Experiencing Contact in Native North America (17th-19th centuries)
Expériences du contact dans les territoires autochtones d’Amérique du Nord (XVIIe-XIXe siècles)
Published on Friday, November 07, 2025
Abstract
Far from being limited to specific places and times, contacts between Native Americans and Euro-American settlers should be studied as long-term phenomena. These encounters took various forms: they could be contentious, diplomatic, cultural, religious, or economic in nature. Our goal is to study the nature of these encounters, their different occurrences, their spatial dimensions, as well as their consequences, for both Indigenous peoples and Euro-Americans. By stressing the role played by long-standing Indigenous traditions in these encounters, we seek to testify to the ways in which Native Americans were able to control their interactions with Euro-Americans while situating these encounters in relationship to well-established Indigenous practices. To do so, we are looking for proposals which rely on Indigenous archives, both material and immaterial, and/or use new methods to analyze colonial records.
Announcement
Argument
Far from being limited to specific places and times, contacts between Native Americans and Euro-American settlers should be studied as long-term phenomena. These encounters took various forms: they could be contentious, diplomatic, cultural, religious, or economic in nature. Our goal is to study the nature of these encounters, their different occurrences, their spatial dimensions, as well as their consequences, both for Indigenous peoples and for Euro-Americans. The different ways these populations experienced the “Other” transformed their practices, prompted forms of mutual adaptation, and contributed to shifts in power relations across North America. These encounters should be seen as interactions with fluid dynamics and indeterminate outcomes. As such, they profoundly shaped the emerging colonial societies of North America.
Recent research has suggested that Native American archives, both material and immaterial, could be used to understand such phenomena: for instance, researchers can rely on texts written in Indigenous languages, oral history or material culture. Recent studies have also suggested new methods to study colonial archives: in her article from the forum entitled “Materials and Methods in Native American and Indigenous Studies,” Lisa Brooks thus reinterprets colonial maps of New England to create maps of Native New England by going out on the land, talking with its inhabitants and analyzing Indigenous place names.
Studies of the encounters between Euro-American settlers and Native Americans and between Native Americans themselves should take into account the role played by long-standing Indigenous traditions. Such research may thus testify to the ways in which Native Americans were able to control their interactions with Euro-Americans while situating these encounters in relationship to well-established Indigenous practices. As an example, Kathleen Duval’s The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (2006) affirms the continuity of Native American diplomatic practices in the relationships between Indigenous peoples and Euro-American settlers. This conference will therefore seek to explore narratives and other ethnographic data, both Indigenous and Euro-American in origin, so as to move past ethnocentric interpretations, with the aim of developing greater understanding of encounters and cultural tensions between the 17th and the 19th centuries.
Following the Vast Early America approach, we seek to explore contacts between Euro-Americans and Indigenous individuals of diverse backgrounds. Therefore, we encourage presentations which feature the experiences of native men, women and children from different cultures, as well as those of Euro-American settlers from a variety of socioeconomic and cultural origins. The Vast Early America approach also informed the way we define North America, which we understand as a territory stretching from today’s Canada to today’s Mexico and including the Caribbeans.
For this conference, we suggest three main categories into which presentations may fall: ethnography, cultural contacts and spatial analysis. Proposals shall not be limited to these categories, and we will consider any papers outside of these three main themes as well. Because this conference focuses on a period of study spanning from the 17th to the 19th century, we also seek to discuss the changes and the transformations resulting from these encounters.
Ethnography has contributed to a more comprehensive understanding of Native experiences from the 17th to the 19th centuries by moving beyond strictly Eurocentric interpretations. This conference will thus explore narratives describing Indigenous societies and their encounters with Europeans and Euro-Americans. Particular focus will be granted to translated, transcribed and published Indigenous voices, whether in autobiographies, missionary writings or conversion narratives. We also welcome critical analyses of colonial narratives, especially when they illuminate tensions between empirical observation and ideological interpretation, the circulation of stereotypes, or spaces of exchange, mutual understanding, and respect. In this context, ethnohistory emerges as a particularly useful approach, providing valuable tools for studying cultural contacts while enabling the examination of experiences of contact from diverse perspectives.
The study of cultural contacts will seek to foreground the points of view of Indigenous individuals, rather than those of missionaries or Euro-American settlers. Native Americans have selected some elements of European and Euro-American cultures in order to survive, but also to secure a more advantageous position in a society which increasingly became dominated by euro-Americans. The everyday beliefs and practices of Native Americans in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries thus sometimes included elements borrowed from euro-American cultures, or even instances of hybridity. The introduction of objects and practices from another culture into Native contexts did not always change Native cultures to their cores. The main principles of Indigenous traditions were thus untouched when new cultural elements were adopted, and even hybrid native cultures remained resolutely Indigenous. These cultural experiences can be witnessed in religious phenomena as well as in agriculture, trade or even diplomatic practices and warfare. These encounters thus provide particular insight into such cultural and social changes.
Finally, these experiences of contact occurred in Native territories, through which they were materialized. We are thus interested in the spatial analysis of these encounters. The territories where these encounters took place, such as the Great Lakes Region or the American West, have been central to research on how alterity manifested over long time frames. By considering space as a key dimension of encounters, recent historiography in early American studies has proposed fruitful concepts, such as the Middle Ground, coined by Richard White, or the Native Ground, introduced by Kathleen DuVal, with which current studies continue to engage. Spatial analysis thus encourages research that examines margins within empires and situates contacts between Native Americans and Euro-Americans in the broader context of empire-building during the early and late modern periods.
Submssion guidelines
Proposals for papers, in French or in English, should be approximately 300 words and be submitted with a short biographical note. Speakers will present for 20 minutes and each panel will be followed by questions. Please email your proposal to all 3 of the following email addresses:
- coatsworthr@gmail.com
- donia.menghini@gmail.com
- maiann.stachnik@yahoo.com
before January 10, 2026.
An answer will be given by the end of January. This conference will take place at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France, on May 22, 2026.
Program committee
- Robert Coatsworth (Sorbonne Université)
- Gabrielle Guillerm (Sorbonne Université)
- Donia Menghini (Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint Denis)
- Maïann Stachnik (Sorbonne Université)
Selected bibliography
« Forum: Materials and Methods in Native American and Indigenous Studies ». The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 75, no 2, 2018, pp. 207-342.
Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Yale University Press, 2023.
Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War. Yale University Press, 2018.
Brooks, Lisa. The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America. Second Edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
Delucia, Christine. « Recovering Material Archives in the Native Northeast: Converging Approaches to Traces, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism ». Early American Literature, vol. 55, no 2 : Special Issue: Beyond Recovery, 2020, pp. 355‑94.
Dubcovsky, Alejandra. Talking Back: Native Women and the Making of the Early South. Yale University Press, 2023.
DuVal, Kathleen. The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Fisher, Linford D. The Indian Great Awakening : Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Greer, Allan. Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Havard, Gilles. Empire et métissages: Indiens et Français dans le Pays d’en Haut, 1660-1715, Septentrion, 2003.
Havard, Gilles. Histoire des coureurs de bois: Amérique du Nord, 1600-1840, Paris, Les Indes savantes, coll.« Rivages des Xantons », 2016.
Mancall, Peter C., and James H. Merrell, eds. American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500–1850. Routledge, 2006.
Martin, Joel W., and Mark A. Nicholas, eds. Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape. University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Subjects
- History (Main category)
- Periods > Modern > Nineteenth century
- Zones and regions > America
- Society > Ethnology, anthropology
- Periods > Early modern > Seventeenth century
- Periods > Early modern > Eighteenth century
Places
- 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris
Paris, France (75)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Saturday, January 10, 2026
Keywords
- Early America, Native American Studies, Settler Colonialism
Contact(s)
- Maïann Stachnik
courriel : maiann [dot] stachnik [at] yahoo [dot] com
Information source
- Maïann Stachnik
courriel : maiann [dot] stachnik [at] yahoo [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Experiencing Contact in Native North America (17th-19th centuries) », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, November 07, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/1545b
