Introduction : settler colonialism, history, and theory -- People from the unknown world : the colonial encounter and the acceleration of violence -- No savage shall inherit the land : settler colonialism through the American Revolution -- The common enemy of the country : settler colonialism to the Mississippi River -- Scenes of agony and blood : Manifest Destiny and the crisis of settler colonialism -- They promised to take our land and they took it : completing the continental settler colonial project -- Spaces of denial : American colonialism in Hawai'i and Alaska -- Things too scandalous to write : the Philippine intervention and the continuities of colonialism -- A very particular kind of inclusion : indigenous people in the postcolonial United States -- Conclusion : the boomerang of savagery.