David Nichols received his B.A. from Harvard and his PhD from the University of Kentucky. He joined the faculty at ISU in 2004. He teaches and researches on colonial and Revolutionary North America, with a focus on Native Americans and the frontier. His first book, Red Gentlemen & White Savages, explores the relationship between social class and U.S. – Indian diplomacy in the 1780s and '90s. He is currently finishing a book on the early nineteenth-century fur trade and researching a book on the economic history of the Chickasaws. Dr. Nichols teaches courses on Colonial and Revolutionary America and American Indian history.