Topical Outline: | Topics to be covered include America before Columbus, environmental transformations
after the meeting of the new and old worlds, disease, geographic diversity of Indian
experiences, trade, the impact of the Revolution on American Indians, and removal of
the "Five Civilized Tribes" to Indian Territory.
Lecture and Reading Schedule
PART ONE: AMERICA BEFORE 1500
Week 1: The Peopling of America
Tues, 9 Jan Introduction
Thurs, 11 Jan Migration to the Americas
“First Americans,” CP.
Week 2: Early America I
Tues, 16 Jan The Anasazi
“Chaco, Hohokam and Mimbres: The Southwest in the 11th and 12th Centuries,” CP; “The
Chaco Canyon Community,” CP.
Thurs, 18 Jan FILM: Myths and the Moundbuilders.
Meet in screening room, 7th floor, main library.
Week 3: Early America II
Tues, 23 Jan Mississippian Cultures
Timothy R. Pauketat, “Cahokian Political Economy,” CP.
Thurs, 25 Jan America in 1492
Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, 1-37.
Week 4: Worlds Collide
Tues, 30 Jan The Encounter
Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, 37-83.
Thurs, 1 Feb The Impact of Disease
Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal
Depopulation in America,” CP.
PART TWO: NATIVES AND NEWCOMERS
Week 5: Southwestern Indians and the Spanish
Tues, 6 Feb Brown Robes
Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, 84-129.
Thurs, 8 Feb Resolved: The Pueblo Revolt and other such violent confrontations
between Europeans and Indians were unavoidable. The decimation of native societies
was inevitable.
Week 6: Northeasterners Meet the French
Tues, 13 Feb FILM: Black Robe
Meet in screening room, 7th floor, main library.
Tues, 15 Feb FIRST EXAM
Week 7: Indians, Puritans, and Virginians
Tues, 20 Feb Trade, Warfare, and Black Robes
Daniel K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” CP.
Thurs, 22 Feb New England and Virginia
J. Frederick Fausz, “Fighting ‘Fire’ with Firearms: The Anglo-Powhatan Arms Race in
Early Virginia,” CP; Neal Salisbury, “Red Puritans: The ‘Praying Indians’ of
Massachusetts Bay and John Eliot,” CP.
Week 8: Indians and the Slave Colonies
Tues, 27 Feb Trading In the Southeast
James H. Merrell, “The Power of the Steelyard,” CP.
Thurs, 1 Mar The Dilemma of Slavery
James H. Merrell, “The Racial Education of the Catawba Indians,” CP.
5-9 Mar, SPRING BREAK
PART THREE: THE CRITICAL YEARS
Week 9: The Indians’ New World
Tues, 13 Mar Environmental Transformations
William Cronon and Richard White, “Indians in the Land,” CP; Krech, “Pleistocene
Extinction,” and “Deer,” from The Ecological Indian, 29-43, 151-171, CP.
Thurs, 15 Mar Pontiac’s Rebellion
Wilbur R. Jacobs, “Gift-Giving,” “Pontiac’s War,” and “1763,” CP.
Week 10: A Lost Revolution
Tues, 20 Mar The American Revolution
Calloway, “Corn wars and civil wars: The American Revolution comes to Indian
country,” CP.
Thurs, 22 Mar FILM: Ikwe
Meet in screening room, 7th floor, main library.
Week 11: The Culture Brokers
Tues, 27 Mar The Culture Brokers
Alan Taylor, “Captain Hendrick Aupaumut: The Dilemmas of an Intercultural Broker,” CP.
Thurs, 29 Mar SECOND EXAM
Week 12: Jeffersonian Indian Policy
Tues, 3 Apr The Battle for Ohio
George W. Knepper, “Breaching the Boundary,” CP. “Documents,” CP.
Thurs, 5 Apr Jeffersonian Indian Policy
Mary Young, “The Cherokee Nation: Mirror of the Republic,” CP.
PART FOUR: COMING TO TERMS WITH A NEW NATION
Week 13: “Civilization”
Tues, 10 Apr Resolved: Unlike western women, Native American women were powerful and
influential members of their communities. Balance and harmony, rather than
inequality, characterized their relationship with men.
Theda Perdue, “Women, Men and American Indian Policy: The Cherokee Response to
‘Civilization,’” CP.
Thurs, 12 Apr Tecumseh
R. David Edmunds, “American History, Tecumseh, and the Shawnee Prophet,” CP.
Week 14: Expanding Empires
Tues, 17 Apr The Invasion of California and Alaska
Wallace, The Long Bitter Trail, 1-73.
Thurs, 19 Apr Origins of the Jacksonian Indian Policy
Week 15: Jacksonian Indian Policy
Tues, 24 Apr Georgia and the Indians
Wallace, The Long Bitter Trail, 74-120.
Thurs, 26 Apr Resolved: The state of Georgia is guilty of ethnic cleansing and should
offer reparations to the Cherokee Indians.
Stephen Breyer, “‘For Their Own Good,’” CP. |