Title: Reading Check 1: Indigenous Worlds and Empires
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 2 · August 31–September 4, 2026: Indigenous Worlds and Competing Empires, 1700s

Q: Which evidence would best challenge a map that portrays the eighteenth-century West as empty space?
- Future state-capital lists
- Indigenous trade and diplomacy
- Modern highway alignments
- Eastern seaport population censuses
A: Indigenous trade and diplomacy

Q: Why do historians use “borderlands” as an analytical frame?
- Fixed territorial boundaries
- European diplomatic capitals
- Overlapping zones of power
- Local stories without comparison
A: Overlapping zones of power

Q: What is the strongest sourcing question for a Spanish official’s report about a Native nation?
- Position, audience, and purpose
- Length, binding, and paper size
- Modern spelling and punctuation
- Color, typeface, and margins
A: Position, audience, and purpose

Q: Name one piece of evidence from this unit and explain how its creator, audience, or collection context affects how a historian may use it.

Q: Make a one-sentence claim answering this unit question: Who held continental power in the eighteenth-century West, and how did mobility make that power? Then identify one limitation, uncertainty, or counterexample that keeps the claim from becoming too broad.