I’ve been thinking a lot about Manifest Destiny lately. I have been thinking about it in the context of Thanksgiving, or the Day of Mourning, being just a few days away as I write this.

I first learned about Manifest Destiny in high school, or maybe middle school, and then again in college as a history major. For those of you who don’t recall what Manifest Destiny is, it is the idea, from the 19^th century that the United States is destined—by God, as its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. This belief drove 19th-century U.S. territorial expansion and was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes.

Another way of framing this is that it is a belief that comes from white supremacy and white entitlement. The complete denial of many thousands of lives because they weren’t white and Christian.

Of course, that isn’t how I learned about it. I wasn’t taught by my white teachers about the horrific destruction of human life that occurred due to the Manifest Destiny mindset. There was some examination of the Trail of Tears, but that certainly wasn’t framed as the result of white supremacy. Then again, I also didn’t learn that a major reason people like Davey Crockett, Sam Houston, and others fought to secede from Mexico was because Mexico was outlawing slavery.

Manifest Destiny in many ways is just another cog in the wheel of the centuries of genocide perpetrated against Indigenous peoples. It is estimated that there were over 60 million people living in what is now called the Americas prior to 1492. By 1600, roughly 90% of that number had been killed, mostly by disease, though European killings certainly accounted for some part of this. This represented 10% of the world’s population at that time. To put this in context, that would be roughly the equivalent of 775 million people dying today. It is the largest human mortality “event” in proportion to the global population ever. In pure numbers, it is second only to World War II, in which 80 million people died, which was 3% of the world’s population at the time.

I know that some people will say those can’t be compared since the time frames are so different. Um, okay, I see your point, I guess. But why would anyone want to minimize such a tragic loss of life?

By the 19^th century, the genocide by disease and violence was well rooted. By 1800, it is estimated that there were roughly 600,000 indigenous people in what is now referred to as North America. I understand that the population numbers were much greater in what is now referred to as Central and South America, but the numbers of deaths in the north are still devastating and horrifying. By the end of that century, it is estimated that the population of indigenous peoples was closer to 120,000 in North America. Manifest Destiny.

To put it in a current context, this is about white people, white men in particularly going wherever they feel like because their sense of entitlement and supremacy tells them they can, and creating whatever devastation they want. Kenosha, Wisconsin comes to mind.

White supremacy has been baked into our systems since the beginning. Just because “the victors write the history books” doesn’t mean that is all of the history.