Category Archives: American History

Essays on American history

Captain John Smith: Conqueror, Colonizer, Commissioner

Posted on April 22, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England, published by University Press of New England (http://www.upne.com/1611685169.html), juxtaposes three different mentalities and activities: the conqueror, colonizer, and commissioner. Smith the conqueror was a soldier who believed that whoever was … Continue reading →

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The Constitution and Religion

Posted on March 28, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

The framers of the Constitution developed their conceptions of religion and government based on a variety of sources: classical political theory, such as Aristotle; European political theory, such as Machiavelli; English political theory, such as Locke and Hobbes; but also … Continue reading →

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Jean Louis Berlandier

Posted on March 25, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

I am teaching this semester a course on the History of Science, and am using two of my books: Science in the Ancient World, and Frontier Naturalist: Jean Louis Berlandier and the Exploration of Northern Mexico and Texas. The latter … Continue reading →

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Pious Scientists

Posted on March 20, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Oftentimes, missionaries in America were people of exceptional learning. Almon Bacone, for example, the founder of Bacone College, as a faculty member in the 1880s and 1890s taught an incredible number of subjects: Greek, Latin, rhetoric, English literature, logic, natural … Continue reading →

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Missionaries and Love

Posted on March 17, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Missionaries and Love: There were many missionaries of many denominations who brought the Gospel to American Indians in the United States and Canada: Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, Moravians, Presybterians, and Baptists. They shared a similar interpretation of the compelling call … Continue reading →

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Thinking–Fulbright Program

Posted on March 14, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Thinking… I have done a lot of thinking on, and have become a scholar of, American Indian history. I backed into this field of intellectual endeavor by taking a job at Bacone College, where I began to have many Indian … Continue reading →

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Thinking

Posted on March 13, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

“I think, therefore I am.” This famous sentence comes from Rene Descartes the seventeenth-French philosopher. Descartes, a skeptic doubting all, looking for the basic rudiments of reality, discovered a core of reality in the awareness of his own being. By … Continue reading →

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In Praise of Alexander Posey

Posted on March 11, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Alexander Posey, the Creek poet, was a student and librarian at Indian University, now Bacone College, in the 1890s. During his brief life (1873-1908), Posey published essays, satire, stories, and wonderful poems about nature, life, and death. He wrote whimsically … Continue reading →

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The Messenger’s Way

Posted on March 9, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

Carved on the northeast corner of the Bacone College chapel is this passage from the Old Testament: Micah, 6:8: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly … Continue reading →

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America in 1492

Posted on March 8, 2015 by theamericanplutarch

The indigenous peoples of America, those people north of the Gulf of Mexico, Rio Grande, and Sonoran Desert in what is today the continental United States and north into Canada stretching from the Gulf of St. Lawrence east to Nova … Continue reading →

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