Native American History

Question 1

A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle For Unity, 1745-1815 - Gregory Evans Dowd (1992)

Answer 1

• There was a “religiously charged struggle for unity” amongst Indians from 1745-1815 that “drew both Indian and Euro-American opposition…its growth, hiatus, fluorescence, destruction, and legacy–is the subject of this book.”
• Tecumseh and Pontiac were not “authors of militant pan-Indianism….[they were] its products, or better, its adherents. They were not its creators, nor were they ever its indispensable leaders
• Dowd traces this nativism movement through the broad swath of traditional American history
• accomodationists vs militants

Question 2

At the Crossroads: Indians & Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763 - Jane T. Merritt

Answer 2

• uses Richard White’s middle ground to critique James Merrell’s Into the American Woods
• Moravian missionary sites represents locations of positive interaction between natives and europeans

Question 3

Bonds of Alliance - Brett Rushforth (2012)

Answer 3

• Indian slavery used by French in pays d’en haut to maintain alliances with friendly Indians
• native slavery was key to solving disputes and keeping cultural interactions running smoothly
• french free-soil doctrine superseded by notions that they were simply buying slaves from sovereign Indian nations who received said slaves in war from an enemy kingdom
• The French reluctantly participated in Pays d’en Haut slave trade in order to gain favor with their Indian allies; the British made no distinction between the Indian factions

Question 4

The Comanche Empire - Pekka Hamalainen (2008)

Answer 4

• the Southwest was less a place where Natives and Euros stood as a stalemate, and more a place where the Comanches reigned supreme via the very processes that Brooks cited
• Like the Iroquois confederacy, the Comancheria played the Mississippi French off against New Mexico
• the Comanche acted from the position of a central political authority

Question 5

Facing East from Indian Country - Daniel K. Richter (2001)

Answer 5

• well-known stories about Indians change if we look at it from their perspective
• “…far from being a youthful rebel who defied her father’s will to join the English invaders, Pocahontas was a dutiful child who fulfilled a very traditional function in Native policies and diplomacy”
• “[Pocahontas, Tekakwitha, and Metacom] sought cooperation rather than conflict, coexistence on shared patches of ground rather than arm’s-length contact across distant frontiers.”

Question 6

Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 - Daniel H. Usner, Jr. (1992)

Answer 6

• Indians, settlers, and slaves…in pursuit of their respective goals…found plenty of common ground upon which to adapt
• cross-cultural interactions
• Natchez Indians take advantage of frontier exchange edicate to surprise colonists, leading to massacre of French populace
• shift from frontier exchange economy to plantation slavery economy

Question 7

Into the American Woods - James Merrell (1999)

Answer 7

• go-betweens in Pennsylvania
• Penn to Paxton (1700-1763)
• there was no middle ground, not even go-betweens wanted to erase the divides between Indians and Europeans
• versatility made go-betweens suspect to all cultures (e.g. Peter Chartier)
• go-betweens couldn’t bridge cultural divides, there’s no “Long Peace”

Question 8

The Middle Ground - Richard White (1991)

Answer 8

• in the pays d’en haut the French and the Algonquians created a hybrid world that, although derived from existing French and Indian worlds, was something new…I claim they did it by capitalizing on creative misunderstandings
• cultural brokers were important
• no sharp distinctions between Indian and white worlds existed, they were the same to the extent that either side could appeal to the other based on what they perceived their values or practices to be
• This world, pulled forward by Europeans and Indians in tandem, vanished from most of what had been the pays d’en haut. The middle ground itself withered and died. The Americans arrived and dictated

Question 9

Violence Over the Land - Ned Blackhawk (2008)

Answer 9

• the experiences of Great Basin Indians force reconsideration of large portions of North American history, histories that after excavation offer far from celebratory portraits of America
• Utes as colonizers of the Great Basin, spurred in part by effects of Spanish colonization on them
• Indians could achieve coexistence and shared social relations with colonial societies often through the subjugation of others and because of their own previous, violent experiences