Between 1760 and 1812, the fertile lands around Lake Champlain's Missisquoi Bay were bisected by an international boundary. During this intense period of settlement, these lands were also subject to competing claims by various individuals, states, empires, and Native nations, all of who used grants, leases, surveys, and titles to further their claims. However, this copious property creation did not result in a coherent landscape, governed by authoritative states. Instead, participants used competing titles and overlapping grants to negotiate a spectrum of territorial claims. In many cases, the political, geographic, and economic ambiguities of property were seen as opportunities, rather than liabilities, by the diverse parties who claimed and occupied Missisquoi land. / Entre 1760 et 1812, les terres fertiles situées autour du lac Champlain, plus précisément de la baie Missisquoi, ont été coupées en deux par une frontière internationale. Durant cette période intense de colonisation, l'endroit fut également l'objet de revendications par divers états, empires, personnes et nations autochtones qui utilisèrent différents titres, baux, plan d'arpentages et concession pour faire avancer leurs demandes. Cependant, la création de ces nombreuses propriétés n'a pas abouti au façonnage d'un paysage cohérent, politiquement stable et soumis à l'autorité claire d'un état. Au contraire, les participants ont utilisé les titres litigieux pour négocier un spectre des demandes territoriales. Dans de nombreux cas, les ambiguïtés politiques, géographiques et économiques du concept de propriété furent considérées comme des opportunités plutôt que des inconvénients par les différents partis qui ont demandé et qui ont occupé les terres du Missisquoi.

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<p> This research is a comparison of religious beliefs of three cultures of M&eacute;xico. My first goal is a critical analysis of the similarities and differences between religious practices and how they relate presently. I argue that the religious ideology imposed on the indigenous of M&eacute;xico was similar to their original beliefs that in their organic form produced a lifestyle superior to that of Spanish ideologies. Furthermore, I hypothesize that returning to the religious aspects of introspection, community and truth through <i>xochitl in cuicatl,</i> would result in that superior lifestyle.</p><p> This subject is approached using cultural analysis, textual exegesis, historical and phenomenological methodologies. Relying on close readings of codices, the elements of the sociological theory of Peter Berger and employing the work of Juana Gutierrez de Mendoza as a lens into Caxc&aacute;n ideology. My hope is to further the scholarly research of this understudied peoples and the region they inhabit.</p>

<p> The projects in this meditation focus on the importance of collaboration in public history. Using two different tools, both projects show a new way for understanding the histories of two diverse Louisiana American Indian communities. The project on the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana is not a complete public history project, but it shows the progression of research and preliminary work needed for the pubic history aspect through an interactive map. The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana exhibit highlights the importance of collaboration and consultation with the Tribe, which happened at nearly every step of the curation and development of the exhibit. Focusing on the inclusion of these communities, and those surrounding them, helped in the understanding of the audience for each of these projects, as well as the overall importance of consultation with the community or communities represented.</p>

<p> During the early twentieth century, Navajo lands were extensive and isolated. Traditional Navajo leadership was much more local, and it varied from clan to clan. The discovery of natural resources on Navajo lands in the 1920s led to the creation of the Navajo Tribal Council to negotiate leases with the federal government. Through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the federal government dominated the council. However, the reforms of the Indian New Deal and the urgency of World War II brought immense changes as many non-Navajo leaders left the BIA for important wartime positions within the federal government, and the Navajo Tribal Council became more independent. During this period the relationship between the council and federal government changed as the council was given greater autonomy in governing the tribe. This thesis examines the history of the council leading up to and during World War II. By comparing the home front of World War I to the home front of World War II, it argues that the council achieved greater self-determination during this period, something often downplayed by historians, and created a unique system of government distinctive only to Navajos. The leadership of the council in providing for the common defense, defining and protecting property rights, and assisting with the federal government in the creation of human service programs established solid reasons for continued autonomy after World War II.</p>

<p> While much of colonial California historiography includes detailed narratives of the mission Indian workers, very little is known regarding those Indians who moved from the missions to work on the large California ranchos and elsewhere. The stories of these Indian workers have often been ignored; further, the narratives which do exist contain some form of debt peonage to explain their working arrangement. This dissertation attempts to challenge these debt peonage theories and offer a more accurate account of the working arrangement that developed on the California rancho during the Mexican (1821&ndash;1848) and early American (1849&ndash;1880) periods. Employing important primary sources&mdash;including rancho account books, letters, court documents, census records, and probate inventories&mdash;this dissertation ventures to show that Indian labor arrangements on these ranchos were less repressive than previously presented. In addition, it reveals the misunderstood nature and importance of the rancho store to both the Rancho owners and their Indian workers.</p><p>

<p> On March 10, 1957, the United States Army Corps of Engineers completed The Dalles Dam and inundated Celilo Falls, the oldest continuously inhabited site in North America and a cultural and economic hub for Indigenous people. In the negotiation of treaties between the United States, nearly one hundred years earlier, Indigenous leaders reserved access to Columbia River fishing sites as they ceded territory and retained smaller reservations. In the years before the dam&rsquo;s completion, leaders, many of who were the descendants of earlier treaty signatories, attempted to stop the dam and protect both fishing sites from the encroachment of state and federal regulations and archaeological sites from destruction. This study traces the work of Wilson Charley, a Native fisherman, a member of the Yakama Nation&rsquo;s Tribal Council, and great-grandson of one of the 1855 treaty signatories. More broadly, this study places Indigenous actors on a twentieth-century Columbia River while demonstrating that they played active roles in the protest and management of areas affected by The Dalles Dam. </p><p> Using previously untapped archival sources&mdash;a substantial cache of letters&mdash;my analysis illustrates that Charley articulated multiple strategies to fight The Dalles Dam and regulations to curtail Native&rsquo;s treaty fishing rights. Aiming to protect the 1855 treaty and stop The Dalles Dam, Charley created Native-centered regulatory agencies. He worked directly with politicians and supported political candidates, like Richard Neuberger, that favored Native concerns. He attempted to build partnerships with archaeologists and landscape preservationists concerned about losing the area&rsquo;s rich cultural sites. Even after the dam&rsquo;s completion, he conceptualized multiple tribal economic development plans that would allow for Natives&rsquo; cultural and economic survival. </p><p> Given the national rise of technological optimism and the willingness for the federal government to terminate its relationship with federally recognized tribes, Charley realized that taking the 1855 treaty to court was too risky for the political climate of the 1950s. Instead, he framed his strategies in the language of twentieth-century conservation, specifically to garner support from a national audience of non-natives interested in protecting landscapes from industrial development. While many of these non-native partners ultimately failed him, his strategies are noteworthy for three reasons. First, he cast the fight to uphold Native treaty rights in terms that were relevant to non-natives, demonstrating his complex understanding of the times in which he lived. Second, his strategies continued an ongoing struggle for Natives to fish at their treaty-protected sites, thereby documenting an overlooked period between the fishing rights cases of the turn of the twentieth century and the 1960s and 1970s. Charley left a lasting legacy that scholars have not recognized because many of his visionary ideas came to fruition decades later. Finally, my analysis of Charley&rsquo;s letters also documents personal details that afford readers the unique perspective of one Indigenous person navigated through a tumultuous period in the Pacific Northwest and Native American history.</p>

<p> Peyote beadwork is a nuanced and elegant art form. Hundreds of thousands of people today use peyote beadwork, including the Native American Church, powwow people, gourd dancers and Native Americans wanting a marker of Native Identity. Mainstream society has relegated this art form to the status of craft. It is virtually unstudied in the academic world. This paper accepts that objects so decorated are art, that is, expressions that are a means of communication among humans, and both a sacred art as well as a means of establishing cultural identity. The lack of academic study has led to hypotheses about its origin that obscure rather than reveal how it began. This paper aims to describe when and by whom the beadwork began, as well as how it was first disseminated.</p><p>

Iroquoian philosophy and political thought survived solely in the minds of old men and women at the end of the nineteenth century. These ideas endure today because of ethnographers who patiently transcribed the elder’s oratory. One such ethnographer was a Tuscarora tribal member named John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt (1857-1937). Hewitt was a linguist who worked at the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology for fifty-one years and dedicated himself to preserving Iroquois thought. He was self-educated and became expert while assisting other staff ethnologists. Hewitt’s “Iroquoian Cosmology Parts I & II” (1903, 1928,) sealed his reputation as the leading Iroquois scholar of his day. In spite of this accomplishment, Hewitt’s reputation faded quickly after his death. This dissertation seeks to understand why Hewitt decided to withhold some material from publication, and looks towards Hewitt’s complicated relationship with the Iroquois – for whom he was both a fellow tribal member and a professional ethnographer – for the probable answer. Finally, I re-evaluate Hewitt’s place in the field of Iroquois Studies as the last of a group of notable self-trained ethnographers and examine the lasting impact of his work on contemporary Tuscaroras and other Haudenosaunee people.

<p> The Town Creek mound site, located in Montgomery County, North Carolina, is classified as Mississippian based on the archaeological evidence for intensive maize agriculture, the presence of complicated stamped ceramics, and the presence of an earthen platform mound. In my research, I studied hinterland sites within a 40-km radius of the mound site to determine how Mississippian settlement patterns in the surrounding region changed through time. I used ceramic analysis and the presence and absence of diagnostic artifacts to create an occupational history of hinterland sites. I also used spatial analysis to delineate polity boundaries and compare spatial patterns to others established in the region. When ceramic and spatial data were combined, patterns emerged suggesting that fewer hinterland sites were occupied during the height of Town Creek&rsquo;s occupation, and more hinterland sites were occupied when Town Creek&rsquo;s population was dwindling. These patterns suggest that as people moved away from Town Creek, they were relocating within the mound site&rsquo;s immediate vicinity. Spatial analysis also showed a break in hinterland sites at 18 km during all of Town Creek&rsquo;s occupation, indicating that the administrative center at Town Creek had an influence of at least 18 km.</p>