First Thoughts

I chose this topic out of interest and because I had never learned much about the relationship between the Native Americans and the European Americans before.  I was curious about the initial relations between the Colonists and Native American tribes and how they lived together.  Through the initial research I found there was even more information that I had not been taught a lot about before in school including the presence of Native Americans in the United States military and how the expansion westward contributed to the process of their relocation.  Using the library database sources I found a few pictures relating to how Native Americans were portrayed in the media as well as some graphs illustrating the changing populations within certain tribes throughout American history.  This showed me there is more to the topic than I first thought and  that our group could find a lot of information about how Americans saw Native Americans and how the cultures clashed.

Some research topics include: Social equality, political power, outside influence, treaties/territories/conflicts, and cultural contributions/relations.  We plan to research these topics in these time periods: The beginning of the United States and in the 18th Century, the 19th Century, and the 20th Century to the present.  This should give us a well-rounded understanding of a wide variety of topics dealing with the Native Americans in America's history throughout each century.