Social & Economic History of the U.S.
Native America



National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar
Saddleback College
Summer 1997

Alannah Orrison, PhD
Professor, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Saddleback College


The purpose of this website is to enrich the curriculum of courses dealing with the social and economic history of the U.S., but the material may also be helpful to general U.S. history survey courses. The page presents questions based on a combination of texts in order to give students an exposure to diverse viewpoints of Native America. The questions are suitable for class discussion, for take-home assignment, and for essay examinations.

This website, like the year-long course it supports, is broken into two sections. The first covers the period from initial contact of Native Americans and Europeans to 1876; the second covers the period from 1877 to the present.

Contact to 1877 1877 to the Present

For each section, a list of readings is given. Additional bibliographical information is available on many of the Native America texts; click on the author's name or see the Voices and Dreams Annotated Bibliography.

One source of great help to all history instructors is Judith Nies' Native American History: A Chronology of a Culture's Vast Achievements and Their Links to World Events, published by Ballantine Books, New York, in 1996. This book, in timetable double-column format, presents milestones in "World History" in one column next to milestones in "Native American History" in the other. It is extremely helpful to know what's been left out of whatever general U.S. history book is the main text for a class.

Social and Economic History of the U.S. to 1876
(Saddleback College History 7)
Texts and Readings:

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill & Wang, 1983.

Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Hughes, Jonathan and Louis P. Cain. American Economic History. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994.

Nabokov, Peter. Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.

Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.


Section One: The Colonial Era

1. Compare and contrast farming methods used by Native Americans in New England to those used by the early colonists. In what ways were the methods similar? In what ways were they different, and to what were those differences owed? What methods and crops did either group borrow from the other? (Cronon, ch.7; Hughes & Cain, ch.2)

2. What does Cronon describe (p. 82) as the "tension between Indian and European property systems," and what were the long-term consequences of that tension?

3. Compare and contrast Indian ideas of property as described by Cronon (ch.4) with the American land tenure system described by Hughes and Cain (ch.1). Are any elements similar? Of what significance are the differences?

4. Consider Thomas Morton. How do Cronon (chs.2 & 3) and Drinnon (chs.1 & 2) describe and evaluate him as a reliable (or not so reliable) reporter of the conditions of "New Canaan"?


Section Two: Early Westward Expansion

1. Compare and contrast Hughes and Cain's (ch.5) brief discussion of territorial gains from 1770 to 1853 with the history of that period as discussed in Thornton (ch.5). Specifically, how do events described in Thornton help explain how the United States government and white settlers were actually able to physically use the land made available by the treaties and purchases Hughes and Cain describe?

2. Compare and contrast Hughes and Cain's (ch.5) brief discussion of territorial gains from 1770 to 1853 with the history of that period as discussed in Drinnon (ch.10) and Nabokov (ch.7). Specifically, how do events described in Drinnon and Nabokov help explain how the United States government and white settlers were actually able to physically use the land made available by the treaties and purchases Hughes and Cain describe?

3. Consider Hughes and Cain's discussion (ch.10) of agricultural expansion in the South from 1800 to 1850. Drawing on this chapter and the materials in Thornton (ch.5). Which Native American groups were immediately affected by that expansion, and how?

4. Consider trade between whites and Native Americans, as described in Nabokov (ch.3) and Cronon (ch.5). How are attitudes toward trade depicted? What goods are discussed? Which goods and trade practices were most important, or most significant for the future, and why?


Social and Economic History of the U.S. since 1877
(Saddleback College History 8)
Texts and Readings:

Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr. The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.

Deloria, Vine Jr. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Hughes, Jonathan and Louis P. Cain. American Economic History. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994.

Nabokov, Peter. Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1961.

Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.

Welch, James, with Paul Stekler. Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.


Section Three: Closing the Continent 1861-1914

1. Review Thornton's (ch.6) analysis of the Ghost Dance. To what does Thornton attribute the Ghost Dance phenomenon? What distinguished the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dances, and how were they similar?

2. With specific reference to the beliefs associated with the Ghost Dance religion, why is it understandable that this religion reached its peak at the time that the American Indian population reached its nadir, and why is it understandable that the exercise of this religion created so much unease among whites? Possible sources: Nabokov (ch.12, #6), Neihardt, Thornton (ch.6), Welch (ch.10).

3. The Dawes Act (also known as the General Allotment Act) of 1887 broke up reservations and substituted a system of land allotments for individual Indians. In addition to reducing the amount of Indian land from approximately 140 million to under 50 million acres, this act began in earnest a policy period in which Indians were to be treated as individuals and the idea as well as the institution of the tribe was under attack. Discuss the ramifications of the Act on Indian population, economic viability, and culture. Possible sources: Berkhofer (pp.166-175), Deloria (ch.2), Nabokov (ch.13), Thornton (ch.5). [With other sources this can be extended into a term paper.]

4. Drinnon refers to John Fiske as "the centennial historian par excellence" (237). Mary Austin wrote The American Rhythym almost fifty years after the centennial. Compare and contrast these two very different observers of the West as they are portrayed by Drinnon (chs.16,17). [Possible term paper requiring additional sources: How do other current historians view these two authors?]

5. Compare and contrast the population histories of Native Americans (Thornton, ch.5) and Europeans (Hughes & Cain, ch.16) during this period. Include information on birth rates, death rates, immigration, and the regional distribution of immigrants.


Section Four: The Twentieth Century

1. What is Drinnon's thesis regarding "Indian-Hating and Empire-Building," and how does it relate nineteenth-century Indian policy with twentieth-century foreign policy?

2. Deloria writes, "One of the major problems of the Indian people is the missionary" (101). How does Deloria's discussion of missionary activity among Native Americans agree or disagree with the testimonies in Nabokov (ch.4)?

3. Compare and contrast the goals of the New Deal (Hughes & Cain chs. 25,27) with what Berkhofer calls (pp.176-186) the "New Deal for Native Americans."

4. Nabokov states that "The Indian veterans who came back to their reservations after World War II were different men" (332). With explicit reference to the reminiscences in that text (ch.16), what does Nabokov mean by that statement? How were those veterans "different," and what caused those differences?

5. What is the "problem of Indian leadership," according to Deloria?

6. What have been the main issues on which Native American activists have concentrated in the postwar period? Possible sources: Deloria (chs.8-11), Nabokov (ch17-19).

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