NOTE:  Each question on the midterm will ask you to slice the history of Native Americans in a different way.  When studying for the midterm, be sure to use specific incidents or examples to establish your interpretation.  Use all the relevant reading, lecture material, and discussion to bear when you think about the questions and your answers.

Major Themes:

Myth as History – Indian;  History as Myth – European

Native American responses seen through the lenses of:

            Change and/or continuity

            Resistance and/or accommodation

            Cultural/religious revitalization

Structure for thinking about periods: 

Colonial European (& American): 

Early contact and first colonial systems (c1500-1680); 
Colonial empires (1680-1760); 
Colonial rivalries and alliances (1760-1820).

Native American: 

Contact and strategies of cultural response (c1500-1680); 
Diplomacy and inter-cultural negotiation (1680-1760); 
Colonial dislocations and  (1760-1820).

Comparison of Spanish, French, and English patterns of contact with Native Americans: 

How did different goals and types of colonization affect the success or failure of relations with Native groups? 
How did Native responses to European activities affect the direction that colonies took?

Native American patterns of resistance to and accommodation with white society:

When do they occur? 
Why do they happen (and why do they happen when they do)?

Sample Questions :

Discuss ways that colonial contact altered the internal structures of Indian societies.  [Think about specific examples presented in the lectures, primary documents, and articles.  Taking into account the historical context for your examples is as important as explaining the effect of European contact.  Organize your answer using a theme such as gender roles, religious expression, economic production – there are others].

Compare and contrast the cultural response to European contact of two or more Native American groups.  [Think in terms of the analytic categories listed above.  What factors might account for the differences or similarities?  Your examples must be historically specific about the colonial systems involved and could include different periods or geographical locations.]

Sample Identification (answers should have 2 components - definition & significance):

Feast of the Dead

A ceremony performed by the Algonkian bands and Huron refugees in summer villages that involved inter-band marriages and the mixing of ancestral bones.

Through rituals such as the Feast of the Dead, autonomous bands of Algonkian-speaking Indians and other allies were incorporated into a new tribal structure which became the Anishinabeg (or Ojibwa). Show the importance of Native American religion as a cultural system.