NOTE: Each question asks you to slice the history of Native Americans in a different way. Be sure to use specific incidents or examples to establish your interpretation. Bring all the relevant reading, lecture material, and discussion to bear when you think about questions and your answers.

Major Themes:

Structure for thinking about periods:

European/American:

Early contact (c1500-1680);

Colonial empires (1680-1790/1820);

Ante-bellum development & expansion (1790-1850).

Native American:

Contact and strategies of cultural response (c1500-1680);

Diplomacy and inter-cultural negotiation (1680-1790/1820);

Exploring new spaces, geographic and cultural (1790-1850).

Comparison of Spanish, French, and English patterns of contact with Native Americans. How did different goals and types of colonization affect the success or failure of relations with Native groups? How did Native responses to European activities affect the direction that colonies took?

Native American patterns of resistance to and accommodation with white society. When do they occur? Why do they happen (and why do they happen when they do)?

Sample Questions :

Analyze the factors that might encourage or hinder resistance, acommodation, or "pan-Indian" alliance in reaction to European contact east of the Mississippi during the 18th and early 19th centuries. How do examples of Indian religious forms such as Kachina or the Midéwiwin relate to readings by Bowden, Morrison, Dowd, or Cave?

Compare and contrast the cultural response to European contact of two Native American groups. What factors might account for the differences or similarities? Your examples may include different historical periods or geographical locations.

What does the removal of the Choctow, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole to Indian Territory in the 1830s represent in the evolution of English/American views towards Native Americans? How does "removal" reflect the continuation, evolution, and/or departure from previous Anglo-American strategies for "dealing with? Native groups during the 1600-1850 period.

Sample Identification (2 components ó definition & significance):

Feast of the Dead

A ceremony performed by the Algonkian bands and Huron refugees in summer villages that involved inter-band marriages and the mixing of ancestral bones.

Through rituals such as the Feast of the Dead, autonomous bands of Algonkian-speaking Indians and other allies were incorporated into a new tribal structure which became the Anishinabeg (or Ojibwa). Show the importance of Native American religion as a cultural system.