AMST 225 - Native American History

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Historian Daniel Richter once wrote, “for better or worse, native history belongs to all of us.” What could Richter have meant by this statement? What is native history and why would it belong to “all of us?” The history of America covers a much longer span than that usually covered in U.S. history courses. The coasts, plains and mountains of the North American continent may have been a “new world” to European traders and explorers, but to the two million people who already inhabited these lands, America was as much the “old world” as was Europe. In this course we will examine the history of North America from the age of contact to the end of the 19th century. Instead of approaching American Indian history from the perspective of Europeans, we will attempt to reconstruct the history of 16th-19th century North Americans from an indigenous perspective. In our class meetings, Mondays and Wednesday will be devoted to chronologically-oriented, broad issues in American Indian history prior to 1900. Alternate years. (4 Credits)