Native Americans Archives

By Editor January 11, 2024

"Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power" - a lecture by Matthew Kruer

Join us for the 2023-2024 William and Mary Quarterly Lecture by Matthew Kruer (University of Chicago) at 5:00 pm ET on February 6, 2024 in William & Mary’s Blow Hall, room 334. The lecture is titled “Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power: ‘Bacon’s Rebellion’ and the Susquehannock Nation.” Reservations are not necessary and seating will be first-come, first-served. Kruer will reexamine… Read More

2 min read

By Erin Kramer February 28, 2023

A Record of Colonialism's Paradoxes

by Erin Kramer (Trinity University) Erin Kramer is the author of “Coraler’s House: Diplomatic Spaces, Lineages, and Memory in the New York Borderlands” (William and Mary Quarterly, October 2022) In the acknowledgements to my recent WMQ article, I thanked a long list of scholars who were kind enough to read drafts of my essay as I struggled through it… Read More

WMQ 8 min read

By OI December 02, 2022

"Towards a New Population History of Colonial California: Mortality and Fertility among Natives and Colonists in Alta California, 1769-1850"

OI Colloquium with Steve Hackel This paper will present preliminary results from an analysis of fertility, mortality and marriage patterns among more than 89,000 Indigenous Californians and some 19,000 settlers or pobladores who lived in California’s 21 missions, 4 presidios, and 3 pueblos between 1769 and 1850. Studying these two populations side by side raises important questions about differential… Read More

4 min read

By OI December 01, 2022

Fighting for Their Places: Race and Settlement in the Early Republic

Join us for an OI Author Conversation with Samantha Seeley and Michael Witgen. Westward expansion is a central theme in the history of the United States. But the movement of people across the continent, forced and voluntary, was more complicated and more fraught than popular narratives suggest. Indigenous peoples in the Old Northwest struggled to retain their homelands… Read More

6 min read

By OI December 01, 2022

Centering the Native South: A Roundtable on Native Pasts and Futures

Join the Society of Early Americanists for a free and public Zoom webinar sponsored by Georgia Humanities and the Omohundro Institute. Brooke Bauer (Catawba; University of South Carolina, Lancaster), Malinda Maynor Lowery (Lumbee; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and Julie L. Reed (Cherokee; Pennsylvania State University) will discuss their scholarship while reflecting on the ways that early Indigenous… Read More

2 min read

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By OI December 01, 2022

Vast Early America at the Washington History Seminar

WATCH HERE. Join historian Claudio Saunt (University of Georgia) for an OI-sponsored session of the National History Center’s Washington History Seminar. Usually convened in person at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, the event will take place online. Join OI Executive Director Karin Wulf on Monday, January 25, at 4:00 pm EST as she and WHS co-chair… Read More

2 min read

By OI December 01, 2022

“Preemptive Property: Native Power, Unceded Land, and Speculation in the Early Republic.”

OI Colloquium with Michael Blaakman U.S. governments began selling future rights to huge swaths of unceded and unconquered Indian country in the 1780s and 90s, creating a form of property claim that shaped the land business. Situating public finance, land policy, and speculation within transnational debates about sovereignty and territoriality, Professor Blaakman will trace how white Americans of the… Read More

3 min read

By Karin Wulf March 30, 2020

History in the Time of Coronavirus

by Karin Wulf Around the world we are experiencing an extraordinary simultaneous crisis. COVID-19, the coronavirus that has caused a pandemic, is affecting people very differently across geography and individual circumstances but we are all in its grip. Here at the OI we are now working fully remotely, our home campus at William & Mary is closed and classes have moved… Read More

News/Announcements 7 min read

By oieahc August 06, 2019

1619 and Virginia

This post accompanies “Virginia, 1619,” episode 250 of Ben Franklin’s World. In this week’s special episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Liz Covart talks with Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Norfolk State University and an expert in African-American and American history, about the lasting impact of the events of 1619… Read More

Ben Franklin's World 3 min read

By Karin Wulf May 02, 2019

Must Early America Be Vast?

by Karin Wulf Spoiler: I think yes. But it’s complicated. You may have seen this meme about historians, with “it’s complicated” mocked as the weak battle cry of our profession. I would argue that there is ample demonstration, from contemporary politics to technology, that an appreciation of complexity is newly resurgent. And so it is with vigor, rather than… Read More

#VastEarlyAmerica 15 min read

By Karin Wulf February 06, 2019

Vast Early America: Three Simple Words for a Complex Reality

This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of Humanities magazine, a publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of the images used in the article are under copyright and appear only on the NEH’s site. by Karin Wulf American history courses usually begin with the peopling of the Americas, then move on to European colonization and the… Read More

#VastEarlyAmerica 37 min read

By Kevin Dawson November 19, 2018

How digital humanities can further our understanding of human experiences

by Kevin Dawson As a cultural historian of the African diaspora who employees the paradigms of Atlantic history to trace the cultural traditions of enslaved Africans who were forcibly uprooted and transplanted in the Americas, I was both impressed and inspired by the possibilities digital research offers for adding depth and breadth to our understandings early American history. Scholars… Read More

digital projects 9 min read

"Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power" - a lecture by Matthew Kruer

A Record of Colonialism's Paradoxes

"Towards a New Population History of Colonial California: Mortality and Fertility among Natives and Colonists in Alta California, 1769-1850"

Fighting for Their Places: Race and Settlement in the Early Republic

Centering the Native South: A Roundtable on Native Pasts and Futures

Vast Early America at the Washington History Seminar

“Preemptive Property: Native Power, Unceded Land, and Speculation in the Early Republic.”

History in the Time of Coronavirus

1619 and Virginia

Must Early America Be Vast?

Vast Early America: Three Simple Words for a Complex Reality

How digital humanities can further our understanding of human experiences

Recent Posts

A Folder of One’s Own: Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin’s Life in Poetry

J.E. Morgan

Noel Edward Smyth

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"Colonial Anarchy, Indigenous Power" - a lecture by Matthew Kruer

A Record of Colonialism's Paradoxes

"Towards a New Population History of Colonial California: Mortality and Fertility among Natives and Colonists in Alta California, 1769-1850"

Fighting for Their Places: Race and Settlement in the Early Republic

Centering the Native South: A Roundtable on Native Pasts and Futures

Vast Early America at the Washington History Seminar

“Preemptive Property: Native Power, Unceded Land, and Speculation in the Early Republic.”

History in the Time of Coronavirus

1619 and Virginia

Must Early America Be Vast?

Vast Early America: Three Simple Words for a Complex Reality

How digital humanities can further our understanding of human experiences

Recent Posts

A Folder of One’s Own: Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin’s Life in Poetry

J.E. Morgan

Noel Edward Smyth

Subscribe to the Blog

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