Explores the impact of colonization on Native Americans to 1840. The course will focus on the creative adaptations of Native Americans to the great changes unleashed by the meeting of the new and old worlds.
Athena Title
Native Americans to 1840
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
This course will introduce students to the diverse experiences of Indians before 1840. It will stress that Native American history is integral to the larger narrative of American history.
The principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making.
Students will be expected to read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically.
Students will be expected to polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively.
Students will be expected to write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
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 evolution on American Indians, and removal of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to Indian Territory.
PART ONE: AMERICA BEFORE 1500
Week 1: The Peopling of America
Introduction
Migration to the Americas
“First Americans” CP
Week 2: Early America I
The Anasazi
“Chaco, Hohokam and Mimbres: The Southwest in the 11th and 12th Centuries,” CP; “The Chaco Canyon Community” CP
FILM: Myths and the Mound Builders
Week 3: Early America II
Mississippian Cultures
Timothy R. Pauketat, “Cahokian Political Economy,” CP
America in 1492
Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, 1-37
Week 4: Worlds Collide
The Encounter
Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, 37-83
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
Brown Robes
Weber, What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680?, 84-129
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
FILM: Black Robe
FIRST EXAM
Week 7: Indians, Puritans, and Virginians
Trade, Warfare, and Black Robes
Daniel K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” CP
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
Trading In the Southeast
James H. Merrell, “The Power of the Steelyard,” CP
The Dilemma of Slavery
James H. Merrell, “The Racial Education of the Catawba Indians,” CP
PART THREE: THE CRITICAL YEARS
Week 9: The Indians’ New World
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
Pontiac’s Rebellion
Wilbur R. Jacobs, “Gift-Giving,” “Pontiac’s War,” and “1763,” CP
Week 10: A Lost Revolution
The American Revolution
Calloway, “Corn wars and civil wars: The American Revolution comes to Indian country,” CP
FILM: Ikwe
Week 11: The Culture Brokers
The Culture Brokers
Alan Taylor, “Captain Hendrick Aupaumut: The Dilemmas of an Intercultural Broker,” CP
SECOND EXAM
Week 12: Jeffersonian Indian Policy
The Battle for Ohio
George W. Knepper, “Breaching the Boundary,” CP. “Documents,” CP
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”
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
Tecumseh
R. David Edmunds, “American History, Tecumseh, and the Shawnee Prophet,” CP
Week 14: Expanding Empires
The Invasion of California and Alaska
Wallace, The Long Bitter Trail, 1-73
Origins of the Jacksonian Indian Policy
Week 15: Jacksonian Indian Policy
Georgia and the Indians
Wallace, The Long Bitter Trail, 74-120
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
