Encounter & Conquest in Indigenous America

4 credits · Undergraduate

The early colonial period in the Americas is one of history’s most traumatic, astonishing, and consequential eras. This lecture class compares and contrasts histories of encounter, resistance, conquest, and colonization in three regions of indigenous America: Hispaniola, the Valley of Mexico, and the St. Lawrence River Valley. Each section will begin with regional geography and indigenous and European contexts on the eve of contact. As the class progresses, lectures and discussions of primary sources will interrogate the dynamics that gave rise to the complex and profoundly unequal American societies of the early colonial period, with their stratified, diverse populations.