11 - The Great White Father and His Little Red Children

Summary

Surveillance has always been at the heart of America’s ongoing effort to subordinate and control the first people of the land. Contrary to the mythology about scattered bands of roaming nomads in the forest, America was at least as densely populated as Europe at the time of first contact with Europeans. Charles Mann and others have successfully narrowed the population estimate of North America to somewhere around 90 million people at the time of Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean.¹ The capital city of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan, was three times larger than the largest city in all of Europe, which was London. Getting the land out of native hands was no small task, and a lot of blood and treasure was expended on the effort then. America’s native nations still control substantial land and resources; and much blood and treasure are still spent today in a changed but obviously ongoing effort to take what’s left. This chapter explores how surveillance was used to subjugate and colonize the Indigenous populations of North America.