Professor Gonzales’ broad research interests lie in Early American and Native American history. He is particularly interested in the intersections of Native American cultural histories and the creation of the United States. On one hand, he is concerned with Native American efforts to contend with the birth of the United States through cultural change and the creation of new indigenous identities. On the other hand, he focuses on how Protestant evangelism and eighteenth century rights discourse contributed to the making of Native/Anglo alliances between the Revolutionary and Early National periods.

Gonzales is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Architects of Empire: the transformation of indigeneity and the making of American imperialism, 1763-1859, which examines Cherokee, Choctaw, Seneca, and Mohegan relations with Anglo-American religious and social reformers between the Seven Year’s War and the Civil War. The book argues that Native Americans were active participants in the construction of American empire, rather than merely its victims or survivors. They worked collaboratively with Anglos to incorporate American cultural institutions like formal education, slavery, Christianity, and family farming into Native communities. This story reveals that the colonial era pattern of Native/Euro-American alliance both persisted beyond the American Revolution, and had significant results: it perpetuated tribal communities within an imperial context, yet also supported the development of American empire in ways beyond Anglo-American acquisition of Indian lands.  

Gonzales has also recently completed an article on Edward Harvey Davis (1862-1951), a New Yorker who moved to San Diego in 1885. Davis became an amateur ethnographer and pursued a life-long career as a collector of Native American material culture. This project examines the relationship between Davis’ work and his changing racial conceptions of Native Americans. Professor Gonzales is currently working on two new articles. One explores Naragansett relations with African-Americans during the late eighteenth century. The other investigates the relationship between Choctaw identity, and the tribe’s participation in black slavery and Christianity. It argues that Choctaw elites attempted to strengthen and protect tribal sovereignty by forging a “southern” identity through slaveholding and church membership.