Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to the oppression of Indigenous Americans.

One major goal of Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto is to give a picture of Native history as a whole. The book achieves this goal with case studies about individual tribes as well as analysis of specific legislation. In the early days of European settlement in North America, small groups of white and Native people lived relatively cooperatively in some areas. When the European population was small and unaccustomed to their new ecosystem, Indigenous individuals and tribes often provided critical support for their survival. As the colonial population grew, groups like the Iroquois League and the “five civilized tribes” formed economic and cultural ties with their European neighbors. As Deloria writes, this likely instilled a sense of general trust among tribal groups of the 18th and 19th centuries that white society would treat them the same way. Eastern tribal leaders readily signed treaties with the colonial government, many of which stated they could keep their customs and land if they agreed to certain stipulations under the new government. As the United States developed and more immigrants arrived, land became scarcer and resources were spread thin.