History Commons^™

Pueblo Sovereignty And Voting Rights: Miguel Trujillo And A New Tactic For Self-Determination, Alexander Douglas Bright

History Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the 1948 Trujillo v. Garley case and contextualizes it with the long history of Pueblo sovereignty in New Mexico. Recent literature on Indigenous electorates in the U.S. southwest has led to new understandings about Pueblo participation in elections. Given this new context, this thesis argues that the Trujillo v. Garley decision has been a misunderstood moment of Indian activism. Rather than marking the end of a long campaign for voting rights, the 1948 court decision was pushed by non-Pueblo advocates and only supported by a handful of Pueblo Indians. When Pueblo Indians, like Miguel Trujillo, began to …

The Saintly Indian: American Catholic Identity In The Indian Sentinel, 1902-1922, Abigail Clare Joranger

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how Catholics writing about Native Americans in the early twentieth century used the popular and political discourse surrounding Native Americans to Americanize the image of American Catholics. It also examines the ambiguity that many Catholic authors displayed towards becoming full participants in American culture, and how that ambiguity was expressed through these writings even while the authors expressed their wish to be accepted as American citizens. The pieces analyzed in this study consist of articles from The Indian Sentinel, a magazine published by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions for the purpose of raising funds for Catholic …

Creating An Indigenous Multicultural Faith: The Russian Orthodox Mission In Alaska And The Centrality Of Cosmology, Niklaus Von Houck

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper applies letters, journals, history interviews, government-company contracts, international treaties, theological works, and images to examine the convergence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Alaskan Indigenous shamanism cultures to explicate the harmonizing of an Indigenous multicultural Christian faith in nineteenth-century Russian Alaska. Central to this examination is the evaluation of effects of Orthodox Christian missiology on native Alaskans and the Indigenous religio-cultural response to Russian missionaries. Not merely a historical overview of contact between natives and missionaries in Russian Alaska, this paper harmonizes the commonality of cosmology between native Alaskan shamanism and Orthodox Christianity. It analyzes the impacts of comparatively …

“The Educated Indian:” Native Perspectives On Knowledge And Resistance In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Madison Michelle Kahn

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Power Of The Tower: Contesting History At Bear Lodge/Devils Tower National Monument, Anna Marie Kramer

Pomona Senior Theses

Bear Lodge/Devils Tower National Monument, a spectacular rock formation in northeastern Wyoming, has a multiplicity of meanings, not all of which were fully acknowledged until the 1990s. It is widely known as a geologic wonder, the first national monument, a marker of local and pioneer heritage, and a premier rock climbing area. In the 1980s and ‘90s, however, the National Park Service began to acknowledge that the Tower also holds cultural and historical meaning for the Northern Plains tribes, dating back long before the colonization of the American West. Some of the tribes expressed to the Park Service that they …

The Rise And Fall Of The Minnesota Middle Ground: Henry Hastings Sibley And The Ethnic Cleansing Of Minnesota, Jordan Scott Bergstrom

All Master's Theses

Henry Hastings Sibley (1811-1891), fur trader and eventual first governor of Minnesota, worked closely among the sub-division of “Sioux” Indians known as the Dakota. Sibley first aided in the development of what historian Richard White called a “Middle Ground,” a racially mixed and symbiotic society. Later in his life, however, he assisted in negotiating treaties that transformed that frontier society into a racially divided and oppressive one. The result was the outbreak of hostilities between Indians, Whites, and mixed-race people in the Great Sioux Uprising, and ultimately the ethnic cleansing of Minnesota. This study approaches Sibley’s involvement on a microhistorical …

A Different Kind Of Race: How Native Racial Practice Affected Kinship In The Borderlands Of The Old Northwest, 1778-1813, Alexis Helen Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses changes in native racial practice in the Ohio River Valley and lower Great Lakes from 1778-1813. In this region, Native peoples altered their identities and racial practices in order to navigate an environment where Euro-Americans threatened their way of life and their land. They cultivated a pan-Indian identity in order to fight against westward expansion, making the isolation of "others" a typical function of kinship practices. While recognizing the racial hierarchy of whites, Native peoples created their own racial thought and practices, integrating their beliefs into their kinship structures, daily lives, and identities. As pan-Indianism evolved, "white" …

“Gentiles By Nature”: Indian–Dutch Relations In New Netherland/New York, 1524–1750, Stephen Staggs

Dissertations

This work evaluates the evolution of the cross-cultural encounters that took place between the Eastern Woodland Indians and the Europeans living in and around the Dutch colony of New Netherland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It challenges a common view that the Dutch generally lacked curiosity about Indians, made no serious attempt to convert them, maintained a social distance from them, and were only interested in establishing commercial relationships with them. Using the extensive pamphlet and sermon literature and the records of the West India Company, Classis of Amsterdam, and patroonships available in the Netherlands as well as the …

"Kill The Indian, Save The Man," Americanization Through Education: Richard Henry Pratt's Legacy, Lindsay Peterson

Honors Theses

"Even wild turkeys only need the environment and kind treatment of domestic civilized life to become a very part of it.” Richard Henry Pratt made this observation while preparing for Thanksgiving with his family in 1867 in response to his interactions with Native Americans on the frontier. He served out West as second lieutenant in the 10th United States Cavalry, an African American regiment. The basic idea behind Pratt’s mentality was that the Indians’ inferiority was cultural, not racial, and that even Native Americans could become educated and “civilized” if only given the same opportunities provided to white Americans, African …

From Scouts To Soldiers: The Evolution Of Indian Roles In The U.S. Military, 1860-1945, James C. Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The eighty-six years from 1860-1945 was a momentous one in American Indian history. During this period, the United States fully settled the western portion of the continent. As time went on, the United States ceased its wars against Indian tribes and began to deal with them as potential parts of American society. Within the military, this can be seen in the gradual change in Indian roles from mostly ad hoc forces of scouts and home guards to regular soldiers whose recruitment was as much a part of the United States’ war plans as that of any other group. The gradual …

Intimate Frontiers: Indians, French, And Africans In Colonial Mississippi Valley, Sonia Toudji

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Historians have agreed that the French were more successful than their competitors in developing cordial relations with Native Americans during the conquest of North America. French diplomatic savoir faire and their skill at trading with Indians are usually cited to explain this success, but the Spaniards relied upon similar policies of trade and gift giving, while enjoying considerably less success with the Indians. Intimate Frontiers proposes an alternative model to understand the relative success of French Colonization in North America. Intimate Frontiers, an ethno-historical examination of the colonial encounters in the Lower French Louisiana, focuses on the Social relations between …

The Establishment Of The United States National Parks And The Eviction Of Indigenous People, Emily A. Vernizzi

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Genocide And The Indians Of California, 1769-1873, Margaret A. Field

Graduate Masters Theses

This study is an effort to determine whether the phenomenon of genocide, as defined in the UN Convention on Genocide of 1948, played a distinguishable role in the sharp decline of the California Indian population during the period 1769 to 1873. Through examination of such resources as memoirs, newspaper accounts of the time, anthropological and demographic studies, government documents, and works on genocide theory, it considers key issues of intent and action on the part of the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans who arrived in California during the period.

The evidence indicates that genocide of indigenous peoples occurred in California in …