DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/3QB3-5979
Defense Date
2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
History
First Advisor
Dr. Gregory D. Smithers
Second Advisor
Dr. Michael Dickinson
Third Advisor
Dr. Adam Ewing
Abstract
Arikara people had been adapting their tribal structures to European influences since Europeans first arrived on the northern Plains in the early seventeenth century. Their sedentary lifestyle, focused on agriculture and hunting, increasingly included trade with French, British, and American trappers by the seventeenth century. The goods procured from European traders, such as firearms and other metallurgical works, began to upset the balance of geopolitical power on the Plains, setting the stage for the violence and political realignments at the center of this thesis. As my research reveals, by the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, tensions between the frontiersmen and the Indigenous people across the northern Plains reached new heights. As Arikara oral histories, United States diplomatic records, ethnological sources – such as travel writings – and correspondence from frontier settlers and soldiers reveal, the Arikara tribe struggled to innovate and reshape their societies in the face of colonial expansionism and hostilities with other Indigenous polities.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-7-2019
Included in
Cultural History Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, Other History Commons, United States History Commons