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Generalizations about Indians and Empires

Generalizations about Indians and Empires. Where Europeans settled in large numbers, built farms and towns, established mining operations, etc., they soon established control.

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Generalizations about Indians and Empires

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  1. Generalizations about Indians and Empires • Where Europeans settled in large numbers, built farms and towns, established mining operations, etc., they soon established control. • In the interior of the Americas, away from areas of dense European settlement, Indians remained more independent, into the 20th century in some places

  2. L.G. Moses & Margaret Connell Szasz, “’My Father, have pity on me!’ Indian Revitalization Movements of the Late-Nineteenth Century,” in Religion in the West, ed. F.M. Szasz (Manhattan, KA: Sunflower Univ. Press, 1984) • In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (PBS documentary; YouTube) • Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn • http://brown.edu/Research/Aravaipa/peoples.html • PekkaHämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” Journal of American History 90 (Dec. 2003), 833-62

  3. Middle Ground Relations • French colonization efforts, 1500s-1600s • Wars with the Iroquois, 1609-1701 • Inability to use force to control Indian peoples

  4. Defining the Middle Ground • Places where neither side could determine the relationship (militarily, economically, politically) • For pragmatic reasons, negotiated a third culture, a common world neither wholly Indian nor European • Each side was forced to adapt, but also had some room to adapt on its own terms • Indians and Europeans were not exotic or alien to each other • Sometimes was violent • The middle ground declined when European-Americans became dominant economically and militarily

  5. The “Pays d’en Haut” or Upper Country

  6. Examples of the Middle Ground • Fur trade • “Coureur de bois” & “Voyageurs” • Military relations • Inter-marriage • “country” marriages; “á la façon du pays” • Métis • Missions • Onontio

  7. Ties Between Metropolitan Centers and Frontiers

  8. Impact on Indians • Rising standards of living (e.g., new opportunities for Indian women) • Connection to military alliances • Technological dependence, over time • Environmental degradation • Decline of fur-bearing game and food game in the 1700s, east of the Mississippi • Disease

  9. Decline of the Middle Ground • British conquest of New France (1760) • Proclamation Line (1763) • Economic decline for Indians in eastern North America, 1750-1820 • Social problems in Indian communities • “shatter zones” • American Revolution • Joseph Brant, Molly Brant, & General William Johnson • Impact of the Revolution & Independence • The War of 1812 • Policies in the U.S. and BNA (Canada): reservations & removal

  10. Conclusions • Successful adaptation, resistance for centuries by many Indians • The material basis of Indian decline was environmental (disease, loss of resources), economic (decline of fur trade, greater manufacturing power of European-Americans), and political-military • In North America, they became wards, victims, only after loss of power (no longer could determine the course of their own adaptation)

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