Mandan

As a collective, the western hemisphere and early Europeans were reluctant to accept the idea that the native, indigenous tribes and cultures of the Americas possessed any form of art. This ideal of false superiority stemmed from the assumption that Native Americans were uncivilized, primal barbarians due to their differential cultural practices and beliefs. Additionally, the colonists had to promote this rhetoric of indians being primitive in order to get rid of the guilt of massacring, raping,…

The Louisiana Purchase. Always a topic seeming to float around and a subject to a lot of chatter. Not many others could have had the advantage to accompany the Discovery Corps on their mission to explore the new land. They would depart in 1803, and leave with the option of no return. With a mission to explore for the betterment of our country, who wouldn't want all of the glory and fame it would bring. Many people around me asked of my adventures or my viewpoint on my comrades. So I've channeled…

Essay on Colin Calloway, We Have Always Been the Frontier: The American Revolution in Shawnee Country. The Shawnee Indians has resisted the Americans and fought for their own revolutionary war for two decades before and after the American Revolutionary War. They had been “fighting for their freedom long before Lexington and, as for many Indian peoples, the Revolution renewed and intensified familiar pressures on their lands and culture” (Nichols, 118). The Shawnee leader Cornstalk united the…

In the novel The Ecological Indian, the author Shepherd Krech critically engages with narratives about the relationships between indigenous peoples and “nature.” The author distills the relationship he has observed in history and media into the term, “noble indian/ecological indian” where Native Americans are placed on a pedestal with regards to ecological, conservation and environmental practices. Implied in this description is the contrast with Europeans who are not ecological rather,…

When delving into history books, two prominent names stand out and are universally known. Those two names are Lewis and Clark. While both gentlemen have a background in the military, they are predominately known for their historic expedition along the Mississippi River to the Coast of Oregon in what is widely known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Their achievements would later be used to argue that the U.S owned the Pacific Northwest while the expedition also paved the way westward for…

As highlighted in Richard White’s 1978 article “The Winning of the West,” the Sioux were the agents of their own migration and expansion between the late seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. The first phase of migration, which occurred in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, was for small-scale beaver fur trade and subsistence buffalo hunting; the second, from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was to conquer neighbors in order to acquire their hunting grounds; and…

from France through the Louisiana purchase. The Dakotas were admitted as States of the Union on November 2nd, 1889 as the 39th and 40th states. The territory we now know as North and South Dakota has been home to many Indigenous tribes including the Mandans, Arikaras, Hidastas and many other tribes that migrated there but were driven out by the powerful Sioux tribe. In 1889, the Indian Appropriation Act was passed and established the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. “The Act broke up the Great…

On September 22, 1805, the explorers finally emerged from the mountains near present-day Weippe, Idaho, exhausted and nearly starving. They met the Nez Perce Indians and got dried fish and roots from them. Lewis and Clark set up camp on the banks of the Clearwater River, a branch of the Snake River, which was a branch of the Columbia River. On October 7, they left camp and started down the Clearwater River in their five newly hollowed dugouts they had made. They reached the Snake River on…

The Gullah People in Relation to the African Diaspora In the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the infamous middle passage occurred. During this horrific voyage, slaves of the African descent suffered and many died in result of the conditions of the voyage. Among the people who were on voyage, were the ancestors of the Gullah people. The Gullah people were able to sustain the culture and traditions of their homeland. Their overall connection to the African diaspora, their continuity, and…

I kept persistently begged my parents for lessons, but they wouldn’t agree with it, but finally they cracked on a fall evening when I was in the third grade. That day in school, a group of members from the Bismarck Mandan symphony came and talked to us about joining the school orchestra. I was intrigued. I felt my excitement grew as they played an excerpt of a piece for us. I couldn’t sit still cross-legged on the ground, but bounced on the ground uncontrollably as…