x58526
gary.kornblith@oberlin.edu

[The official, up-to-date syllabus for this course is online at http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/gkornbl/H325F09/.]

This course approaches Native American experience from a sympathetic yet unromantic cultural perspective. We begin with the premise that Native Americans were active agents in producing their history both before and after the European invasion of North America--not just victims of white oppression and/or abstract social forces. Topics include cultural diversity in North America on the eve of European colonization; the dynamics of early Indian-European encounters in different regions of North America; the role of slavery in Native American societies and in Indian-European relations; the political and spiritual dimensions of accommodation and resistance to Euro-American expansion in the eighteenth century; the construction and reconstruction of Indian identities in the era of the American Revolution; forced Indian Removal; and the nineteenth-century struggles for the Great Plains and the Great Basin. Emphasis will be placed on current scholarly debates and varieties of historical analysis. Students are encouraged to think independently, and student participation in class discussions (both online and face-to-face) is essential to the success of the course. Written work, like class discussions, will focus on the wide-ranging and intellectually challenging assigned readings.

Format: The class meets regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3 to 4:20 p.m. Class attendance is mandatory, participation in class discussions is expected, and students are also required to post a question for group consideration on Blackboard in advance of class sessions.

Evaluation: Students will be graded on the basis of class participation, including postings on Blackboard, and two analytical essays . The basic formula is 30% for class participation, 30% for the first essay (8-10 pages), and 40% for the second essay (10-12 pages). The professor reserves the right to exercise some discretion in assigning final grades.

Purchases: The following books should be bought and brought to class for the relevant discussions. They are available for purchase at the Oberlin Bookstore.

• Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2003)
• Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001)
• Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2002)
• Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
• James H. Merrell, ed., The Lancaster Treaty of 1744 with Related Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008)
• Joshua Piker, Okfuskee: A Creek Town in Colonial America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004)
• Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)
• Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)
• Colin G. Calloway, ed., Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of How the West Was Lost (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1996)
• Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006)
  

Schedule of classes and assignments:

Thurs., Sept. 3

• Calvin Martin, "An Introduction Aboard the Fidèle" in Martin, ed., The American Indian and the Problem of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 3-26 [on Blackboard under Course Documents]
• Richard White, "Using the Past: History and Native American Studies," in Russell Thornton, ed., Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 217-243 [on Blackboard under Course Documents]
• Devon Abbott Mihesuah, “Should American Indian History Remain a Field of Study?” in Devon Abbott Mihesuah and Angela Cavender Wilson, eds., Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 143-159 [on Blackboard under Course Documents]

America before European Invasion

Cahokia

Tues., Sept. 8

• Calloway, One Vast Winter Count, xvii, 1-115

Thurs., Sept. 10

• Ramón A.Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 3-36 [on Blackboard under Course Documents]
• Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 101-122 [on Blackboard under Course Documents]
• Neal Salisbury, "The Indians' Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 53 (July 1996): 435-458 [in JSTOR, accessible from a campus computer]

Tues., Sept. 15

• Calloway, One Vast Winter Count, 119-163
• Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, 39-94 [on Blackboard under Course Documents]

Thurs., Sept. 17

• Calloway, One Vast Winter Count, 165-211, 267-293
• Juliana Barr, “A Diplomacy of Gender: Rituals of First Contact in the 'Land of the Tejas,'” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 61 (July 2004): 393-434 [in History Cooperative, accessible from a campus computer]
  

Early Encounters in the East

Metacom (King Philip)

Tues., Sept. 22

• Richter, Facing East from Indian Country, 1-109
  

Thurs., Sept. 24

• Richter, Facing East from Indian Country, 110-150
• Jill Lepore, "Dead Men Tell No Tales: John Sassamon and the Fatal Consequences of Literacy," American Quarterly 46 (Dec. 1994): 479-512 [in JSTOR, accessible from campus computer]

Early Encounters in the Southeast

Slave Raiding in Southeast

Tues., Sept. 29

• Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade, ix-xiii, xvii-xviii, 1-69, 91-154

Thurs., Oct. 1

• Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade, 257-357

Emergence of a "Middle Ground" in the Great Lakes Region

Jesuit Relations

Tues., Oct. 6

• White, The Middle Ground, ix-xvi, 1-93

Thurs., Oct. 8

• White, The Middle Ground, 94-141
• Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 38-53 [on Blackboard under Course Documents]
• Brett Rushforth, "'A Little Flesh We Offer You': The Origins of Indian Slavery in New France," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 60 (Oct. 2003): 777-808 [in JSTOR, accessible from a campus computer]

Taking Stock at Mid-Semester

Tues., Oct. 13

Review course readings to date

Thurs., Oct. 15

First paper due; no class

War and Peace in the Early Eighteenth Century

The Indians giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquet, by Benjamin West

Tues., Oct. 27

• Richter, Facing East from Indian Country,151-179
• Merrell, ed., The Lancaster Treaty of 1744, vii-x, xiv-xvi, 1-38, 89-108

Thurs., Oct. 29

• Merrell, ed., The Lancaster Treaty of 1744, 39-88, 108-126

The View from a Creek Town

Tues., Nov. 3

• Piker, Okfuskee, 1-108

Thurs., Nov. 5

• Piker, Okfuskee, 109-204

Guest participant: Joshua Piker, OC '89

Pan-Indianism and Native Responses to the Rise of the United States

Tenskatawa

Tues., Nov. 10

• Nancy Shoemaker, "How Indians Got to be Red," American Historical Review 102 (June 1997): 625-644 [in JSTOR, accessible from a campus computer]
• Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, xi-xxiv,1-89

Thurs., Nov. 12

• Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 90-201

Indian Removal

Painting of Trail of Tears

Tues., Nov. 17

• Mary Young, "The Cherokee Nation: Mirror of the Republic," American Quarterly 33 (Winter 1981): 502-524 [in JSTOR, accessible from a campus computer]
• Miles, Ties That Bind, xiii-xvi, 1-128
  

Thurs., Nov. 19

• Miles, Ties That Bind, 129-215

Struggles for the Great Plains

Sitting Bull

Tues., Nov. 24

• Calloway, ed., Our Hearts Fell to the Ground, 1-36, 56-101, 111-204
• Recommended: John Hunt Peacock, "Don't Make the Perfect the Enemy of the Good: Set More Reasonable Language Learning Goals than Fluency" (2009) [on Blackboard under Course Documents]

Guest participants: John Hunt Peacock and Sean Peacock, Spirit Lake Dakota Nation

Thurs. Nov. 26

Thanksgiving; no class

Struggles for the Great Basin

Painting of Bear River Massacre

Tues., Dec. 1

• Blackhawk, Violence over the Land, 1-15, 55-87, 119-175

Thurs., Dec. 3

• Blackhawk, Violence over the Land, 176-266

Tues., Dec. 8

• Blackhawk, Violence over the Land, 267-293

Thurs., Dec. 10

No class

Fri., Dec. 18

Second paper (final project) due at 9 p.m.