HIST 72B: History of Native Americans in the Southeast

Theda Perdue

This course focuses on the Native Southeast, a distinct culture area characterized traditionally by horticulture, chiefdoms, matrilineal kinship, and temple mounds and historically by contact with Euro-Americans who equated slavery with race and land with wealth. While the course pays some attention to the Native impact on black and white southerners, the main objective is to learn more about the histories of the Native peoples of the Southeast, the internal dynamics of their societies, and the ways in which culture change affected them. Ethnohistory, a methodology that fuses history and anthropology, provides the best tool by which to accomplish this objective. By reading ethnohistorical works, discussing the issues they raise, and writing three short ethnohistorical papers, students will begin to learn how to use this methodology.