Pick one question and respond with researched material using the AIE readings, the course content and the film.
Explain the impact that the fur trade had on the American Indian tribes, especially concerning the hunting boundaries, treaties and territories in relationship with business, trade, ruling countries, colonies and each other. Further reading: Fur Trade and Native Americans and the Fur Trade
The men who wrote the constitution of the United States of America were directly influenced by the Iroquois Laws of the Confederacy. What are the arguments for an Iroquois influence on the U.S. constitution of 1787? What are the problems with evidence for this theory? Why do some people want to demonstrate a link between Native American peoples and the founding of the United States as a political entity? Further reading: Iroquois Confederacy and Sullivan’s Campaign against the Iroquois Confederacy
The French and Indian war led to the Native American to be used for war and territory expansion by both England and France. Can you explain the ending result of this war? Which tribes benefitted from this war? And what happened to the losing tribes of this war? For Further reading: French and Indian War
In 1965, a leading historian of colonial New England described the meeting of Indians and Europeans in early America as follows: “One [the English] was unified, visionary, disciplined, and dynamic. The other [Native American] was divided, self-satisfied, undisciplined, and static. It would be unreasonable to expect that such societies could live side by side indefinitely with no penetration of the more fragmented and passive by the more consolidated and active. What resulted, then, was not – as many have held – a clash of dissimilar ways of life, but rather the expansion of one into areas in which the other was lacking.” How does this characterization hold up in a larger analysis of the history of Indian-Euroamerican relations in the colonial era?
Trace the expansion of white settlements through wars with the Native Americans during the colonial period of North America’s southern, middle, and New England colonies. What was the social and legal status of Native Americans slaves in North America during the colonial era? What was the role of Native Americans in early colonial trade in the Americas?
Last part: At the end of your post please comment in one paragraph on what you have learned that was new, surprising, and interesting.
https://www.archives.gov/education/native-communities
