History 235 - NativeAm Hist:PreContact-1865

This course surveys Native American history from ancient times through the U.S. Civil War, tracing the ways that tribal communities have shaped North America. Beginning with the diverse indigenous societies that inhabited the Americas millennia before Columbus's arrival, it discusses the cultural complexity of Native peoples, nations, and worldviews rooted in particular ecosystems and homelands. It moves through the early modern era of European scientific exploration and 'discovery' of a New World, and the pivotal violences of the 'Indian Wars' of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries.