Meets the following requirements: HS HY   

This course confronts the complex interplay between pre-contact societies and European forms in the creation of the Americas.  By comparing the pre-contact societies of North, Central, and South America we encounter the basic context within which colonial regimes developed in the New World.  This first section of the class highlights the variety of social organization around which natives of the Americas developed with a survey of indigenous societies on the eve of contact with Europeans.  This section begins with indigenous societies in what became Spanish America since contact transformed them first.  The pre-contact North America is discussed by looking at how the contact with Spaniards and others had already transformed the human and social ecology of the continent long before French and English settlers arrived.  The section emphasizes the diversity of societies which Europeans would encounter across time and space.

Level: Intermediate.  *HS*  *HY*