Yeah, it's what we looked at when we parked.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Okay.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Do I want a hat? I think I want a hat. I think you want a hat. It was a cold December day in Ohio. We've got one hot hand left today. The place of this famous battle is a park. Along with George, we met up with two local archaeologists who have studied the site. Kevin Nolan and Christine Thompson.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

That's a good spot.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

The soaking wet, freezing Kentucky militia had

[Rebecca Nagle]

to come up in the snow one night during their meandering invasion, St. Clair decided to camp near the Wabash River. Christine and Kevin showed me the spot.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

So that's where they were camped. His camp was a rectangle, basically hemmed in by the river and the ditch, that's where the Wabash river originally ran.

[Rebecca Nagle]

St. Clair's men spread out with the Kentucky militia in one area and the army regulars in another. The land around the river goes up and down.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

And one of the things that you can see, there's this Little Ridge where

[Rebecca Nagle]

St. Clair set up camp. Looked high to him, but it was actually a low spot.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

So they picked a very bad spot to see people trying to surround them on three sides.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Tawawa Sipewe alliance found them sleeping next to the Wabash River.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

The native tribes, they had come down from Kikianga. The land gets higher up there, and so they congregated the night before and they spread out on a ridge.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The indigenous forces led by the Myaamiya, but includes Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Lenape, Shawnee, Wyandotte, Haudenosaunee and Cherokee fighters.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

And they spread the historical accounts. Talk about how they were standing shoulder to shoulder when they started the battle, as they formed this crescent. And so I always tell kids, okay, if there was 1400 native fighters and we'll give them each three feet, how long is that? And a couple smart ones were like, oh, that's close to a mile. They came around and they completely surrounded St. Clair's army in 15 minutes.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

So as dawn is coming, the Kentucky militia is over there. And so they're just getting out of bed, they're half dressed.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Tuhuawa Sipewe alliance attacks the Kentucky militia first.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

They're screaming and running across this flat plain. It's November, it just snowed the night before, so it's slippery, they're wet, they're scared, they're potentially bloody and people are trying to kill them. And they have to climb that 20 foot hill.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Under fire, the Kentucky militia starts running towards their fellow soldiers in the main camp.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

And as the noise starts to wake up and alert the main camp, they start firing down. But they're firing into the Kentucky militia.

[Rebecca Nagle]

From a high spot overlooking the main camp, Indigenous warriors started firing down. The Americans tried shooting back, but they aimed too high. For generations, when people cut down trees in this small Ohio town, they would find lead in the wood. At this time, guns could take 30 seconds or more to reload. So once the fighting got close range, guns were pretty useless. Both sides had guns, but Kevin says

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

on the native side, after a while they would switch to bows because you can put another arrow in about five seconds.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And the Chihuahua Sipiwe alliance strategically killed the American commanding officers. The indigenous warriors knew those officers personally. They'd been trading and negotiating with them for years.

[Bowen Yang]

And so targeting the officers was also like, oh, I remember you. You're that one who said that thing to me. And now we're going to settle it.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

From then on, it's just a scramble for the US and they don't have the organization anymore because a lot of their officers have been picked off. The guns have been rendered moot, and it's just disorganized chaos.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Tawawa Sipewe alliance killed or wounded over 80% of U.S. soldiers during what's now known as St. Clair's defeat. To this day, it is one of the highest casualty rates the US has experienced in war ever. This one battle effectively wiped out the U.S. army.

[Bowen Yang]

My ancestors put dirt in those soldiers mouths to say, if you're going to get our homelands, this is the Only way you're going to get it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Close to 1,000 people following General Arthur St Clair died that day.

[Bowen Yang]

I don't, I don't celebrate this victory. This is really horrific violence. I also don't, like, blame my ancestors for that. The violence was back and forth. When I think about the loss of life, I know what the culture demands of a family every time a hole like that is created. And actually I think of it for the Mishimalsake as well. Every person who fell there in the service of American empire left a gap in their family. And, you know, war is. War is hell, right?

[Rebecca Nagle]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no winning. St. Clair's defeat, or the Battle of the Wabash, as the Myaamiya call it, was so decisive, the Tawa Sipewe alliance thought that would be the end of it.

[Bowen Yang]

And so they really, I think, thought for a while that, oh, this will do it. This will stop the Misha Malsa from coming. Because who can endure this level of loss and come again? And who can is like the colonial system, like this empire can endure that loss and come again.

[Rebecca Nagle]

After St Clair's defeat on the US side, there was a lot of finger pointing. The militia blamed the army. The army blamed the militia. Congress wanted to investigate what happened, but had never done that before. Leaders were unsure of what authority they even had. After some debate, Congress created a committee. That House Oversight Committee conducted the first ever congressional investigation. During the hoopla, George Washington called a meeting of all his department heads. That group would later be called the Presidential Cabinet. The George Washington, who had resigned from the army at the end of the last war and watched his troops go home, had a change of heart. He wrote to Congress and told them he needed an army capable of defeating the Tawawa CPEW alliance. And Congress gave him one. So that whole vision of not having a big army, our founding fathers decided to let it go. They needed an army not so different from the one England had. They needed the army of an empire. The US Spent a year rebuilding. They created a new centralized military called the Legion of the United States. They decided this army would fight with well trained professional soldiers, not backcountry militias. And instead of having only dozens or hundreds of soldiers, the new army would have thousands. The army bought more supplies. They held war games. And to build a fort in Kikikayongh, they recruited general number three. Can you tell me who Anthony Wayne is?

[Bowen Yang]

In our language, we call him El Homme San Jua. The Wind. He kind of rose to prominence as a military leader during the American Revolution. Was called Mad because he, like, hopped on a soldier's back and let a charge up a hill during a battle and was trusted by George Washington to reorganize the military. Winning a battle is about, like, tactics and individual bravery, but winning the war is about bureaucracy.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And the general may have been known as Mad Anthony Wayne, but he was patient. Instead of leading a charge straight to Kikayongh, he spent years building a series of forts slowly advancing into Myaamia homelands.

[Bowen Yang]

So Wayne eventually builds a fort at the site of the battle of the Wabash, where St. Clair was defeated. And literally, they have to clean the bones away of St. Clair's soldiers to begin to build this fort.

[Rebecca Nagle]

They named it Fort Recovery. George, Christine and I toured a reconstructed version of it. It almost, to me feels like a prison yard. Like the way that there's like an open space and then these towers at each corner.

[Bowen Yang]

I think that's a good comparison.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The fort had a wall made out of spiked logs with two guard tower looking buildings on each side. It feels almost medieval. I mean, obviously, like, it was built for war. In the system of US Forts for recovery wasn't a big deal. It was really just a supply fort. When the US was invading indigenous territory, it would build these forts 20 miles apart because that's how far a packhorse could travel in a day.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

They built the first story on Christmas day, and they were in such a rush to get that because Wayne warned them, we're not gonna be surprised again.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And they weren't. When the Tawawa Sipewe alliance did attack, the Americans were ready.

[Bowen Yang]

They couldn't take the fort. And, you know, I think maybe 17 men died from the Alliance's side.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Americans actually lost more men than that. But for indigenous leaders, those 17 deaths were devastating.

[Bowen Yang]

That level of loss was actually too high for the men involved. Like, you didn't want to lose that many soldiers.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It sounds like there's a difference in, like, the view of how much life is expendable.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bowen Yang]

I think the American military can just throw more soldiers at it. And the alliance just didn't. They didn't see soldiers as expendable in that way, because the harm done to the community by that loss of life is too high a price to pay. And so a lot of folks who were connected to the Alliance a little more loosely, they left after this battle.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The alliance didn't fall apart, But a lot of important people pulled back, Including a prominent Myamia military leader named Little Turtle.

[Bowen Yang]

In English, it kind of sealed for him the understanding that we weren't going to be able to defeat the Americans if they kept coming after what we did to them at the Wabash, how can we beat them? They're just going to keep coming. The leaders of the alliance actually meet, and little Turtle makes a very clear pitch for peace. That violence wasn't the way to resist American empire, that there was going to have to be another path.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The alliance continues to fight, but it shrinks in size. There's one last battle, but it's pretty anticlimactic.

[Bowen Yang]

It's like barely a skirmish. 15 to 20 minutes of hard fighting, and basically the Americans take the field.

[Rebecca Nagle]

At this point, the tribe has been at war for 15 years.

[Bowen Yang]

And you have successive burnings of villages, farm fields, stored grain. You have women and children taken captive, but also non combatants made into refugees. So you have a depth of disruption of lifeways that impacts definitely one generation and probably two generations of Mya Mia people and really shapes their understanding of what it means to resist through warfare. So there's an understanding they're gonna have to resist American empire using other tools.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Why not warfare?

[Bowen Yang]

Because they couldn't pay the price of total war.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Yeah, I think sometimes I hear the sentiment that if indigenous people had known was coming, they would have fought harder. And I'm wondering if you have a response to that.

[Bowen Yang]

Like, I mean, to not be flippant about it. They have no idea how hard people fought and the very, very difficult decisions they had to make to not fight anymore. It would have been easier to die. Right. In some cases. And they made the hard choice not to die. And we're here today because of that. But I think it's a common stereotype, like, oh, well, if you had just been better, if you had just invented guns and gunpowder, you would have been able to win. It neglects all the forces at.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I think it's a way to tell the story without having to grapple with how extreme the violence was.

[Bowen Yang]

From Yamya perspective, military resistance wasn't the way forward. But there were lots of other forms of resistance, forms of fighting that people took up, and we are still here. Therefore, I would argue we won those battles. What adaptive resistance argues is that it's possible for Native people to intentionally change the way they're living in order to resist certain aspects of American imperialism so that you might give ground in one area. So, for example, religion, you might begin to join a Catholic church, and you might even come to believe some of those things. But then in other aspects of your life, you might maintain tribal Governance, you might maintain tribal lands.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I think one of the things that I think about a lot when I'm looking at the decisions that my ancestors made, I think sometimes it's hard to understand from the way we talk about these issues today because we frame things as like what is just and that we're fighting for justice. And when I look at the decisions of my ancestors, what I see them fighting for is survival.

[Bowen Yang]

I would just add that I don't think they were fighting only for survival. Like in that moment, what they're doing is we're just trying to survive this moment, but it's with the goal of providing a path forward for something better for their children and grandchildren.

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

Right.

[Bowen Yang]

And that's the part that I think native people, like, we innately know that, but the broader public doesn't see it like, why would they agree to these things?

[Rebecca Nagle]

After 15 years of war, General Anthony Wayne won. He built a fort in Kikayongh.

[Bowen Yang]

So the fort that's eventually built there is kind of named in his honor. Of course, the town is called Fort

[Rebecca Nagle]

Wayne and that's how Fort Wayne, Indiana got its name. In the treaty, the Myaamia actually kept most of their land. They ceded hunting grounds in Ohio. But most Myaamia villages were able to rebuild and stay put. They adapted so they could remain in their homeland, at least for a time. With U S backed wars in Iran and Gaza, strikes against Syria and Yemen, and the invasion of Venezuela, a lot of people are concerned with what the US military is doing. But so much of what we're seeing today goes back to this early history. There are other wars and moments in US History that make our military bigger. But the first big shift happens really early during this war with the Tawawa CPUA alliance. And we didn't build the military out to defend freedom or liberty. We built it so the US could expand.

[Stefan Auni]

You've maybe heard the phrase total war before.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is Stefan Auni, he's a historian at Williams College.

[Stefan Auni]

Total war would describe making kind of population centers the object of military campaigns, as opposed to just defeating armies in the battlefield. If you center native indigenous history, that kind of total warfare is there from the very beginning. And in those strategies you have kind of inherently the possibility for indiscriminate violence, the killing of non combatants.

[Rebecca Nagle]

When we think about how the US fights wars, how we target or protect civilians, whether or not we commit war crimes, there's this double standard from the very beginning. And it starts with how we fight indigenous people.

[Stefan Auni]

I call this the savage exception, which is the idea that in the quote unquote, savage war, the rules of war did not need to apply as much.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And those rules of war, the US keeps violating them. During the Vietnam War, soldiers used the term Indian country as lingo for any place that was enemy territory.

[Stefan Auni]

There's an interview with a soldier who describes Indian country as the place where there's no civilians, everyone's an enemy. Indian country is the place where you can kind of just fire on anything. And of course, Vietnam is defined in part by some of these really brutal civilian massacres, most famous being the My Lai massacre.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The villagers version of the incident was given by survivors yesterday. They said a patrol of 100Americans stormed into the hamlet, drove all the residents out of their huts, then opened fire with automatic weapons. The same thing happened during the war on terror.

[Stefan Auni]

Good evening.

[Rebecca Nagle]

A scathing report issued today details what the CIA did to terrorism suspects in the name of 911 and in the war on terrorism.

[Stefan Auni]

I mean, a classic example is when the Bush administration is trying to justify its torture program. Their lawyers cite wars with the Modoc people.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And I was curious, like with Venezuela or the bombing of boats in the Caribbean, did you see any parallels in those events with what you've studied in the history of Indian wars?

[Stefan Auni]

You know, Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, nor have they declared war on Iran.

[Rebecca Nagle]

That war with the Tawawa Sipiwe Alliance. Congress funded it, but they never formally declared war. Some experts call it the first undeclared war the US ever fought. And it became precedent for all the undeclared wars we've fought since.

[Stefan Auni]

Certainly, if you take the long history of US military history, there's been more undeclared wars than declared wars.

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

There is no military action that should

[Rebecca Nagle]

be taken in Venezuela, in Greenland, or anywhere else on this globe without explicit

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

approval by the United States Congress.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Trump's military actions may be controversial, but they aren't new. That 15 year war between the United States and the Myaamiya, it had a long lasting impact on the United States. It is why we have a centralized military, why it's so big, why the President can fight wars without congressional oversight, and why those wars have been plagued by human rights abuses. This war also changed the Myaamia nation. That story after the break.

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[Rebecca Nagle]

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[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

sounding metric I had. Impressions.

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[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Are you really buying a car online on autotrader right now?

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Really?

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

At a playground?

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Wow. Your search can really get that specific.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Really?

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

And you just put in your info and boom. Cars in your budget.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Mom needs a second. Honey.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

You can really have it delivered.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Really? Or I can pick it up up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

I think your kid is walking up the slide.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

Kyle.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Again? Really? Auto trader.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Buy your car online.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

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[Rebecca Nagle]

A few years ago, the Miami tribe bought back land in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in Kika Yonge. We're here. That's their turtle sign. Okay. I got a tour with George and Kara and a group of people who work there. How are you guys?

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Good.

[Unnamed Tribe Member]

Good.

[Rebecca Nagle]

On the land, there's a house from when it was a family farm. The tribe has added a community building and hiking trails through the woods.

[Kara Stross]

We've got mushrooms on property.

[Rebecca Nagle]

We have ramps here. Claudia Hadeen showed me some plants. Danny Titman pointed out their maple trees.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

So we'll tap them and cook them down and then we'll have maple syrup.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Doug Pakongi showed me their lacrosse.

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

And the great thing about this game and how it really connects us as a community is you hear mea mia tawenge out there when we're playing. So you hear people saying, mahando, scoop it me lilo. Give it to me. You get that connection back to the way our relatives played when they were here. 150, 200 years ago, the tribe put

[Rebecca Nagle]

this land into trust, which means it's under tribal jurisdiction, not the states. It's just a few dozen acres, but it's a place myaamia people can come home to.

[Bowen Yang]

We can truly exist in that area with a kind of freedom that we haven't had since before Anthony Wayne's invasion.

[Rebecca Nagle]

George Ironstrack says, after that 15 year war, the Myamia thought they would be able to stay in their homeland. And they did for a couple generations. But then in the 1840s, the army

[Bowen Yang]

was once again came into Myaumionge, onto Miami. Villages rounded people up, held them in what you could fairly call concentration camps.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The US Forced them to move first to Kansas and then to Oklahoma.

[Bowen Yang]

Thinking of my ancestors arriving in what is today eastern Kansas in November with no houses, People are sick, people are dying. And they made it through that winter. And that could not have been easy. You know, you're just scraping out an existence. And the only thing I think that motivates native people in situations like that is thinking about the community.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Some people stayed behind in Indiana, but most of the tribe settled in Oklahoma. At one time, the tribe had less than than a hundred citizens. And with all that loss, Kara Stras says something happened to the Myaamia language.

[Kara Stross]

In the late 80s, Myaamia people did not know any of our language. We didn't even know the word Myaamia. And so even your name for yourself is something that we had to reclaim.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I first heard Myaamiya people describe their language like the embers of a fire. The flame had gone out, but the coals were still there.

[Kara Stross]

From Myaamiya people. Like, our language was lost, and we are reclaiming it entirely from documentation. Archives are at the base of everything that we do.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The tribe went through any record that contained a piece of their language and painstakingly reconstructed it.

[Kara Stross]

So you know what has happened in the last 30 years? We've gone from no one speaking the language to hundreds of people who are certainly not fluent, but using it on a daily basis.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And so the Myaamia adults who are teaching their kids to play lacrosse or make maple syrup or tell me stories or sing meow Mia songs, they actually didn't grow up with that themselves.

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

I grew up disconnected from my community. I knew who my ancestors were. I knew I was Miami. But really what happened is I just grew up being an Indian.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is Doug again.

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

It wasn't till the cultural revitalization that I really started to become mea mia. And so what this space does for our community is that our children and grandchildren will be able to grow up Myamia. They will be born Mya Mia.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What does it mean for you knowing that, like, you grew up without that connection to Mya Mia people, but that future generations will grow up always having had it?

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

Yeah. So for Me, it starts with my kids. So, you know, growing up without the culture, for me, I lacked that identity. My involvement in the language and culture started with them, but they grew up knowing that they were Miami. They know the language. You know, they know their culture.

[Kara Stross]

I mean, my Miami identity always started with my grandmother.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Here's Kara.

[Kara Stross]

And I think remembering that there were people who tried their very hardest to remember and pass along what they had, and what they had was very little. And what I heard from her and what I saw from her was that was a very individual process. Like, she didn't have other people always to help push that forward. And that as this revitalization process happened, as our family got involved with,

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

was

[Kara Stross]

almost like she could relax. Like, she knew there was other people who were picking that up and would keep going with it. And I think that was really special that she got to experience that, because her mother and grandmother didn't get that.

[Rebecca Nagle]

They were.

[Kara Stross]

They were those generations that were trying to pass on things but being very cautious about how to do it. And today, we don't always have to have that same level of caution, or at least not in our own community. Like, we get to pick these things up and proudly be Meow Mia and figure out what that means for us today and also how we're going to pass that on to future generations, that we won't lose these things ever again.

[Rebecca Nagle]

While the US Side of this story tells us how our military got bigger, got more violent, the Myaamia side of the story tells us how to survive that violence and even if we don't see it in our own lifetime, how to protect the things that matter to us most. You've got turtles. Where The Miami tribe is headquartered in Oklahoma. It's only a couple hours from my house. One day last January, I drove up there to see George and Kara. The tribe was having a big gathering. Hey, George, can I ask you a few questions?

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Let me just check on my daughter real quick. She's tying up her chance.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I'll be right back. Tribes in Oklahoma, we go to each other's dances. Do you all see the way I go? Cj So I ran into a bunch of people I knew.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

Oh, my gosh.

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[Rebecca Nagle]

You guys might be here. So good to see you.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

We're here for our winter gathering. Stomp dance and social dances. It's my favorite event of the year. Yep, absolutely love it. It's a busy time, a lot of work, but it's just two to three days of non stop culture and community.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I knew the Work that George and Kara do to preserve Myaamia history and culture was important, but I don't think I understood it until I saw them in their community. Young people peppered them with questions. One person called Kara her fairy godmother. Even adults asked them for help, pronouncing certain words. That revitalization that we talked about, they're leading it.

[Unnamed Tribe Member (possibly George or Kara)]

So you've got a lot of women sitting around putting on shaker cans. So that's the shaking noise you're hearing. Most of the shakers cans here tonight are made from milk cans. Evaporated milk cans are tomato sauce cans. So they're metal, filled with river stone. And there might be a few folks here tonight with turtle shells.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Some stomp dances are ceremonial. Others, like this one, are social dances. They bring people together. During the stomp dance, women shake shells. We're kind of like the rhythm section and men sing. The songs are call and response. And so for each song there's a leader. When it was George's turn to lead, I got up to dance. Like most stomp dances, it went late into the night. I stayed until the end. The government is just one of the big forces that controls our lives. The other big one, money. How this thing called the US Economy was built.

[Kevin Nolan or Christine Thompson]

Oh, man.

[Rebecca Nagle]

At the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States was in a financial disaster. How did our founders plan to pay that debt? I mean, land really was essential to how they thought they were going to address this fiscal crisis. Next time on First America. If you like what you're hearing, please leave a review. It's one of the best ways to help listeners find this show. You can also support First America by subscribing or sharing episodes with your friends. First America was made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce foundation, an NYU Yale American Indian Sovereignty project. Additional support came from Indian Collective, First Nations Development Institute, Yahavia Tam of San Manuel Nation Borealis Philanthropy, Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Our fiscal sponsor is Red Media. I dreamed this project into the world in collaboration with an amazing group of indigenous scholars, including Maggie Blackhawk, Fonda Lac Ojibwe Ned Blackhawk, citizen of the Timok tribe of Western Shoshone, Phil Deloria, descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux tribes, and Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Burl Sioux Tribe. I, Rebecca Nagle, citizen of Cherokee Nation, also reported, wrote, hosted and executive produced the show. First America is produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries. Our managing producer is Amy Westervelt, senior producer and sound designer is Brendan Baker. Our story editor is Audrey Quinn. Our producers are Jules Bradley, Sarah Ventri, Kim Netter, V. Petersa and Jordan Goss Perret. Our editorial consultant is Connie Walker, citizen of the Okanese First Nation. Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our partnerships director is Lindsey Crowder. Our development consultant is Jenny Lawton. Our theme song is by Raven Chukan, who is Danae. Scoring by Laura Ortman, citizen of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and Raven Chukan. Artwork by Kelly Gonzalez, citizen of Cherokee Nation. The team at Pushkin is Greta Cohn, CEO Eric Sandler, Chief Strategy Officer Grace Ross, VP of Business Development Morgan Ratner, Director of Marketing Owen Miller, Content Delivery Associate Kyra Posey, Creative partnerships manager Jordan McMillan, social media manager Brian Strabanek, Senior Analytics Manager and Jake Flanagan, Production Counsel. Special thanks this episode to Martin Case, Jodi Bird, Emily Connolly, David Correa and Jason Moore. Hey, it's Rebecca Nagle. I wanted to thank you for listening to First America and for being a Pushkin plus subscriber. I hope you're enjoying this season. When you finish the show, make sure you check out other Pushkin plus offerings like bonus episodes and ad free listening of podcasts like Cautionary Tales, Revisionist History and Drilled.

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[Rebecca Nagle]

It's called soccer. It's called football.

[Matt Rogers]

Soccer.

[Unnamed Tribe Member or Interviewee]

Football.

[Matt Rogers]

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[Rebecca Nagle]

any pizza including stuffed crust with any toppings for 9.99.

[Bowen Yang]

We can agree on that.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Yeah, fully. So pineapple.

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[Rebecca Nagle]

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[Bowen Yang]

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