This course examines Indigenous peoples of North America in the early modern period (mainly the sixteenth to early nineteenth century) focusing on their early experiences of European conquest and colonization. This course also critically examines how historians have written about such encounters. As we work our way through a wide range of monographs and articles, we will explore themes as diverse as Euro-Indigenous relations, sovereignty and possession, warfare and slavery, the fur trade and métissage, religion and spirituality, women and gender, dispossession and destruction, and Atlantic worlds and continental histories. Over the span of the course, graduate students will acquire knowledge of the ethnohistory of Indigenous societies and cultures as well as the French, English, Dutch, and Spanish Empires in North America. Through our weekly readings and seminar discussions, we will also increase our familiarity with some of the most important debates in Indigenous and colonial historiography.
