By the Fire We Carry

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for the John Leonard Prize and Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction

A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later

“Impeccably researched. . . . A fascinating book and an important one.”—Washington Post

“A triumph. I cannot think of a book that more powerfully illustrates that the past is never dead.”—Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic

“This is great storytelling, dogged reporting, and a compelling personal tale all wrapped in a book that should live for years to come.”—Timothy Egan, author of A Fever in the Heartland

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. By contrast, nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests.

In the 1830s, Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military and forced into exile halfway across the continent, with a promise that this new land would be theirs. But that promise was broken. When Oklahoma was created from Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued that the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn’t have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including the author’s own Cherokee Nation.

Rebecca Nagle recounts the Muscogee people’s generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty. Chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry is a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.