| Most of us have only a few simple images when it comes to Native American History--Pocahontas, the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, Casinos.... But the real story is long, impressive and varied. So long that it is hard to cover in fifteen weeks, but we will give it a shot, moving rapidly from the earliest pre-Columbian inhabitants of North America, to the era of colonial contact, the American Revolution, and the "ethnic cleansing" that is called Removal. We shall look at Indian roles in the Civil War and at the devastating Plains Wars that involved Sitting Bull and Geronimo. We shall examine the rise and fall of Indian boarding schools, the longstanding controversies regarding reservations, the government efforts to suppress, and then later to revive, Native American traditional culture, the emergence of the modern Red Power Movement, and much more. |
