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Ryan Hall
Associate Professor of Native American Studies and History
Department/Office Information
HistoryRyan Hall is an historian of the North American West, in particular Native American and borderlands history. His first book, Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877, was a history of the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people of what is now Montana and Alberta. It told the story of how Blackfoot people used the ancient geography of their homelands to preserve their way of life during the chaotic early years of American and Canadian invasion.
His current research examines the long history of corruption and theft in America's "Indian Affairs" administration and asks how graft shaped U.S. westward expansion and the Indigenous experience during the nineteenth century. To learn more about Professor Hall's past and current research, listen to his recent podcast interview with the New Books Network.
Prior to coming to Colgate, Professor Hall received his Ph.D. from Yale University and taught at the University of Toronto and Northern Arizona University. This fall he is teaching HIST223: The American West, HIST/NAST356: Global Indigenous History, and HIST400: Chaos and Crisis. In January he will bring his Global Indigenous History students to the island of O'ahu for two weeks of experiential and service learning about the history of Hawai'i and the Indigenous Pacific.
MA 2010, MPhil 2011, PhD 2015, Yale University
BA 2008, University of Oklahoma
Book:
Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
Articles and Chapters:
"Patterns of Plunder: Corruption and the Failure of the Indian Reservation System, 1851-1887," The Western Historical Quarterly 55, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 21-38.
"Seeking Safe Harbour: Indigenous Refugees and the Making of Canada's Numbered Treaties," in Challenging Borders: Contingencies and Consequences, eds. Shelia McManus, Julie Young, and Paul McKenzie-Jones (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2024), ch. 6.
"Chaos and Conquest: The Civil War and Indigenous Crisis on the Upper Missouri, 1861-1865," The Journal of the Civil War Era 12, no. 2 (June 2022): 147-72.
"Negotiating Sovereignty: U.S. and Canadian Colonialisms on the Northwest Plains, 1855-1877," in Remaking North American Sovereignty: State Transformation in the 1860s, eds. Frank Towers and Jewel Spangler (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020), 132-52.
"Before the Medicine Line: Blackfoot Trade Strategy and the Emergence of the Northwest Plains Borderlands, 1818-1846," The Pacific Historical Review 86, no. 3 (August 2017): 381-406.
"The Divergent Wests of Isaac Stevens and Lame Bull: Finding Motive in the 1855 Blackfoot Treaty," The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 105, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 107-21.
"Struggle and Survival in Sallisaw: Revisiting John Steinbeck's Oklahoma," Agricultural History 86, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 33-56.
Review Essays and Book Reviews:
"On Tragedy and Triumph in Native America," Reviews in American History 52, no. 2 (June 2024): 154-64.
"Border History is Indigenous History," Reviews in American History 50, no. 2 (June 2022): 160-67.
Book reviews in The Historian, The Journal of the Early Republic, Southern California Quarterly, H-EarlyAmerica, The Canadian Journal of History, The Western Historical Quarterly, American Indian Quarterly, The Pacific Historical Review, The Journal of Family History, The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, The New Mexico Historical Review, and Entangled Religions.
- Lloyd Lewis Fellowship in American History, awarded by the Newberry Library for Spring 2025
- Finalist, 2021 Spur Awards (Best Historical Nonfiction Book), Western Writers of America
- Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Social and Cultural History of Western North America, The University of Calgary (Fall 2017)
- Frederick W. Beinecke Dissertation Prize, Yale University (2015)
- Vernon Carstensen Memorial Award (Best article in Agricultural History), Agricultural History Society (2013)
- Newberry Library Consortium in American Indian Studies Research Fellowship (2013)
- Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Research Fellowship (2012)
- Canadian Studies Doctoral Student Research Grant, International Council for Canadian Studies (2011)
- CORE 131: Native Oklahoma
- CORE 150: Native People of the Great Plains
- FSEM 188 and HIST 223: The American West
- HIST/NAST 243: Native American History
- HIST/NAST 356: Global Indigenous History
- HIST/NAST 360: Borderlands of North America
- HIST 400: Thematic Seminar: The Arts of Resistance
- HIST 400: Thematic Seminar: Chaos and Crisis
- HIST 490: Honors Seminar in History
"Centering Native Lands," profile in Colgate Research, November 2022.
Podcast Interview, New Books in the American West, May 2022
"Professor Hall on Indigenous Studies," The Colgate Maroon-News, October 22, 2021
Podcast Interview, New Books in Native American Studies, August 2020
Podcast Interview, 13: A Colgate University Podcast, March 2020