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Why you can't teach United States History Without American Indians. Anthology of essays, aimed at college level history, about various historical topics from a more Indian perspective.
1. Borders and Borderlands. Even hunter-gatherers have a strong sense of the lands they have a right to forage in, and mobile groups like the Apache or Comanche marked their borders with cairns or forced-growth trees. There was no empty territory when the Europeans arrived, except maybe where disease had killed off all the claimants. But US history tends to describe a frontier expanding into empty or vague land, and maps reinforce this -- pre-colonial populations are perhaps marked with names -- sometimes of subsistence strategies or language families -- floating vaguely over a map, with no well-defined border or capitals marked, while maps of the post-colonial era show European colonies in bold colors, pushing into a washed out Indian or empty territory. Maps *from* the period made by Europeans, especially the French and Spanish, are much more explicit and respectful of Indian states and borders.
2. Encounter and Trade in the Early Atlantic World. We don't know much about 1500s North Atlantic America, but there was a lot of European contact and trade, first driven by the cod fishery, with fishermen buying medicine and fresh food. Then the fur trade, with furs bought with cloth and metal goods, and cloth made specifically for Indian tastes, probably driven by Indian women. 60-70% of fur trader expenditures went to buying cloth, dwarfing alcohol (5%) and firearms.
3. Rethinking the American Paradox, Bacon's Rebellion. I don't remember ever hearing about Bacon's Rebellion, but apparently historians have considered it really important, with the usual story focusing on a rebellion by lower class whites against the elites. The essay places it in the context of a long-burning war between Indian nations, and talks about the trade in Indian slaves (which I first really heard about from Charles Mann). The supply of white indentures contracted around 1660, and Virginia planters got more access to African slaves around 1700; enslaved Indians bridged the gap, though many were also exported to the West Indies. Between 1670 and 1700, 40% of slaves on the upper James river were Indians.
4. Recentering Indian Women in the American Revolution. Role of Indian women in owning land and making political decisions. George "Town Destroyer" Washington's 1779 orders to wage total war on the Iroquois, destroying houses and crops and taking women and children as hostages. An odd incident when General Sullivan ran across an old woman in an abandoned village and left her there, against orders.
5. The Empty Continent. Another map about how Indians are erased from maps.
6. The Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and American Indians. An essay about rather infuriating and indefensible European concepts that 'discovering' land gave them right over the land and inhabitants, with discussion of the discovery rituals Europeans would engage in to mark the territory. The later "Manifest Destiny" of US thought is largely claiming to sweep away existing European rights from discovery, as well as any surviving Indian title.
7. Indiana and the California Gold Rush. Gold was found by white and Indian laborers on Sutter's colony; Sutter made a claim to the governor backed by some local Indian chiefs; Indians workers left for gold mines themselves, leaving Sutter's colony starved of labor. White miners hunted Indians for sport. An 1850 law legalized the enslavement of California Indians.
8. Why you can't teach the history of US slavery Without American Indians. Discussion of slavery by and of Indians. The Carolinas exporting Indian slaves to fund buying African slaves (reflecting a desire to have non-local slaves who wouldn't be able to run away as easily.)
9. American Indians and the Civil War. The Dakota War in 1862 Minnesota. Lincoln signing the Homestead Act in 1862, in gross violation of US treaties with Indian nations. Corruption stealing the annuities promised to reservation Indians. Confederate soldiers treated as POWs, Dakota fighters treated as criminals guilty of capital crimes, with Lincoln authorizing the largest mass execution in US history. Kit Carson's ethnic cleansing of the Navajo. The Sand Creek Massacre.
Continued here: https://mindstalk.dreamwidth.org/496129.html
1. Borders and Borderlands. Even hunter-gatherers have a strong sense of the lands they have a right to forage in, and mobile groups like the Apache or Comanche marked their borders with cairns or forced-growth trees. There was no empty territory when the Europeans arrived, except maybe where disease had killed off all the claimants. But US history tends to describe a frontier expanding into empty or vague land, and maps reinforce this -- pre-colonial populations are perhaps marked with names -- sometimes of subsistence strategies or language families -- floating vaguely over a map, with no well-defined border or capitals marked, while maps of the post-colonial era show European colonies in bold colors, pushing into a washed out Indian or empty territory. Maps *from* the period made by Europeans, especially the French and Spanish, are much more explicit and respectful of Indian states and borders.
2. Encounter and Trade in the Early Atlantic World. We don't know much about 1500s North Atlantic America, but there was a lot of European contact and trade, first driven by the cod fishery, with fishermen buying medicine and fresh food. Then the fur trade, with furs bought with cloth and metal goods, and cloth made specifically for Indian tastes, probably driven by Indian women. 60-70% of fur trader expenditures went to buying cloth, dwarfing alcohol (5%) and firearms.
3. Rethinking the American Paradox, Bacon's Rebellion. I don't remember ever hearing about Bacon's Rebellion, but apparently historians have considered it really important, with the usual story focusing on a rebellion by lower class whites against the elites. The essay places it in the context of a long-burning war between Indian nations, and talks about the trade in Indian slaves (which I first really heard about from Charles Mann). The supply of white indentures contracted around 1660, and Virginia planters got more access to African slaves around 1700; enslaved Indians bridged the gap, though many were also exported to the West Indies. Between 1670 and 1700, 40% of slaves on the upper James river were Indians.
4. Recentering Indian Women in the American Revolution. Role of Indian women in owning land and making political decisions. George "Town Destroyer" Washington's 1779 orders to wage total war on the Iroquois, destroying houses and crops and taking women and children as hostages. An odd incident when General Sullivan ran across an old woman in an abandoned village and left her there, against orders.
5. The Empty Continent. Another map about how Indians are erased from maps.
6. The Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and American Indians. An essay about rather infuriating and indefensible European concepts that 'discovering' land gave them right over the land and inhabitants, with discussion of the discovery rituals Europeans would engage in to mark the territory. The later "Manifest Destiny" of US thought is largely claiming to sweep away existing European rights from discovery, as well as any surviving Indian title.
7. Indiana and the California Gold Rush. Gold was found by white and Indian laborers on Sutter's colony; Sutter made a claim to the governor backed by some local Indian chiefs; Indians workers left for gold mines themselves, leaving Sutter's colony starved of labor. White miners hunted Indians for sport. An 1850 law legalized the enslavement of California Indians.
8. Why you can't teach the history of US slavery Without American Indians. Discussion of slavery by and of Indians. The Carolinas exporting Indian slaves to fund buying African slaves (reflecting a desire to have non-local slaves who wouldn't be able to run away as easily.)
9. American Indians and the Civil War. The Dakota War in 1862 Minnesota. Lincoln signing the Homestead Act in 1862, in gross violation of US treaties with Indian nations. Corruption stealing the annuities promised to reservation Indians. Confederate soldiers treated as POWs, Dakota fighters treated as criminals guilty of capital crimes, with Lincoln authorizing the largest mass execution in US history. Kit Carson's ethnic cleansing of the Navajo. The Sand Creek Massacre.
Continued here: https://mindstalk.dreamwidth.org/496129.html