HIST 302 – Native American History

Prerequisites/Corequisites: Take 3 credits; From Department HIST; From Level 100. (Required, Previous).
Credit Hours: Min: 3; Max:

Description: 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. This is not an exhaustive history of Native Americans, and thus is selective in both scope and content. For instance, topics will 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 an 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. We will also discuss differing approaches to studying Native histories. One 100-level history course or permission of department is prerequisite to all history courses above the 299 level.