WEEK 2 · INQUIRY MODULE
Week 2: Indigenous Worlds and Competing Empires, 1700s
Who held continental power in the eighteenth-century West, and how did mobility make that power?
Dates: August 31–September 4, 2026
Focus
- Comanche, Lakota, Pueblo, and other Indigenous polities
- Spanish, French, British, and Native diplomacy
- Horses, trade, disease, kinship, and captive exchange
Before class
- Read: American Yawp, chapters 2–4 selected sections.
- Open and inspect the linked primary-source collection(s). Record one source, one context question, and one limitation.
- Scholarship lens: Pekka Hämäläinen, Indigenous Continent (2022), selected excerpt; Anne F. Hyde, Born of Lakes and Plains (2022), selected excerpt.
Primary-source portals
Tuesday/Thursday meeting plan
| Date | Status | Plan |
|---|
| Tuesday, September 1 | Class | Indigenous polities, mobility, kinship, and competing imperial claims in the eighteenth century. |
| Thursday, September 3 | Class | Horses, trade, diplomacy, captive exchange, and a scale-of-power evidence lab. |
Reading & Reasoning Check 1 due Friday, September 4.
After class
Deliverable: Reading & Reasoning Check 1.
- 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.