Title: Week 3 Overview and Inquiry
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 3 · September 7–11, 2026: Borderlands, Louisiana, and the Platte Purchase

WEEK 3 · INQUIRY MODULE

Week 3: Borderlands, Louisiana, and the Platte Purchase

How did distant imperial claims become local dispossession and governance?

Dates: September 7–11, 2026

Focus

- Louisiana Purchase and contested sovereignty
- Lewis and Clark as diplomacy and intelligence
- Missouri statehood, the Platte Purchase, and local archival traces

Before class

1. Read: American Yawp, chapter 7 selected sections.
2. Open and inspect the linked primary-source collection(s). Record one source, one context question, and one limitation.
3. Scholarship lens: Anne F. Hyde, Born of Lakes and Plains (2022), selected chapter or excerpt.

Primary-source portals

- Northwest Missouri State University Archives
- Missouri Digital Heritage
- Platte Purchase Treaty copy, St. Joseph Museums

Tuesday/Thursday meeting plan

Date | Status | Plan
Tuesday, September 8 | Class | Louisiana Purchase claims, diplomacy, intelligence, and contested sovereignty.
Thursday, September 10 | Class | Platte Purchase document chain, Northwest archive orientation, and Mapping the West studio.

Labor Day is Monday, September 7; it does not cancel a T/Th meeting. Mapping the West is due Friday, September 18.

After class

Deliverable: Mapping studio draft; major submission follows Friday, September 18.

- I can answer the weekly inquiry with a contestable claim.
- I can name at least two pieces of evidence and explain their limits.
- I can identify an interpretation that my evidence supports, complicates, or challenges.