Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians

Abstract

Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians emerged from the symposium of the same name at the Newberry Library in May 2013. The authors, though mainly historians, represent an interdisciplinary group committed to getting American history college instructors to “recast their survey history classes” toward the centrality of American Indians to US history (1). The editors intend that the work will “offer college teachers a toolbox of articles to help them transform their approach” (2). To this end, the book’s three parts offer two main types of essays: historiographic critiques and informative pieces that offer topics for consideration in survey courses.Part 1, “U.S. History to 1877,” consists of two critiques and seven topical presentations. The two critical essays decry the absence of Native polities in maps historically and presently in textbooks—unless, that is, they depict the reservation period, thereby creating a “declension narrative” at odds with the agency of Native nations (22–23). Moreover, the preponderant absence of Indians in college textbooks leads to neglect of the story of contention for homeland and of dispossession that also should reveal Native survival and sovereignty. Textbook maps require revision highlighting “Indian presence and possession” to “be more accurate as well as a superior teaching tool” (71).The Indian-focused topical pieces in part 1 include three describing historical processes and four describing events. The process articles call for greater recognition of Indian history in the North Atlantic trade conducted in the sixteenth century, in the dislocation caused by the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny, and in slavery both as slaves and as owners. The articles featuring events explain the importance of looking at Indians in Bacon’s Rebellion, the California gold rush, and the Civil War and at women playing roles in the American Revolution. These essays go beyond victimization and project Native agency.Part 2, “U.S. History since 1877,” possesses a greater balance of three critiques and four topical essays. The critiques explain that textbooks should add diplomacy and survivability to treatment of the western Indian wars. Also, textbooks would better present Native history by “positioning the American Indian self-determination movement in the era of civil rights” and by positioning the struggle for American Indian religious freedom alongside the “larger story of religious resurgence in America” (197, 227). Two of the topical considerations delve into the reading revolution in Native America and the use of primary sources to analyze Native participation in the New Deal. The other topical considerations cover the more general topics of Indian movement to cities and the impact on Indian Country of the power consumption that has fueled suburbanization.Part 3, “Reconceptualizing the Narrative,” comprises three critical essays. The concept of teaching American history with a colonialism theme pervades two of the articles. The first maintains that settler colonialism keeps Native Americans central to the narrative. The second explains the usefulness of a focus on imperialism and the indigenous response to it for viewing American history with a global comparative perspective. The third notes that typical surveys omit Native sovereignty as part of the federalism experience and calls for rectifying this omission to generate a more complete study.This book makes a definitive case for thorough treatment of American Indian history in the survey narrative. College instructors who already draw on this history will want to recommend the text to colleagues who do not. Secondary teachers also should find it relevant. The critiques prove useful both for framing instruction and for incorporating historiographic analysis in the classroom. The topical essays provide subjects for enriched study. Some essays are more compelling than others, but all warrant consideration with respect to teaching the survey. The very gathering of these essays under a clear title calling for inclusion of American Indians in survey courses bears historiographic significance. One of the book’s editors, Jean M. O’Brien, provides an apt conclusion: “The fundamental truth is that, of course, you can teach U.S. history without Indians—it happens all the time, [but] you shouldn’t teach U.S. history without Indians . . . if you want to get the story right” (115).