Challenging the Wilderness Myth

Introducing The Revolutionaries, a new Fifth Column miniseries for the Semiquincentennial

Exactly 250 years ago yesterday, George Washington’s Continental Army attempted to drive the redcoats out of Canada, thereby protecting the rebels’ northern flank, by launching a two-pronged assault on Quebec.

It was a disaster.

There was snow and ice everywhere (who knew that Canada might be cold on New Year’s Eve?), Major General Richard Montgomery was shot and killed, second in command Benedict Arnold (yeah, that one) was injured, 30-50 more Americans died, around 400 were taken prisoner; just a total fiasco. The Hudson River, valley, and related north-south waterworks all the way up to Montreal would, instead of staying firmly in Yankee control, prove to be a heavily contested corridor until literally the last day of the Revolutionary War.

All of which to say is, EVERY day is a Semiquincentennial day in the year of our Lord 2026, and I am absolutely here for learning and sharing weird & wonderful things about our 250th.

To that end, I’m delighted to introduce a new miniseries-within-the-pod, called The Revolutionaries, in which I’ll be yakking with historians, podcasters, and other oddballs to tell us some crazy, misunderstood, and lesser-known stories about our awesome if not exactly crystal-pure revolutionary past. The idea is not only to learn new (and fun!) history, but also pick away a bit at the historiography – why some important characters and stories get forgotten; and how even the hagiographic celebrations of various Founders flatten the far more captivating and complicating detail.

What better historian to kick us off than none other than Charles C. Mann, author of the groundbreaking books 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created? Mann walks us through a fascinating revolutionary precursor: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680, in which early Americans, through coordinated violence, shook off the misrule of European imperialists.

Special shout-out to Arch Stanton for the fab animated intro, and Fleetwood Hack auteur Eli Lake for the theme song. Enjoy!

* Woulda been awkward if Charles had played for the Redskins

* How science changes history

* Man vs. the Amazon

* Massive urbanism under the canopy

* The myth of pristine wilderness

* “we’re like beavers”

* Sometimes called “the first American Revolution”

* “huge impact in the history of the United States as a whole, because it’s the reason we have California”

* “Pueblo” = catch-all; they spoke different languages

* “Jeffersonian, independent villages…very democratic”

* “to become a member of the council, they sit you in a chair in the center of the village, and everybody makes fun of you and pelts you with garbage”

* Chaco Canyon abandonment = No Kings

* “very leery of centralized authority, so much so that the Spaniards find them hard to deal with, because they don’t have like a governor or a king, and they’re constantly complaining.”

* Spaniards didn’t even call themselves Spaniards, BTW

* Silver and gold, because small cargo-holds

* “Spain becomes fantastically wealthy. They spend it all on wars and Dutch bankers”

* Whoops, no silver and gold in New Mexico

* Juan de Oñate = Juan de jerk

* “The Franciscans are obliged to convert people by enslaving them to build churches so that they can be converted in the churches….And weirdly, the Pueblo don’t like it.”

* Spaniards: much bigger New World bastards than the English

* “they got off on the wrong foot”? Too soon, Charles

* Don’t mess with Po’pay

* The knotted-rope code

* A simultaneous revolt against 32 missions!

* 2 days, 400 dead Spaniards

* How Po’pay was NOT like Washington

* 12 years a non-Spaniard

* Autonomy even after the Reconquista

* Thank the Pueblo that Spain never found gold and silver in Cali & Nevada

* Cool history happens when tribes produce archaeologists

* The West is the best

* American ethnic cleansing

* The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World, by Charles C. Mann

* Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom, by Russell Shorto

* Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner

* Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West, by Donald Worster

Intro sequence by the one and only Arch Stanton!

Outro music (audio podcast only) by the great Eli Lake!