Title: Week 4 Overview and Inquiry
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 4 · September 14–18, 2026: Removal, Sovereignty, and the Mexican North

WEEK 4 · INQUIRY MODULE

Week 4: Removal, Sovereignty, and the Mexican North

How did treaties and removals remake western space without eliminating Indigenous sovereignty?

Dates: September 14–18, 2026

Focus

- Removal and Indian Territory
- Treaties as negotiated and coercive texts
- Mexico’s northern borderlands and Indigenous diplomacy

Before class

1. Read: American Yawp, chapters 10 and 11 selected sections.
2. Open and inspect the linked primary-source collection(s). Record one source, one context question, and one limitation.
3. Scholarship lens: Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America (2023), selected excerpt.

Primary-source portals

- NMAI Native Knowledge 360°: American Indian Removal
- NMAI Native Knowledge 360°: Horse Creek Treaty

Tuesday/Thursday meeting plan

Date | Status | Plan
Tuesday, September 15 | Class | Removal, treaty vocabulary, parties, translation, coercion, and sovereignty.
Thursday, September 17 | Class | Mexican North, jurisdiction, Indigenous diplomacy, and Source Reasoning Lab 1 annotation.

Mapping the West due Friday, September 18; Source Lab 1 due Friday, September 25.

After class

Deliverable: Mapping the West due Friday; Source Reasoning Lab 1 annotation in class.

- 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.