Not long ago, I remembered that I participated in a fifth-grade school play about the origins of the United States. While I did not go for any acting roles, I was still expected to learn parts of the songs that came with it. This benefited me about a decade later when I rediscovered the play by searching for lyrics I remembered.
13 Colonies
Published in 1997, 13 Colonies is considerably older than I am and could run for Congress if turned into a human being. While its age does show through a reference to a TV show from the 1970s, what I am fixated on now is how it handles parts of American history that are difficult to confront. With the society I know today being more progressive than it was before, I wanted to revisit 13 Colonies to see whether the play aged decently in its old age or fell victim to the antiquated beliefs of older generations. Having reread the script, I would say it is somewhere in between while leaning toward the latter.
As the screenwriter and lyricist of the play, John Heath came across as fairly well-meaning. Nevertheless, I believe he could have done much more to reflect on what he presented in 13 Colonies.
The first two pages of the script are surprisingly strong. Leif Erikson asserts ownership of the “New World” with the justification that he arrived centuries before other Europeans did, but George Washington refutes him by acknowledging the existence of Native Americans. The Native Americans are subsequently introduced in the first song of the play, expressing discontent over the acquisition and commodification of their land. While it may not be perfect, the opening in 13 Colonies implicitly recognizes that white Europeans were not the original stewards of American land, and that the colonization process was unpleasant for the people who originally were.
Unfortunately, Heath does not grapple with this conflict past this point. Immediately after the song, a Seminole American willingly aids Spanish conquistador Ponce de León in his search for the Fountain of Youth (which never actually happened), openly inviting him to look for treasure and contributing to the narrative of colonizers being more deserving than the colonized.
No Native American character has a speaking role beyond that point. Treated largely as invisible, the continued existence of Native Americans is alluded to only once when a British soldier mentions the French and Indian War, and even then, their absence is noticeable. Contextualizing a song about expelling French people from North America, two other soldiers respectively contend they are fighting for control of the fur trade and claims to land equally desired by the French. The three soldiers ultimately concur that war is justified on demographic grounds—they are British while the others are instead French, and any difference associated with that is enough to fight for.
Under the second soldier’s contention, control of the fur trade rests between the British and French but leaves out Native Americans. Despite being the main producers of furs, they are not treated as stakeholders in a war they historically fought in. The same can be said for the third soldier’s contention and is arguably worse due to Heath’s previous recognition of indigenous land ownership. Native Americans have worked American land far longer than European colonists have, yet land is regarded as either belonging to the British or French.
Though the soldiers’ consensus is not directly tied to Native Americans, it introduces the idea of “othering” as a foundation for imperialist and racial violence, both of which are concerning for their demographic and left without scrutiny in the play. Racist practices like phrenology (or even just statements of culture inferiority, as seen with the song in the play) have been touted as ways to “know” that a group is less deserving than another, and since the power imbalance between the British and Native Americans far exceeded that of the British and French, dismantling that knowledge was unrealistic.
During this period of time, trade, land, and demography in North America are clearly relevant to Native Americans. Heath leaves them unaddressed, however, constructing a conflict between two white European groups without acknowledging the marginalized third group that is explicitly identified in the name of their war.
Fun for the whole family
While 13 Colonies does show some consciousness toward the existence and experiences of Native Americans, it largely still adheres to the Eurocentric narrative of the United States’ founding that dominated its time. With this in mind, however, it is also important to consider how 13 Colonies embodies popular media more than it does history. While it does have real history in it, it is heavily embellished with fictional characters and broken timelines to put on a show for schoolchildren and their families.
Entertainment is the bottom line for 13 Colonies. If a play is not entertaining, there are few incentives for schools to replace more historically focused curricula in favor of it. Without entertainment value, its target audience would be disappointed by its performances, discouraging future productions of it and hurting its sales. The target audience of 13 Colonies is unfortunately young and likely to find a non-Eurocentric narrative upsetting. If an elementary school student is raised believing that the colonists were almost always in the right, calling George Washington a “Town Destroyer” or highlighting the deaths of Native Americans in territorial disputes would disrupt that immensely. Given its time, 13 Colonies was flawed from the start. Heath could have worked to make it more historically sensitive, but not without trading off an entertained audience and successful publication.
(As a side note, it may be difficult for older works to establish counternarratives if they cannot locate sources that align with them. Some narratives are more dominant than others, and sources corresponding to those are more readily available because dominant groups have enough power to protect their own interests.)
Having looked at a musical about early American history from the late 20th century, it makes sense now to look at a more recent musical to see how its conception of history differs from the other. Doing so helps us understand where we currently stand on issues and if necessary, where we should go from there.
Hamilton
Centered around the Founding Father the musical is eponymous to, Hamilton debuted in 2015 during my middle school days. Although I had my own brief Hamilton phase during this time (I still remember the lyrics to “Guns and Ships”), I will be taking a step back to look at the musical through a historical lens instead of its entertainment value.
While 13 Colonies sells itself as educational and implicitly apolitical, Hamilton brands itself in a progressive light. The underdog immigrant serves as a motif throughout the musical, and logically extending from this, a diverse cast puts people of color in almost all the leading roles. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the musical and played Alexander Hamilton, explains this as “a story about America then, told by America now.” King George III is the only leading character to be consistently portrayed by a white actor, demonstrating an awareness of racial power in the United States by analogy.
Even without considering its cast, Hamilton openly condemns slavery while acknowledging the role black soldiers played in the American Revolution. It elevates important female voices of the time and calls out the Declaration of Independence for being centered on men. Hamilton clearly has a lot going for it, even if it feels shoehorned at times. Unfortunately, the progressive image it has is significantly undermined by its lack of indigenous visibility and reluctance to upend the traditional narrative entirely.
Skimming through songs and using CTRL+F on a script of the musical, I was disappointed to realize it had no mentions of Native Americans whatsoever despite their contributions to the American experiment. Hamilton acknowledged how slaves were forced to give up their labor for colonialism, but not the Native Americans who gave up their land. This became less surprising when I thought about it more. If Hamilton is meant to portray the United States in a positive light, it is required to defend colonialism to some extent. The expropriation of indigenous land that powered American colonialism is incompatible with Hamilton’s message, so leaving it entirely out of the picture was unfortunately practical for the show’s sake. Messages ultimately enable sanitization to fit those messages. The real Hamilton helped people buy slaves and likely even owned some himself, yet his stage appearance does not reflect these challenges to his abolitionist image. Hamilton denounced Native Americans as “savage tribes on [the] Western frontier” in Federalist No. 24, but as the protagonist of a Broadway musical, saying such a thing would disqualify his character. Even though Hamilton is meant to uplift people of color, it ultimately conforms to a narrative that is not much better than the traditional one. Feminist, pro-immigrant, and anti-slavery messages are welcome additions, but at the end of the day, people of color are representing not themselves, but white Americans from the turn of the 18th century. They may look good doing it, but it is because many of the problems associated with relevant history are swept under the rug, knowingly or not.
A mismatched audience
Like 13 Colonies, Hamilton has an incentive to be clean and unpolarizing since it caters to an audience and survives as a production by doing so. While the diversity of its cast is meant to reflect how diverse the United States can be today, the people who actually see the performances are a different case. Based on a report from the Broadway League concerning Broadway audience demographics, the average Broadway goer during Hamilton’s peak is white, holding a majority of around eighty percent. About eighty percent of those over the age of twenty-five were college educated, and the average annual household income far surpassed that of the United States. The chart below corresponds to data from 2018 to 2019 but since there is little variation over time, sufficiently illustrates how lopsided the Broadway community is.
With the average Broadway goer effectively being the stereotype of the white liberal wine mom, Hamilton must primarily be progressive through symbolic means if the goal is to profit. The upper class enables it to continue its productions and making them sufficiently uncomfortable about their class will lose them. The adults of Broadway may be more emotionally mature than the children who watch 13 Colonies, but their upbringing still gives them tastes and preferences that must be navigated by the media they consume.
Having touched on the usage of language in 13 Colonies, I now want to highlight three ideas in Hamilton that, despite their relevance to Native Americans, are written without consideration of them. I have relinked the script here for reference but will also link the Genius pages for songs I reference.
Land
As mentioned previously, American land was owned by Native Americans before the colonists occupied it. However, even though this makes white American ownership of land highly questionable, the way land is discussed in Hamilton occasionally suggests that the colonists were entitled to it. In “My Shot,” a song specifically focused on Hamilton’s call for independence, Hamilton compares himself and other revolutionaries to Moses with a “promised land” implied to be the United States. Baseless as a promise from a higher entity may be, securing land as a nation of former colonists is still given a religious justification that would have challenged Native Americans as the original owners. Fighting the colonial power would equate to fighting the supernatural.
The idea of land entitlement subliminally returns in “Guns and Ships” in the form of presumed ownership. When Lafayette is convincing Washington to recruit Hamilton into the war effort, he poses a question specifically: “You wanna fight for your land back?” The possessive “your” asserts the land is owned by Washington and other white Americans, and the idea of it being “back” not only implies a threat to that ownership, but that white ownership had always been there. The colonies have always been there growing peacefully while the British act as aggressors—Native Americans are wholly absent from this scenario despite colonial aggression against them.
Immigration
The immigrant is a motif in Hamilton, as mentioned before, with the word “immigrant” appearing eleven times throughout it. Though it carries a negative stigma in some contexts, the immigrant of Hamilton is ultimately one who prevails against the odds.
“Immigrants: we get the job done.”
While immigration is generally beneficial and thematically works well with the diverse cast of the show, it is also problematic for Hamilton since it is inextricably relevant to Native Americans. Acknowledging Hamilton, Lafayette, and other white colonists as immigrants is a concession to Native American precedence that unfortunately does not require mentioning them by name. It also contradicts the idea of land entitlement. It is much harder to argue for a group’s sole ownership of land when they were not the original stewards, and it is especially difficult if that group wields enough power to occupy it by force. Hamilton’s broad celebration of immigration creates an unintended consequence—a time where immigration actually had troubling outcomes due to immigrants having the upper hand is effectively shunned.
Historical narratives
Hamilton frequently touches on the idea of history itself, with a song from Washington specifically titled “History Has Its Eyes on You.” There, Washington makes a bold claim that reappears as a question in the title of the final song: “You have no control: who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” While this is true for the deceased (other than wills, if you count them as an act of the deceased), this does not hold for the living—people can alter the environment around them to change or maintain the narratives that are told about their time. This is especially the case for people with power. While Washington faces some criticism today over slavery and his treatment of Native Americans, he is still immensely popular and respected. As the hero of the Revolutionary War, Washington had no shortage of power and quickly became the first President of the United States. Such a high status is difficult to knock if you currently live in and reap the benefits of the United States, and considering how Native American populations dwindled from genocide and relocation, any challenge to that status would lack in both power and numbers. Coming from Washington, the statement of “no control” is a display of privilege—he possesses far more control than marginalized groups and even his own people.
To me, Hamilton is both painfully close to and far from getting things right. Miranda made a clear effort to support various marginalized groups, even including some discussion of power in relation to historical narratives. However, the outcomes and conclusions he got out of Hamilton missed the mark. As a white man with a wife who preserved his legacy, Alexander Hamilton was the story of Hamilton. Miranda and his colleagues may be people of color, but the fundamental perspective of the story did not reflect that. In an era of slavery, African Americans lived and died without being the main story. Native Americans lived and died without having a story told at all. There is a palpable irony to Miranda not telling the story of the downtrodden, and I am sadly unsure if it can be fixed without destroying the premise of Hamilton itself.
History continues
While we are certainly more conscious of historical injustice now than we were back when 13 Colonies was released, we still need to make sure that the narratives we add to the conversation are not reproducing existing power structures. I can still appreciate Hamilton from a music and entertainment standpoint but realize that better works must be strived for when it comes to this.
When it comes to the incentives that reward unprovocative work, I have no confident answer. Producing more critical fictional work may prevent discomfort over certain ideas and make people more receptive to them, though that may be another area to tread carefully considering how the public perceived and responded to Squid Game. I suppose we will have to wait and see.
For now, I will be going about my four-day weekend. Enjoy your Thanksgiving and enjoy your Native American Heritage Day.