History 103 AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877 Fall 1996

First Position Paper

Write a short paper (4-5 typed, double-spaced pages) in response to one of the following statements. Whether you agree or disagree with the statement, your paper should make your position clear and cite historical evidence to support your judgment. You are expected to draw on at least two of the assigned readings in framing your response. A major goal of this assignment is for you to synthesize and interpret material presented in the course thus far (through Sept. 27).

Be sure to identify the sources of all direct quotations, paraphrased passages, and important assertions derived from the work of others. You may use footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical notations for this purpose. Although papers will be evaluated mainly on the basis of content, the quality of your presentation also matters. The professor values clarity, logic, originality, documentation, and concise prose.

PAPERS ARE DUE IN CLASS ON MONDAY, SEPT. 30. Late papers may be penalized, as may be papers that seriously violate the page limit. Please do not ask for an extension except in cases of dire emergency.

Statements:

1) "Although it has become fashionable in certain circles to blame Europeans for the destruction of Native American societies, in truth the historical record is morally ambiguous. While Indians died at horrendous rates after Europeans began colonizing North America in the late fifteenth century, microbes--not evil conquerors--were mainly responsible for this outcome. If some colonizers sought to exploit indigenous peoples, others wished only to spread Christianity or to trade with Native Americans on a mutually beneficial basis. Overall, the European intruders did the best they could to bridge the enormous cultural gap that divided them from native peoples."

2) "The key to understanding patterns of cultural interaction--both cooperation and conflict--in eighteenth-century North America is religion. Groups with similar cosmologies were able to live in peace with one another; groups with incompatible religious perspectives were not. Neither racial identity nor economic interest mattered nearly as much as spiritual beliefs in the encounters between Euro-Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans during the 1700s."