Much of the 19th and 20th centuries was marked by cruelty, exploitation and violence directed toward Indigenous tribes by the burgeoning governments of the U.S. and Canada. But studying the earlier history of the continent reveals a more nuanced picture of the balance of power and the scope of interactions between Native American cultures and European settlers, invaders, missionaries and traders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Indians weren\u2019t just pathetic victims who got their land taken away,\u201d said John Barrington<\/a>, a professor of history, who taught a course on North American history this semester. \u201cIt\u2019s important to emphasize that to make them fully human, or else they become objects of pity rather than respect, and a little bit of their humanity is taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n Studying the area east of the Mississippi River, \u201cstudents can get a sense of the extraordinary variety of Native American cultures in the ways that they adapted to local environments as different as the Arctic ice and the Caribbean,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Beginning with 16th-century interactions between the Vikings and the Inuit in the Central Arctic and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico, the course demonstrates that North American history prior to the War of 1812 was more than a two-sided clash between whites and Native Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cWith hindsight, we think of the whole history as \u2018Europeans versus Indians,\u2019\u201d Barrington said. \u201cBut in fact, the usual dynamic was certain European groups allied with certain Indian groups against other European groups who were allied with different Europeans.\u201d<\/p>\n With many different groups competing after arriving in North America from Europe \u201cwith interesting guns and other technologies,\u201d Native American tribes could often play them off against each other and form alliances in their own rivalries with other Indigenous groups, said Barrington.<\/p>\n During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), different Indigenous tribes fought on both the British and French sides. Native groups also supported both the loyalist and patriot forces in the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Iroquois were particularly good at doing this,\u201d Barrington said. \u201cThey played the French against the Dutch, and then when the English took over from the Dutch, they played the French against the English. There was a lot of self-interest at play among the different groups.\u201d<\/p>\n The popular narrative of the first Thanksgiving<\/a> as a celebration of harmony between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe of New England also glosses over historical nuance.<\/p>\n \u201cOne purpose of that cozy relationship is that the Wampanoags wanted the Pilgrims\u2019 help against their traditional enemies in Massachusetts,\u201d said Barrington. \u201cThat kind of dynamic was very common. Native groups had bitter rivalries with neighboring groups.\u201d<\/p>\n After the War of 1812, population growth and technological advances tipped the balance of power in favor of the governments of the United States and Canada, said the professor, who is ending the course with the Trail of Tears in 1839.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the whites grow and advance, it\u2019s just been the more tragic and more familiar story of being steadily dispossessed, one group after another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Rachel Gambrell \u201926 said that the course has helped her appreciate North American history on a deeper level.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially in the early grades, we were taught that everybody was friends and there wasn\u2019t much conflict,\u201d said the history major<\/a>. \u201cAs we got older, we learned that, obviously, there were conflicts. But this is the first time I\u2019m learning about what actually happened.\u201d<\/p>\n