hist.g5.f.his.colonial_indigenous_relations_alliances_conflicts
Analyze colonial-Indigenous relations across the 17th and 18th centuries — alliances, treaties, dispossession, and three major conflicts: the Pequot War (1636-37), King Philip's War (1675-78), and the Powhatan Wars (1610-1646)
Describe colonial-Indigenous relations in three time-snapshots and three conflict-cases: (a) EARLY ALLIANCE 1607-1660 — the 1613 Two Row Wampum treaty between Haudenosaunee and Dutch (sovereign parallel rivers, no one steers the other's boat); the 1621 Wampanoag-Plymouth treaty with Massasoit and Tisquantum/Squanto (with full primary-source analysis correcting the Pocahontas/Thanksgiving narratives — Loewen BOOK-VS-EVIDENCE work); the Powhatan-English relationship with Wahunsenacawh/Powhatan and Pocahontas/Matoaka; (b) THREE WARS 1610-1678 — the Powhatan Wars (1610-1646, three wars in Virginia); the Pequot War (1636-37, Massachusetts Bay/Connecticut colonist alliance with Narragansett and Mohegan against Pequot — culminating in the Mystic Massacre 1637 in which 400-700 Pequot were killed in their burning fort, an event rarely taught in elementary school); King Philip's War (1675-78, the most devastating war by per-capita casualty rate in American history — Wampanoag-Narragansett-Nipmuc resistance led by Metacom/King Philip against expanding English settlement, ending with Metacom's death and the enslavement of his wife and son and other captives to the Caribbean); (c) MID-18TH CENTURY — the Iroquois Confederacy's diplomatic balancing between French and English in the 1740s-50s. Apply MG-7 routine to multiple primary sources: the 1621 treaty terms, William Bradford's 'Of Plimoth Plantation' on the Pequot War from English perspective, Indigenous oral-tradition sources via Plimoth Patuxet Museum Wampanoag Homesite and Mashantucket Pequot Museum (the unit centers BOTH sides). CRITICAL: present-tense protocol — the Wampanoag, Pequot, Narragansett, Powhatan/Pamunkey, and Haudenosaunee nations are SOVEREIGN AND PRESENT TODAY.
- Compare and contrast the four major European colonial projects in North America — Spanish (from 1492), French (from 1534), Dutch (from 1609), English (from 1607) — across motivation, practices, religious institutions, economic models, and relationships with Indigenous nations
- Profile pre-1600 Indigenous nations of the 13-Colonies region and surrounding North America with present-tense protocol — Wampanoag, Powhatan Confederacy, Lenape, Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Six Nations, Cherokee, Pequot, Narragansett, Mohegan, Susquehannock, Catawba; sample nations from the Great Plains (Lakota, Mandan), Pacific Northwest (Chinook), Desert Southwest (Pueblo, Diné), and California (Chumash)
- Analyze the French and Indian War (1754-1763, the North American theater of the global Seven Years War 1756-1763) — causes, course, outcomes for British, French, Indigenous nations, and colonists
- Analyze the American Revolution (1775-1783) from multiple perspectives — Patriots, Loyalists, ~5,000+ Black soldiers on the Patriot side, ~20,000+ enslaved African Americans fleeing to the British under Dunmore's Proclamation, Indigenous nations split, French alliance
- Believing the 'first Thanksgiving' was the defining colonial-Indigenous moment — three wars (1610-1678) tell a different story.
- Treating Indigenous nations as undifferentiated 'enemies' or 'helpers' — Pequot, Narragansett, Mohegan all had different roles in the Pequot War; Wampanoag, Pequot, Narragansett had different roles in King Philip's War.
- Missing that the Iroquois Confederacy played the European powers against each other through diplomacy — Indigenous nations were AGENTS not pawns.
- Erasing the Pequot War and King Philip's War from elementary US history — these are typically taught at G5 only with trauma-informed Resilience-FIRST framing.
- Believing the Pocahontas-John-Smith story is accurate — Matoaka/Pocahontas was 10-11 years old at the time, John Smith's 'rescue' story was added years later in his 1624 Generall Historie of Virginia after Smith had no living witnesses to contradict him (Loewen + Bruchac documented critique).