80 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
8: "[Congress shall have Power] to regulate Commerce with foreign
Nations and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
In the federal system in which all powers not specifically reserved for
the federal government go to the states, relations with Indigenous
nations are unequivocally a federal matter.
Although not mentioned as such, Native peoples are implied in
the Second Amendment. Male settlers had been required in the
colonies to serve in militias during their lifetimes for the purpose
of raiding and razing Indigenous communities, the southern colo
nies included, and later states' militias were used as "slave patrols."
The Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, enshrined these irregular
forces into law: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the se
curity of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed." The continuing significance of that "free
dom" specified in the Bill of Rights reveals the settler-colonialist
cultural roots of the United States that appear even in the present as
a sacred right. 2
US genocidal wars against Indigenous nations continued un
abated in the 1790s and were woven into the very fa bric of the new
nation-state. The fears, aspirations, and greed of Anglo-American
settlers on the borders of Indigenous territories perpetuated this
warfare and influenced the formation of the US Army, much as the
demands and actions of backcountry settlers had shaped the co
lonial militias in North America. Owners of large, slave-worked
plantations sought to expand their landholdings while small farm
owners who were unable to compete with the planters and were
pushea off their land now desperately sought cheap land to support
their families. The interests of both settler groups were in tension
with those of state and military authorities who sought to build a
new professional military based on Washington's army. Just as the
US government and its army were taking form, a number of settle
ments on the peripheries of Indigenous nations threatened to secede,
prompting the army to make rapid expansion into Indigenous terri
tories a top priority. Brutal counterinsurgency warfare would be the
key to the army's destruction of the Indigenous peoples' civilization
in the Ohio Country and the rest of what was then called the North
west over the first quarter-century of US independence. 3