How does the history of Native Americans challenge or complicate our understanding of U.S. history, especially in light of the contradictions between the nation’s democratic values and the long history of Native American persecution?
Native Americans have long been conceptualized as somehow existing outside the margins of United States history, even though they populated North America centuries before the arrival of colonial settlers and had developed extremely sophisticated and complex societies. After browsing the NYPL digital collection of Native American images (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=all&collection_list=AfterColumbusFourhun&col_id=182 (Links to an external site.), click on collection contents and then on any of the collections to browse the images) and reading the assigned chapters in the Boundless textbook, address the following prompt:
How does the history of Native Americans challenge or complicate our understanding of U.S. history, especially in light of the contradictions between the nation’s democratic values and the long history of Native American persecution?
