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This article provides a critical analysis of the practices and discourses of white settler 'men' in Southeast Kansas (Ancestral Osage Territories) by examining the inextricable links rural masculinity has with settler colonialism. I begin by underscoring how efforts in erasing Indigenous histories have been sanctioned through processes of dispossession, bordering, and nation-state building. I then explore how hetero-patriarchal rural hierarchies are assembled via capitalistic desires for private property; conservative Christianity's rhetoric of altruism and good intentions; white supremacist conceptions of race; and masculinist perspectives regarding work and gender. Next, I highlight how the spatial assertion of white settler masculinity reproduces colonial oppressions based upon interlocking subject positions and notions of difference. I continue by suggesting denial and disaffiliation are banal exercises of disavowal employed by white settler societies as attempts to forget colonial violence. I then finish by illustrating how a masculinist status quo might be disrupted, resisted, and transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an ancient city known as Cahokia, located in the areas that would become St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois. According to the article, Cahokia was built around 1050 and contained a gigantic pyramid known as Monks Mound. The article describes the area known as the "American Bottom," early human settlements in the area, and the construction of a wooden palisade near the core of Monks Mound. The article discusses the possibility that ancestors of the Osage Indians built and ruled Cahokia.