YouTube Recording – You will be sent a link to a private playlist containing all sessions from Fall 2020 within 48 hours during standard office hours.

This course will continue the story from Part 1 last Summer, beginning with the settling in of the French trading and missionary presence in what is now Quebec, and the business of the fur trade involving multiple tribes and French, British and Dutch traders.

The primary Indigenous groups we will look at throughout the course will be the Iroquois Confederation (noted for their success with the balance of power), Northwest Coast tribes such as the Nootka, the Osage of our own neighborhood of North America, and the Inuit (Eskimo).  There will also be brief glances at everyone’s favorite Native Americans, the Plains tribes, and at the Pueblo People we discussed in Part 1 of the course.

We will conclude with the late 18^th Century explosion of Pontiac’s Rebellion, the Paxton Boys’ eruption in Pennsylvania, the American Revolution, and what is variously known as the War of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars — or Tecumseh’s Campaign.

The course will concentrate on such themes as varying Indigenous and contrasting European religious beliefs, and some of the important tribal, social, economic, political, and foreign policy arrangements.  Several themes will rear their heads regularly throughout the course:  the people, the world and the divine (religions); and “the white man’s Indian” (Europeans’ perceptions of Indigenous People).  There will also be much discussion of the evolution of official and unofficial British, French, Spanish, and American Indian policy, its implementation, and its significance for the subsequent development of the United States and Canada.

 Instructor:  Dr. Alan Perry shares with us his knowledge, experience and a life-long enthusiasm for history.  Dr. Perry graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand with degrees in history.  He served over 15 years as Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and taught history at Park University in Kansas City.  He also has served as an Archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC, the Virgin Islands and Kansas City.