Paul Otto (historian)

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Paul Otto is a professor of American history at George Fox University, and a researcher in the area of Dutch-Native American relations and wampum.

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Education and career

Otto received his BA (1987) from Dordt University, his MA (1990) from Western Washington University, and his PhD (1995) in early American and Native American history at Indiana University. Otto has taught at Calvin University and Dordt University and currently teaches at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, where he has been since 2002. He has served as the chair of their History, Sociology, & Politics Department, 2005-2019. He teaches courses on American history, Latin America, and Southern Africa, with a particular interest in issues of race and ethnicity. [1] In 2010, Otto received a faculty achievement award for research as an undergraduate professor at George Fox University.

Scholarship

Otto's scholarship has focused on the relations between the Dutch and Native Americans in colonial New York. Otto was recognized as a Fulbright scholar in the Netherlands in 1993-1994. His scholarship and first book, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley, published by Berghahn Press, led him to receive the Hendricks Award in 1998. [2] Further, Otto has been recognized as a fellow of the New Netherland Institute and the Holland Society of New York. His work has also been cited in history textbooks covering the period, such as Eric Nellis's Empire of Regions, [3] and Alan Gallay's Colonial & Revolutionary America, [4] and in journal articles such as one by Nancy Hagedorn, who cited Otto's work as exemplifying a trend in American historical scholarship towards a "more intricate and subtle, but also more representative, vision of early America". [5]

Otto is currently researching wampum in the colonial northeast, [6] and has delivered lectures on the subject at forums such as SUNY New Paltz's Henry Hudson Symposium.

He has received an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Henry E. Huntington Library (San Marino, California), an Earhart Research Grant, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend. [1] In 2015-2016, he was a fellow at the National Humanities Center. He has also served as co-editor of the Journal of Early American History. [7]

Publications

Related Research Articles

New Amsterdam 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that became New York City

New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading factory gave rise to the settlement around Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River. In 1624, it became a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic and was designated as the capital of the province in 1625.

New Netherland 17th century Dutch colony in North America

New Netherland was a 17th-century colony of the Dutch Republic that was located on what is now the East Coast of the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to southwestern Cape Cod, while the more limited settled areas are now part of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Mohicans Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe

The Mohican are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that historically spoke an Algonquian language. As part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the neighboring Lenape, who occupied territory to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohican occupied the upper tidal Hudson River Valley, including the confluence of the Mohawk River and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic River watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with the powerful Mohawk to the west during the Beaver Wars, many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Lenape Indigenous people originally from Lenapehoking, now the Mid-Atlantic United States

The Lenape, also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory included present-day northeastern Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River watershed, New York City, western Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. Today, Lenape people belong to the Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma; the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin; and the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario.

Wampum Traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of American Indians

Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of Native Americans. It includes white shell beads hand fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. Before European contact, strings of wampum were used for storytelling, ceremonial gifts, and recording important treaties and historical events, such as the Two Row Wampum Treaty and Hiawatha belts. Wampum was also used by the northeastern Indigenous tribes as a means of exchange, strung together in lengths for convenience. The first Colonists mistook it for a currency and adopted it as such in trading with them. Eventually, the Colonists applied their technologies to more efficiently produce wampum, which caused inflation and ultimately its obsolescence as currency.

Adriaen Block

Adriaen (Arjan) Block was a Dutch private trader, privateer, and ship's captain who is best known for exploring the coastal and river valley areas between present-day New Jersey and Massachusetts during four voyages from 1611 to 1614, following the 1609 expedition by Henry Hudson. He is noted for possibly having named Block Island, Rhode Island, and establishing early trade with the Native Americans, and for the 1614 map of his last voyage on which many features of the mid-Atlantic region appear for the first time, and on which the term New Netherland is first applied to the region. He is credited with being the first European to enter Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River, and to determine that Manhattan and Long Island are islands.

This is a list of Directors, appointed by the Dutch West India Company, of the 17th century Dutch province of New Netherland in North America. Only the last, Peter Stuyvesant, held the title of Director General. As the colony grew, citizens advisory boards – known as the Twelve Men, Eight Men, and Nine Men – exerted more influence on the director and thus affairs of province.

The Council of Twelve Men was a group of 12 men, chosen on 29 August 1641 by the residents of New Netherland to advise the Director of New Netherland, Willem Kieft, on relations with the Native Americans due to the murder of Claes Swits. Although the council was not permanent, it was the first representational form of democracy in the Dutch colony. The next two councils created were known as the Eight Men and the Nine Men.

Peach Tree War 1655 North American conflict

The Peach Tree War, also known as the Peach War, was a large-scale attack on September 15, 1655 by the Susquehannock Indians and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the North River.

Beverwijck, often written using the pre-reform orthography Beverwyck, was a fur-trading community north of Fort Orange on the Hudson River in New Netherland that was renamed and developed as Albany, New York, after the English took control of the colony in 1664.

Two Row Wampum Treaty 1613 Treaty between Iroquois Indians and Dutch Government

The Two Row Wampum Treaty, also known as Guswenta or Kaswentha and as the Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613 or the Tawagonshi Treaty, is a mutual treaty agreement, made in 1613 between representatives of the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee and representatives of the Dutch government in what is now upstate New York. The agreement is considered by the Haudenosaunee to be the basis of all of their subsequent treaties with European and North American governments, and the citizens of those nations, including the Covenant Chain treaty with the British in 1677 and the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States in 1794.

Adriaen van der Donck Lawyer and landowner in New Netherland (1618–1655)

Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific Jonkheer the city of Yonkers, New York, is named. Although he was not, as sometimes claimed, the first lawyer in the Dutch colony, Van der Donck was a leader in the political life of New Amsterdam, and an activist for Dutch-style republican government in the Dutch West India Company-run trading post.

Wappinger

The Wappinger were an Eastern Algonquian Munsee-speaking Native American people from what is now southern New York and western Connecticut.

Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, located beside the "North River" within present-day Albany, New York, in the United States. The factorij was a small fortification which served as a trading post and warehouse.

Pavonia, New Netherland

Pavonia was the first European settlement on the west bank of the North River that was part of the seventeenth-century province of New Netherland in what would become the present Hudson County, New Jersey.

New Netherlanders were residents of New Netherland, the seventeenth-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America, centered on the Hudson River and New York Bay, and in the Delaware Valley.

Esopus people

The Esopus tribe is a tribe of Lenape (Delaware) Native Americans who were native to the Catskill Mountains of what is now Upstate New York. Their lands included modern-day Ulster and Sullivan counties. The Lenape originally resided in the Delaware River Valley before their territory extended into parts of modern-day New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Eastern Delaware. The exact population of the Lenape is unknown but estimated to have been around 10,000 people in 1600. The Esopus people spoke an Algonquin dialect known as Munsee.

History of Albany, New York (prehistory–1664)

The history of Albany, New York prior to 1664 begins with the native inhabitants of the area and ends in 1664, with the English takeover of New Netherland. The area was originally inhabited by Algonquian Indian tribes and was given different names by the various peoples. The Mohican called it Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw, meaning "the fireplace of the Mohican nation", while the Iroquois called it Sche-negh-ta-da, or "through the pine woods". Albany's first European structure was a primitive fort on Castle Island built by French traders in 1540. It was destroyed by flooding soon after construction.

References

  1. 1 2 "Paul Otto". George Fox University
  2. Hendrick's Manuscript Award Homepage
  3. Nellis, Eric. An Empire of Regions: A Brief History of Colonial British America. UTP. 2009. p. 87
  4. Gallay, Alan. Colonial and Revolutionary America: Text and Documents. Prentice Hall. 2011. p. 84
  5. Hagedorn, Nancy. "Atlantic History and the Reconceptualization of European-Native Relations in the Colonial Northeast". H-Atlantic. July, 2010.
  6. Otto, Paul. Beads of Power: A Short History of Wampum George Fox University Faculty Lecture
  7. Journal of Early American History