I will be teaching three courses this semester, one of which I teach every fall: a survey course in Native American History that aspires to cover the entire topic in an introductory manner in a single semester.
I am posting the syllabus here, and welcome any comments, criticisms and suggestions. For those of you who teach, I wish you all the best between now and December.
History 261 American Indian History Fall 2024
Instructor: Michael Oberg
Meeting Times: MW, 10:30-12:10, Newton 213
Office Hours: MW 12:30-1:45
EMAIL: oberg@geneseo.edu
Phone: (585)245-5730 (office)
Website and blog: www.michaelleroyoberg.com
The website and blog are designed to complement the textbook. There is a review section for each chapter of the textbook. Click on the “Manual.”
Required Readings:
Michael Leroy Oberg and Peter Jakob Olsen-Harbich, Native America: A History, 3d. ed., 2022.
Colin G. Calloway, ed., Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of How the West Was Lost, 2d. ed., 2017.
Frederick E. Hoxie, Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era, 2001.
Francis Paul Prucha, ed., Documents of United States Indian Policy, 3d ed, 2000.
Additional Documents and Articles available on JSTOR and as noted below.
Course Description: This course surveys the history of Native Americans in the region that ultimately became the United States. It traces the effects and consequences of the European “Invasion of America,” analyzes changes in and among native cultures in response to the arrival of Europeans, as well as native responses, resistance, and accommodation to European colonization. We will examine the role of Native Americans as players in the intercultural, imperial politics of the Colonial Period, their involvement in the American Revolution, and their response to the westward expansion of Anglo-American settlement in the decades after the American Revolution. We also will explore the historical background of the problems, issues, and challenges facing Indians in contemporary American society, and, in outline, the challenges posed to native peoples by Settler Colonialism. We will discuss the genocide that Indigenous peoples experienced and survived.
Participation is more than attendance. As you will see from the attached grading agreement, after four missed classes you will not be able to earn any grade higher than a D for the course.
Writing Assignments: On two occasions over the semester, I will read your journals.
You will write each week on short topics I assign you, but also on current events and on any outside reading you choose to do. I will provide you with these writing prompts in class.
I will also assign two short take home writing assignments, of no more than 1500 words in length. I will pose for you a number of broad questions that will force you to consider widely what you have read to that point in the semester, develop an argument and an effective answer, and to present that answer in writing with grace and style.
I will assign reading quizzes each week to assess how well you are digesting the material.
With any of these assignments, I encourage you to let me know if you have any questions. You should be clear on what I expect of you before you complete an assignment. Please use office hours, and if you cannot make these make an appointment to see me. I want to encourage you to ask for assistance and advice with your assignments.
I will write extensive comments in your journals and essays. I will also make comments on these papers about your class participation. I will ask you challenging questions, offer what I hope you will view as constructive criticism, and encourage you to push yourself as a writer and a thinker. But I will not give you grades, in the traditional sense, on this work.
I want you to benefit from this course. On the date of our first class meeting, we will discuss the standards for the class. You and I will work together to arrive at a set of expectations for the sort of work that will earn a specific grade. In your final journal, and in individual meetings or phone calls scheduled during Finals Week, we will discuss how well you think you did in meeting the agreed upon standards, and what your grade for the course ought to be.
Discussion Schedule
26 August Introduction to the Course
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, Introduction, Chapter One.
28 August The Columbian Encounter
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 23-32; Columbus’s Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, 1493; The Requerimiento;
Also, have a look at the Re-Envisioning Greater Cahokia Story Map. Students interested in Native American languages might look briefly at the materials placed online by the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island.
Journal Prompt: Most Americans believe that this country was settled by Europeans who sought freedom. How do Columbus’s letter and the Requerimiento complicate that familiar narrative?
4 September When Indians Discovered Europe
Reading: Harriot, Brief and True Report and John White Paintings of Algonquians on the Outer Banks.
Journal Prompt: Basing your entry on an assessment of Harriot’s Report and White’s artwork, what did English people see when they looked at the Indigenous peoples of out coastal Carolina region?
9 September The Shatter Zone
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 33-44; Some images from John Smith’s Generall Historie are available here; Take a good look at John Smith’s Map of Virginia as well. Also, read the poem from Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony available here. For students who have the time and some familiarity with Disney’s “Pocahontas,” I encourage you to take a look at “Missing Mataoka,” which includes an alternative audio track to be played as you watch the Disney film. Your reactions to this film may make for an interesting journal entry. Take a few minutes as well to read John Rolfe’s letter to Sir Thomas Dale, justifying his decision to marry Pocahontas.
11 September The Shatter Zone, Continued.
Reading: Oberg and Olsen Harbich, Native America, 33-44; Treaty of Middle Plantation (1677). Please read as much as you can of John Eliot’s Tears of Repentance, a history of his efforts to bring Christianity to Indigenous peoples in southern New England.
Journal Prompt: It is often said that Europeans discovered the “new world,” but in what ways did the arrival of the Europeans create a new world for Indigenous peoples?
16 September The Iroquois League and Confederacy.
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native American, 44-49, 59-79;Daniel K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” William and Mary Quarterly, 40 (October 1983), 528-559 (Please locate this article on JSTOR, download a copy of it, and makes sure you have a copy with you on your computer for our discussion. If you are unfamiliar with JSTOR, please ask for assistance. Look on the library webpage and click on databases). One of the most important primary sources used by Professor Richter in thiswell known essay was a collection of writings by French Missionaries to New France known as The Jesuit Relations. You may follow this link to the Relations. I would like you to check Professor Richter’s sources occasionally, and look at how he uses his evidence.Your reaction to this experience may make for an interesting journal entry.
18 September Life Behind the Frontier
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 80-98; Samson Occom, “Short Narrative;” “The Confession of Samuel Ashbo of Mohegan” and Temperance Hannibal’s Narrative, dated 7 February 1754.
Journal Prompt: From what you read in Richter, Occam, Ashbo and Hannibal, can you describe some of the ways in which Indigenous peoples encountered Christianity?
23 September Native Americans and the Wars of the Eighteenth Century
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 98-109; Proclamation of 1763.
25 September The American Revolution
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 110-129; Michael Oberg, “What’s So Great About the American Revolution?” and “No Mercy.”
Journal Prompt: It is often said that the American Revolution created a new nation, conceived in liberty. What were the costs of that new nation for Indigenous peoples?
30 September What Do We Make of the Revolution and Native Americans?
Reading: Jeffrey Ostler, “’To Extirpate the Indians’: An Indigenous Consciousness of Genocide in the Ohio Valley and Lower Great Lakes, 1750s-1810,” William and Mary Quarterly, 72 (October 2015), 587-622 (JSTOR)
2 October Indians and the New American Empire
Prophets of the Republic
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, pp. 129-157; Prucha, Documents no. 1-21.
Journal Prompt: Think of Ostler’s article and the teachings of the Indigenous prophets. How important is the concept of genocide for understanding the historical encounter between Indigenous people and European newcomers?
7 October Discussion Sections: Native Peoples and Long Knives
Reading: David A. Silverman, “The Curse of God: An Idea and its Origins among the Indians of New York’s Revolutionary Frontier,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser. 66 (2009): 495-534 (JSTOR).
First Paper Due
9 October The Mechanics of Dispossession: Or, How Chenussio Became Geneseo
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 157-161; Prucha, Documents, Document no. 27, 29-34, 36-38; 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua; 1797 Treaty of Big Tree; Oberg, “The Treaty of Big Tree: Let’s Follow the Money”; and “Chenussio: The Indigenous History of Livingston County.”
16 October The Removal Crisis
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, pp. 162-174; Prucha, Documents, 39-45, 50.
Journal Prompt: Who is responsible for “removal”?
First Journal Due
21 October The Indians’ West
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 175-190; Calloway, Hearts, Introduction, Chapters 1-4.
23 October NO CLASS MEETING. I will be out of town.
28 October The Indians’ West, Continued
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, pp. 190-204; Prucha, Documents, nos., 51-66; Calloway, Hearts, Chapter 5; Angela Cavender Wilson (Waziyatawin), “Grandmother to Granddaughter: Generations of Oral History in a Dakota Family,” 20 (Winter 1996), 7-13 (JSTOR).
Journal Prompt: Discuss your feelings after reading and discussing Waziyatawin’s article.
30 October The Plains Wars: Concentration and Enforcement Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 204-214; Prucha, Documents, 67-81, 83-85; Calloway, Hearts, Chapters 6-8.
4 November Reformers and the Indian Problem
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, pp. 215-227; Prucha, Documents, no. 82, 97-98, 101-102, 104, 124; Hoxie, Talking Back, Introduction; Calloway, Hearts, Chapters 9-10.
Journal Prompt: What did the end of the Plains Wars mean for Indigenous peoples?
6 November Wounded Knee
Reading: Black Elk Speaks, (excerpt, available here); Calloway, Hearts, Ch. 12. And this website based on Historian Justin Gage’s We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us. (Take some time to understand Gage’s argument about the Ghost Dance movement and its consequences).
11 November The Nation’s Wards Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 227-247, Prucha, Documents, nos., 105-110, 112, 117-118, 120-123, 126-128, 132-134, 137.
Journal Prompt: How thoroughly did the United States control the lives of individual Indigenous peoples?
13 November The Boarding School Experience
Reading: Calloway, Hearts, Ch. 11; Hoxie, Talking Back, Ch. 1-3; Prucha, Documents, 125, 129; The Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center
18 November The Search for American Indian Identity
Rise and Fall of Indian New Deal
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, pp. 247-263; Prucha, Documents, nos. 136, 138-144; Hoxie, Talking Back, Chapters 4-7, Afterword.
Journal Prompt: Based on an assessment of what you read this week, how well and completely did the agenda pursued by “Red Progressives” assist Indigenous peoples on the western reservations?
20 November From Termination to Self-Determination
Reading: Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, pp. 263–275; Prucha, Documents, nos. 145, 147-149, 151-160, 162-163
25 November The War on Native American Families
Reading: Magaret Jacobs, “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child’: The American Indian Child Welfare Crisis of the 1960s and 1970s,” American Indian Quarterly, 37 (Spring 2013), 136-159; Oberg, “Texas is Making Me Crazy.”
Journal Prompt: Assess the consequences, real and perceived, of the Termination era for Indigenous peoples.
2 December The Struggle for Sovereignty: 1978 Reading: Prucha, Documents, nos. 167, 169-187; Oberg and Olsen-Harbich, Native America, 275-284,
4 December Native America in the Era of Self-Determination
Reading: Oberg, Native America, Chapter 10; Prucha, 189-190, 201, 204, 207, 210-211.
Journal Prompt: How accurate a name is “Self-Determination” for the policies pursued by the United States in the 1960s and 1970s?
Second Journal Due
9 December: Final Class Meeting: Where Do We Go From Here?
Oberg, “The Trump Administration and American Indian Policy: A Post-Mortem” and Michael Oberg and Joel Helfrich, “Why Deb Haaland Matters.”
11 December Final Writing Assignment Due, 10:00AM
13 December Meetings to Discuss Final Grades, 3:30-6:30
Learning Outcomes. This course fulfills the requirements for Diversity, Pluralism, and Power under the college’s new general education curriculum. students understand (i) the diversity of identities that characterizes the United States; (ii) the ways in which systems of power lead to different outcomes for members of diverse groups; (iii) the reasoning and impact of one’s personal beliefs and actions; and (iv) how to participate effectively in pluralistic contexts (e.g., by communicating and collaborating across difference). History 261 also fulfills the requirement for Global Cultures and Values, meaning that Students (i) understand systems of value and meaning as embodied in one or more cultures from different regions of the world; and (ii) assess interconnections among/across local and global systems and cultures. Courses in this category engage extensively with the past and/or present in cultures outside Europe and the United States (though they may also engage with content from cultures located within those regions, e.g., Native/Indigenous cultures).
