1491 is the last year before Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, thus launching a long series of European explorations in the New World. Charles C. Mann's book 1491 describes the importance of this year in early American history.
In 1491, native cultures in the United States would have been unaware of Christianity, guns, smallpox, European concepts of private ownership of land and racial hierarchy, and unaware that a change was coming that would completely upend their cultures.
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Mann highlights how traditional accounts of the story tend to ignore the convoluted politics of the tribes of the region, as well as Tisquantum's own complex motivations. The third chapter of 1491 describes the dramatic rise and fall of the Inca Empire.
How might the "1491" article connect with our course materials? A. The article directly challenges the "Single Story," or stereotypes, of Indigenous societies being "primitive" by showing their advanced manipulation of environments.
What was the significance of the location for the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz? - The occupation on Alcatraz Island was symbolic because it was an actual deserted prison island, which was equivalent to the current inadequate living conditions for many Native Americans on reservations.
Firsting and Lasting was a term created to describe how American Indians were treated and what happens to them in mainstream U.S. history, as they were essentially "written out of existence."
What were the goals of the Dawes Act? - To stimulate assimilation of Native Americans into dominant American society.
The Occupation of Wounded Knee relates to the Occupation of Alcatraz in that they both were movements that involved Native American's fighting for their rights and showing the United States government that they wanted their culture, land, and rights back.
The occupation which began in 1969 caused Native Americans to remember what the island meant to them as a people. Although the Alcatraz occupation inspired many other Pan-Indian movements to occur, it also showed how gender played a part in Indian activism.
Firsting and Lasting importantly addresses not only how New Englanders constructed their views of Native American peoples, but also the ways in which those views continue to hinder non-Native people's current imaginations.
The Ghost Dance was associated with Wovoka's prophecy of an end to colonial expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans. Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance to assimilation under the Dawes Act.
Studying history helps us understand and grapple with complex questions and dilemmas by examining how the past has shaped (and continues to shape) global, national, and local relationships between societies and people.
The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the federal government to break up tribal lands by partitioning them into individual plots. Only those Native Americans who accepted the individual allotments were allowed to become US citizens.
The federal government aimed to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream US society by encouraging them towards farming and agriculture, which meant dividing tribal lands into individual plots.
The Dawes Act was directly responsible for the loss of 90 million acres of Native American land, effectively abolishing tribal self-governance and forcing assimilation.
the first whites to explore many parts of the americas probably encountered depopulated areas due to european diseases spreading so rapidly and killing off most of the native population
they exploited their environment by reshaping entire landscapes to suit their needs, and even performing controlled forest fires to retool ecosystems.
American Neolithic development occurred later than that of the Middle East, possibly because the Indians needed more time to build up the requisite population density. Without beasts of burden they could not capitalize on the wheel (for individual workers on uneven terrain skids are nearly as effective as carts for hauling), and they never developed steel. But in agriculture they handily outstripped the children of Sumeria. Every tomato in Italy, every potato in Ireland, and every hot pepper in Thailand came from this hemisphere. Worldwide, more than half the crops grown today were initially developed in the Americas.
This peculiar, remote, watery plain was what had drawn the researchers' attention, and not just because it was one of the few places on earth inhabited by people who might never have seen Westerners with cameras. Clark Erickson and William Balée, the archaeologists, sat up front.
Before Columbus, Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held ninety to 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe. His argument was simple but horrific.
Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Incan culture.
Half the 102 people on the Mayflower made it through to spring, which to me was amazing. How, I wondered, did they survive?
After much resistance to "Indian Civilization" attempts, Jefferson decided the only solution would be to physically remove Indians from lands in the southeast, away from the "harm" of settlers and to free up lands for settlers, and so that Indians could become "civilized' at their "own pace.".
From a time when early settlers scalped and collected Native American heads for bounties in attempt to "clear" indigenous lands for settlement.