History of Education and Indigenous Americans: A Guide for Pre-Service Teachers

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Article Body

What is it?
Education and learning cannot be neutral. What we decide is important for young people to know necessarily reflects our values. This guide takes a look at two topics in history education of Indigenous people in the United States. First, the Federal Indian Boarding Schools which were a deliberate attempt to separate indigenous people from their communities and their cultures. The second topic is the emergence of the American Indian Movement and specifically that movement’s efforts to defend Indigenous culture and also establish schools, called “survival schools” to teach Indigenous young people about their history and culture.

Guiding questions

What is the purpose of education?
What history should be taught in schools?

 

Background - History of Boarding Schools 1880-1930


As the United States settlers expanded into the American West between 1865 and 1890, the federal government increasingly confined Native peoples who lived there to reservations and denied the ability to continue their livelihood through hunting and farming. In addition to this effort to separate Native Americans from their land, the government also acted to separate Native Americans from their history and culture. Indian Boarding schools were central to this effort. Beginning in the 1880s, Native children were sent to these schools typically located hundreds of miles from their parents and community with the expressed purpose of assimilating them into what the government considered to be U.S.-American culture. In order to coerce Native communities into sending their children to boarding schools, the U.S. government made basic aid such as food and supplies contingent on the reservation’s children going off to school. At these schools, the children were forced to cut their hair and take English-sounding names. Children who were caught using their given names or speaking a Native language were harshly punished. While the curriculum at each school was different, the schools tended to emphasize training in manual labor rather than academics. History, when it was taught, centered on white U.S-Americans. The fact that Native young people were separated from their elders and community meant that they did not have the same access to stories and oral traditions that they would have had they remained with their families.

Primary Source Activity:
Show students the following video (~8min) from PBS News Hour on Indian Boarding schools: https://youtu.be/gRNcCCgnauI.
When the video is over, ask the class how the boarding schools acted to separate Native children from their history and culture.

 

Examining Sources:
Direct the students to the following collection of primary sources related to Indian Boarding Schools. Have students choose a source and determine if it contains evidence of how Native children were separated from their history and culture:
 
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/native-american-boarding-schools/

Along with these sources, have students consider the announcement by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative:
https://www.doi.gov/priorities/strengthening-indian-country/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative


Question when examining these sources:

  • In what way are Native people advocating for a reconsideration of history of a different perspective of the past?

 

The American Indian Movement 1961-

From the very beginning, many Native people criticized the boarding school program and opposed the effort to assimilate Native people into U.S. culture. (See guide on Charles Eastman, Zitkála-Šá, and the Society of American Indians for more on early opposition). By the 1920s, these schools were the subject of increased scrutiny for their teaching practices, living conditions , and lack of quality medical care that led to over 500 students' deaths over the years and most were eventually closed. Beginning in the 1960s, a new movement called the American Indian Movement (AIM) began organizing for Native rights including the right for Native people to practice their culture and to emphasize history from a Native American perspective.

Timeline:

1961 - Activists Clyde Warrior (Ponca) and Mel Thom (Walker River Paiute) among others form the National Indian Youth Council. A group that would grow to 15,000 members and was one of the first Native activist groups to use direct action protest.

1968 - American Indian Movement formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota around the issue of police treatment of Native Americans.

1972 - AIM members founded two schools in Minnesota, the Little Red School House in St. Paul and Heart of the Earth Survival School in Minneapolis; Beginning in October, the Trail of Broken Treaties march ends with an occupation of Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, DC. AIM protestors demand that 110 million acres of land be restored to Native Americans.

1973 - At the request of Lakota elders, AIM participated in a protest against corruption within the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Tribal Council, which led to the famed 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Federal law enforcement killed two protestors and wounded 24 more.


1978 -  The Longest Walk a march on Washington that began in Alcatraz Island, California and ended on the National Mall. 30,000 individuals eventually join the march. As part of the protest, a tipi was set up and maintained on the grounds of the White House.The protest called attention to legislation that would have broken Indian treaties and threatened water rights. The legislation was defeated. Two AIM leaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means, were indicted on charges related to the occupation, but prosecutor misconduct led to the charges being dismissed.

 

Primary Source Activity:
Show students this brief video about Clyde Bellecourt (Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun) and the American Indian Movement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLh3gw0kVhQ

An excellent alternative film, if your school can access it, is the 2020 documentary, Warrior Women, about Native American women activists in the American Indian Movement. https://www.warriorwomenfilm.com/synopsis

 

Examining Primary sources
Have students choose a primary source from the links below. As they examine or listen to the source, ask them to pay attention to how the American Indian Movement advocated for Native American culture and history. For more background on AIM, teachers may can consult this history of the movement: http://www.aimovement.org/ggc/history.html

Russell Means Radio Interview (1992)
https://americanarchive.org/primary_source_sets/american-indian-movement/2-224-257d81km


Interview of Vernon Bellecourt, AIM Leader (1973)
https://americanarchive.org/primary_source_sets/american-indian-movement/3-28-wh2d795w2v

“Survival Schools,” WGBH Journal, 1978
https://americanarchive.org/primary_source_sets/american-indian-movement/9-15-8279d3bf

“Wounded Knee,” Sunday Forum, 1973
(Pine Ridge Reservation Residents Discuss AIM)
https://americanarchive.org/primary_source_sets/american-indian-movement/6-15-78gf28x2


“Support the American Indian Movement” | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/2016648080/

[Tipi with sign "American Indian Movement" on the grounds of the Washington Monument, Washington, D.C., during the "Longest walk"] | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/2011646498/

“Prevent a 2nd massacre at Wounded Knee : show your solidarity with the Indian nations” Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/2016648079/

Protesters at Columbus landing, San Francisco, California | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1989022_kl_c104/

An American Indian Movement Wounded Knee button, 1990.
https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-american-indian-movement-1968-1978/sources/1338

Flag of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Image by Wikimedia Commons user Tripodero,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_American_Indian_Movement_V2.svg

“What we did in the 1960s and early 1970s was raise the consciousness of white America that this government has a responsibility to Indian people. That there are treaties; that textbooks in every school in America have a responsibility to tell the truth. An awareness reached across America that if Native American people had to resort to arms at Wounded Knee, there must really be something wrong. And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing. From that, our own people began to sense the pride."
AIM Leader Dennis Banks, from a 1996 interview

Wrap up
Pose the following question for students:

  • What can be done today to ensure that Native culture is defended and history will be learned? This can be an end-of-class discussion or written on an exit ticket to be handed in when students leave.

Extension idea
Have students examine the resources below to learn about what’s being done to defend Native culture and spread the understanding of Native history both in the U.S. and around the world. Students could develop a project on how the education system in their state could be changed to incorporate the culture and history of Native people.


Additional resources

About Native Knowledge 360° | Native Knowledge 360° - Interactive Teaching Resources
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/about/native-knowledge-360

OPINION: We must support the teachers who will be in charge of expanding Native history lessons
https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-we-must-support-the-teachers-who-will-be-in-charge-of-expanding-native-history-lessons/


From United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf

Article 14
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to establishand control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.

2. Indigenous individuals, particularly children,have the right to all levels and forms of education of the State without discrimination.

3. States shall, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their
own culture and provided in their own language.

 

General Tips for Teaching Controversial Subjects

  • Center activities on primary sources. Primary sources are tangible evidence that allow students to engage directly with history. These primary sources in particular were preserved and digitized by the Library of Congress because they were deemed important to the history of the United States.
  • Discussion and analysis of these sources can be wide ranging, but within each class those discussions can always be turned back to the source itself.
  • The sources are also, by definition, only pieces of a puzzle. They bring us closer to understanding the past but there is always room for doubt and uncertainty.  
  • Questions, Observations, and Reflections should come from students. These are primarily student-directed learning activities. It is the instructor's role to create a space for inquiry and empower students to drive the inquiry.
  • It may help to remind students at the outset that it is normal for different individuals to come to different conclusions, even when we are looking at the same sources. Further, it would be strange if we all agreed completely on our interpretations. This can normalize the strong reactions that can come up and enables educators to discuss the goal of historical research, which is to hopefully go beyond the realm of individual  perspective to access a fuller understanding of the past that takes multiple perspectives into account.
  • Teaching historical topics that involve violence and other trauma can be traumatic for some students as well. Providing students with previews of what content will be covered and space to process their emotions can be helpful. The following video series from the University of Minnesota contains further tips for teaching potentially traumatic topics: https://extension.umn.edu/trauma-and-healing/historical-trauma-and-cultural-healing.

 

Native Women and Suffrage - Beyond the 19th Amendment: A Guide for Pre-Service Teachers

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Article Body

What is it?

Women’s suffrage is a commonly-taught topic in U.S. history and the textbook narrative follows a familiar pattern: the topic often begins with Seneca Falls in 1848 and ends with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. While these were both important events, one way historians ask new questions about the past is by asking whether a topic’s generally accepted beginning and ending are actually the most useful for understanding the topic. Historians call this “periodization”. Sometimes it’s useful to include what happened before the time period and sometimes it's useful to consider what happened later. Along these lines, historians of women's suffrage like Cathleen Cahill have researched the contributions of Black women, Native women, and other women of color to the cause of women's suffrage. In Dr. Cahill’s book Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement, she notes that for many of these women the ratification of the 19th amendment was a step toward getting the right to vote but it was not sufficient to allow all women to vote. Additional obstacles included Jim Crow laws in the South that disenfranchised Black and Mexican women, federal laws that made Native people wards of the state, and immigration laws that prevented Chinese women from becoming citizens. By pulling back and considering a longer period of time, students and teachers can see the broader movement to secure the vote and better understand the history of suffrage.

Key points:

  • The activity outlined here will take one 90-minute period or two 45-minute periods. It is appropriate for a high school U.S. history classroom, but can be modified for a variety of learners.
  • Students will analyze, interpret, and evaluate primary sources.
  • Students will learn about how not all women received the right to vote with the 19th amendment and how Native, Black, Latin American, and Asian women both participated in the struggle for suffrage and incorporated that struggle into efforts to gain rights for their communities.

Approach to Topic

Examining women’s suffrage through the contributions of Native, Black, Latin American, and Asian women not only provides a fuller and more inclusive account of this important event in U.S. history, it also adds to students’ understanding of the history of race in the United States. For example, in the case of Native Americans, their depiction in U.S. history textbooks too often suffers from what Native scholar Vine Deloria, Jr., called “the ‘cameo’ theory of history” where Native people briefly appear “on stage” only to then disappear from a narrative that is centered around the activities of European Americans. By incorporating Native people throughout our study of U.S. history, we can avoid this “cameo” effect and communicate to students that Native people have been a part of American history from the beginning to the present day. For other people of color too in U.S. history, their actions and activities are often only touched upon in textbook sections that are isolated from the rest of U.S. history. For every major event in U.S. history, a wide variety of Americans from different racial backgrounds participated, often in important roles.  As Cahill writes, on these suffragist activists:


Their political awakenings emerged from their engagement with the concerns of their own communities as well as their anti-racist activism, fights for justice, and struggles for sovereignty and nation-building. They saw the campaign for women’s right to vote as addressing some of the specific concerns of their communities; they also
saw it as a means of finding allies in other causes.

Cahill highlights the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC as an event that brought together women suffragists from a variety of backgrounds to advocate for the vote. The parade took place on March 3, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Have students read this summary from the National Park Service about the 1913 parade: https://www.nps.gov/articles/woman-suffrage-procession1913.htm

When they are done, ask the class:

  • What was the parade trying to accomplish?  
  • How did they group themselves?
  • What obstacles did the marchers face?
  • How were Black and Native women were represented in the parade?  

Primary source activity

Provide students with links to the primary sources below. Ask them to choose one of the sources, and add to their responses to the questions above with observations about their source.

1913 Suffrage Parade
Primary sources:
Official program woman suffrage procession. Washington, D. C. March 3, 1913. | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.20801600/

Head of suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., Mar. 3, 1913 | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/97500042/

“Fifteen Thousand Women to March for Suffrage,” The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]), 28 April 1912. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1912-04-28/ed-1/seq-57/> (Mentions Mabel Lee)

"Home Makers," Suffrage Parade | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014691447/

[College section of the March 3, 1913, suffrage parade in Washington, D.C.] | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000444/

Woman suffrage parade, Wash., D.C. | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/2013648100/

Pro-Suffrage Activists
Below are profiles of women’s suffrage reformers who marched in the 1913 parade. These women wanted the 19th amendment to pass and for restrictions on women voting to end, but that was not enough to secure the vote for all of them. As a result, their activism did not end in 1920. Along with each reformer is a brief biographical sketch that details causes for which the individuals advocated before and after 1920.. Each profile also contains several primary sources for students to examine so they can learn more about the individual.

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin was born in 1863 on Ojibwe land in present-day North Dakota. She attended public schools in Minnesota and eventually graduated from Washington College of law. Baldwin used her status as a lawyer to advocate for Native issues. From 1904 to 1932 she worked for the U.S. federal government’s Office of Indian Affairs overseeing government contracts to reservations. She joined the Society of American Indians after it was formed in 1911. When the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, Native women like Baldwin were not automatically granted the right to vote as they were not considered U.S. citizens.

Primary Sources
Mrs. Marie L. Baldwin ,1914
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014697070/

Mrs. Marie L. Baldwin, 1914
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014697069/

GRETCHEN SMITH, “INDIAN COLLECTION WORK OF 30 YEARS: Mrs. Baldwin, Chippewa,” The Evening Star, April 15, 1929
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1929-04-15/ed-1/seq-7/

 

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin/ Zitkála-Šá


Zitkála-Šá (pronounced Zeet-KA-la-sha) was born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1876. A Yankton Dakota Sioux, Zitkála-Šá like many thousands of Native children at the time was also forced to attend a boarding school far away from her home. At eight years old, Zitkála-Šá left Yankton and her family to attend the Indiana Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana over 700 miles away.

In her life, Zitkála-Šá rose to prominence as a musician, writer, and political advocate. An accomplished violinist, she performed at the White House for President William McKinley in 1900 and as a soloist at the Paris Exposition that same year. A prolific writer, Zitkála-Šá’s presented depictions of American Indians that emphasized family and community in books such as American Indian Stories and presented her own experiences in personal essays for Harper’s Monthly and The Atlantic Monthly. When the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, Native women like Zitkála-Šá were not automatically granted the right to vote as they were not considered U.S. citizens.


Primary Sources
“She is Watching Congress,” Evening Public Ledger, February 22, 1921 https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1921-02-22/ed-1/seq-20/

“Sioux Princess Closely Watches Indian Welfare,” The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, February 26, 1921 https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86058226/1921-02-26/ed-1/seq-15/

Maryland Suffrage Sews, June 15, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060379/1918-06-15/ed-1/seq-5/

 

 

Carrie Williams Clifford

Carrie Williams Cliffordwas born and raised in Ohio. She graduated from an integrated high school in Columbus, Ohio and worked as a teacher and for her mothers hair styling business. Clifford published two books of poetry, Race Rhymes and The Widening Light. 

Clifford helped found the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women in 1900 and served as its first president. She advocated for the rights of women and for the rights of Black people. A close friend of W.E.B. Du Bois, Clifford recruited Black women to join the Niagara Movement, the organization that would become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1912. Four years after participating in the Suffrage Parade in Washington, Clifford marched with the NAACP in New York City in what was known as the “Silent Protest Parade” on July 18, 1917. The demonstration protested against violence against Black Americans, specifically the East St. Louis Massacre earlier that month. Clifford wrote a poem to commemorate the march: https://scalar.lehigh.edu/harlemwomen/silent-protest-parade After the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Clifford would have been able to vote in her native Ohio, but in many southern states Jim Crow laws effectively prevented Black men and Black women from voting until the 1960s.

Primary Sources:

“Mrs. Carrie Clifford Spoke Right Out in Meeting,” The broad ax. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah), 02 Sept. 1905. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024055/1905-09-02/ed-1/seq-1/>

(image)“Author of Rare Book of Poems,” Franklin's paper the statesman. (Denver, Colo.), 13 Jan. 1912. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91052311/1912-01-13/ed-1/seq-6/>

(image) “Mrs. Clifford Reelected,” The colored American. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 13 Aug. 1904. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83027091/1904-08-13/ed-1/seq-14/>

Carrie Williams Clifford, “Marching to Conquest,” 1911

Marching to Conquest

We are battling for the right with purpose strong and true;
'Tis a mighty struggle, but we've pledged to dare and do;
Pledged to conquer evil and we'll see the conflict thro'
Marching and marching to conquest.

All the noble things of life we'll teach our girls and boys,
Warn them of its pitfalls and reveal its purest joys,
Counsel, guide and keep them from the evil that destroys
As we go marching to conquest.

Loving confidence and trust must mark our intercourse,
Harmony and unity will our success enforce ;
Seeking guidance from the Lord of good, the boundless source,
As we go marching to conquest.

Come and join our anthem then and raise a mighty shout,
Sing it with such fervor as will put our foes to rout,
Sing it with conviction strong, dispelling every doubt,
As we go marching to conquest.

Women, when our work is o'er and we to rest have gone.
May our efforts doubled, trebled, still go sweeping on.
And the voices of millions swell the volume of our song.
As they go marching to conquest.

Chorus :
Hurrah, hurrah, we'll shout the jubilee;
Hurrah, hurrah, we'll set the captives free,
Ignorance, distrust and hate at our approach shall flee.
  Marching and marching to conquest.

 

Nina Otero-Warren

Nina Otero-Warren was born to a wealthy and prominent Spanish-speaking family in present-day New Mexico in 1881. College educated, Otero-Warren was briefly married to U.S. army officer Rawson Warren, but they divorced after two years. She never remarried and instead became an important figure in local politics in Albuquerque for over 50 years. In 1917, she became the head of the New Mexico chapter of the Congressional Union, which would become the National Woman’s Party. Otero-Warren pushed the party to publish suffrage literature in Spanish as well as English to reach the largest number of people in the American Southwest. From 1918 to 1929, Otero-Warren served as the Superintendent of Public Schools in Santa Fe County and in this role resisted efforts to impose English-only education and also publicly criticized the conditions of the county’s Indian boarding schools. 

In 1921, only a year after the 19th Amendment was ratified, Otero-Warren ran for Congress. She won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Representative, but lost in what was a close election.

 

Primary Sources

Adelina Otero-Warren | Library of Congress

https://www.loc.gov/item/2014716277/

“Mrs. Otero-Warren Equipment for Service in the U.S. Congress,” The Clayton news. (Clayton, N.M.), 27 Oct. 1922. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93061573/1922-10-27/ed-1/seq-4/>

“Picturesque Family History Adds Interest to Race for Congress by Mrs. Otero-Warren.” The Clayton news. (Clayton, N.M.), 29 Sept. 1922. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93061573/1922-09-29/ed-1/seq-4/>

 

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was born in Guangzhou, China in 1897. When Lee was nine-years-old, she won an academic scholarship to study in New York City where her father, a missionary, was already living. Living in Chinatown and attending school at the Erasmus Hall Academy in Brooklyn, Lee became involved with activism as a teenager participating, on horseback, in her first suffrage parade in 1912. Lee attended Barnard College and wrote essays for the college’s The Chinese Students’ Monthly one of which was titled “The Meaning of Woman Suffrage.” When the 19th Amendment was ratified, Lee herself was not still able to vote because the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented any Chinese person from becoming a U.S. citizen. Lee earned her PhD in economics from Columbia University and published an economic history of China in 1921.  

Primary Sources
“Chinese Girl Wants to Vote,” New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]), 13 April 1912. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1912-04-13/ed-1/seq-3/>


Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Excerpt from “The Meaning of Woman Suffrage” The Chinese Student Monthly, Barnard College, May 1914.

I once heard Professor Kirchway of Columbia say that although scientists are always
telling us that in the midst of life we are in death, we are not as apt to realize it as
much as that while in the midst of life we are in the woman suffrage question. And it
is a fact that no matter where we go we cannot escape hearing about woman
suffrage. Yet there is hardly a question more misunderstood or that has more
misapplications. So manifold are its misconceptions that it has come to be a by-­‐word
suitable for every occasion. For instance, if when in company one should wish to
scramble out of an embarrassing situation, or his more fortunate brother should
wish to be considered witty, all that either would have to do would be to mention
woman suffrage, and they may be sure of laughter and merriment in response.

The reason for this is that the idea of woman suffrage at first stood for something
abnormal, strange and extraordinary, and so has finally become the word for
anything ridiculous. The idea that women should ever wish to have or be anything
more than their primitive mothers appears at first thought to be indeed tragic
enough to be comic; but if we sit down and really think it over, throwing aside all
sentimentalism, we find that it is nothing more than a wider application of our ideas
of justice and equality. We all believe in the idea of democracy; woman suffrage or
the feminist movement (of which woman suffrage is a fourth part) is the application
of democracy to women.

Suggested activity: Reframe the story
After students have read through the textbook account of women’s suffrage, distribute the sources and brief biographical sketches of the women’s suffrage reformers listed above. Prompt the students to take special note of each reformer’s activities before and after the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. Place them in groups where each group has a mix of students who learned about a different reformer. In groups, have them draft new text for a textbook entry on women's suffrage that provides a new timeline for the topic. Questions they should consider as they write their entry:

  • What dates are the most important to emphasize? Do they need a timeline to communicate the order of events?
  • What primary sources should they use as part of the text?
  • What should the title of their textbook section be?

General Tips for Teaching Controversial Subjects

  • Center activities on primary sources. Primary sources are tangible evidence that allow students to engage directly with history. These primary sources in particular were preserved and digitized by the Library of Congress because they were deemed important to the history of the United States.
  • Discussion and analysis of these sources can be wide ranging, but within each class those discussions can always be turned back to the source itself.
  • The sources are also, by definition, only pieces of a puzzle. They bring us closer to understanding the past but there is always room for doubt and uncertainty.  
  •  Questions, Observations, and Reflections should come from students. These are primarily student-directed learning activities. It is the instructor's role to create a space for inquiry and empower students to drive the inquiry.
  •  It may help to remind students at the outset that it is normal for different individuals to come to different conclusions, even when we are looking at the same sources. Further, it would be strange if we all agreed completely on our interpretations. This can normalize the strong reactions that can come up and enables educators to discuss the goal of historical research, which is to hopefully go beyond the realm of individual  perspective to access a fuller understanding of the past that takes multiple perspectives into account.
  • Teaching historical topics that involve violence and other trauma can be traumatic for some students as well. Providing students with previews of what content will be covered and space to process their emotions can be helpful. The following video series from the University of Minnesota contains further tips for teaching potentially traumatic topics: https://extension.umn.edu/trauma-and-healing/historical-trauma-and-cultural-healing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comanche Nation and "Manifest Destiny": A Guide for Pre-Service Teachers

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Article Body

What is it?

“Manifest Destiny” — the idea that the U.S.-Americans had a religious certainty that would settle the breadth of the North American continent from coast to coast — has become a kind of shorthand for explaining the expansion of the United States. This notion has also been reinforced by many U.S. History textbooks. The reality, as is often the case with history, is quite a bit more complicated. This guide provides resources to help teachers support students as they consider Manifest Destiny more critically. Not only did territorial expansion have many causes and motivations, it was not destined in any sense.

Key Points

  • The activities outlined here will take one 90-minute period or two 45-minute periods. It is appropriate for a high school U.S. history classroom, but can be modified for a variety of learners.
  • Students will analyze, interpret, and evaluate primary sources. 
  • Students will learn to critically analyze the term "Manifest Destiny" and learn more about the history of Comanche people in the American Southwest. 


Manifest Destiny in Textbooks


Many U.S. history textbooks frame the territorial expansion of the United States before the Civil War using the idea of “Manifest Destiny.” For example, in McGraw Hill’s United States History and Geography Unit 7 that covers 1820-1848 is titled “Manifest Destiny.” The unit also presents the expansion of the United States as more or less inevitable rather than a result of specific choices made by people in the past, thereby reinforcing rather than critiquing the premise of Manifest Destiny. When Native Americans are mentioned in the unit, they tend to be portrayed as an obstacle to this process. Teachers can encourage students to question the idea of Manifest Destiny and to reconsider how this narrative is being framed by their textbook by engaging with sources and historical scholarship that presents a more complex picture.

In the Classroom


Warm Up - Reframing Manifest Destiny

To encourage students to question the way the textbook frames the territorial expansion of the United States as Manifest Destiny provide the two images linked below for student to compare:

Image one: https://www.loc.gov/item/97507547/

Image two: https://iltf.org/get-involved/

The first image, the 1872 painting American Progress by John Gast, will likely already be familiar to students as it is used in many textbooks often in the same chapter that deals with “Manifest Destiny”. The second image is from the web page of a Native land rights advocacy organization the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. Titled “Reversing Manifest Destiny” it explains the mission of the organization while also commenting on Gast’s painting and the concept of Manifest Destiny. While students examine these images have them consider the following questions:

  • What similarities do you notice between the two images?
  • What differences do you notice?
  • What story do you think each image is trying to tell?
  • Why do you think the Indian Land Tenure Foundation decided to use an image based on Gast’s painting?

Comanche Nation in the Southwest

To better understand this period in American history, students can explore the history of Indigenous people who were already living in the West at the time “Manifest Destiny” was first introduced. In 1845, when columnist John O’Sullivan coined “Manifest Destiny,” a large part of the West was controlled by the politically and economically formidable Comanche, which actively thwarted expansion efforts on multiple fronts. One historian, Pekka Hämäläinen, even goes as far as calling the Comanches an “empire”. Hämäläinen writes, “For a century, roughly from 1750 to 1850, the Comanches were the dominant people in the Southwest, and they manipulated and exploited the colonial outposts in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and northern Mexico to increase their safety, prosperity, and power.”

It is important to note that not all historians agree with Hämäläinen’s argument and reject the idea that Comanches or any other Indian groups constituted an “empire” at this time. Indigenous historians including Ned Blackhawk and Jameson Sweet and scholar Delphine Red Shirt argue that using the term “empire” distorts Indigenous history and culture and does not properly account for the effects of U.S. colonialism on Indigenous communities. Sweet wrote specifically that “Forcing the ‘empire’ label onto the Comanche was inaccurate and misguided”.

So whether there was a Comanche Empire is a topic of debate among historians, but the consensus among historians is that the Comanche were a formidable power in the American Southwest. This is not the impression that readers would get from U.S. history textbooks, however. In the McGraw Hill textbook, a small section deals with Native Americans and then only focuses on the Northern Plains. Meanwhile in three other sections titled “The Hispanic Southwest,” “Independence for Texas,” and “The War With Mexico,” the Comanches are mentioned only in passing and only in the context of attacks on white settlements. In both these instances, the Comanches are mentioned along with the Apache, so no independent treatment is provided for students about this group that shaped the Southwest for over a century.

Source Activities

Source Activity 1: Comanche Strategy

The Comanches mastered a divide and conquer style of politics and consistently played their rivals against each other. After warring on and off with the Spanish colony of New Mexico in the 1770s and 1780s, for example, the western Comanche leader, Ecueracapa, signed a peace treaty with the military governor of New Mexico, Juan Batista de Anza in 1786. As part of the treaty, the Comanche joined forces with Spain to attack their mutual rivals the Apaches in New Mexico. The results of one such battle are depicted in the source below.

Primary Source #1
[Comanche pictograph map of the Battle of Sierra Blanca, 1787]. | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014590059/

It is important for historians of Indigenous people to use sources created by the Indigenous people themselves whenever possible. This map is one such source. The map was drawn after the battle by a Comanche participant and then it was sent to Governor Anza as the official record of the altercation. The key below the map, the letters A-G with Spanish text, was added by Spanish officials to interpret the map. Together they relate how many Comanche warriors were involved in the battle, how many on each side were killed, and how many people and horses were captured. Anza certified the document himself — signing and dating the document July 30, 1787 on the bottom.

The source is also significant for being a rare example of a source created by a Comanche from this period that has survived to the present day.

When using this map to students teachers can ask them to consider what this source created by Comanche people can tell us about the Comanche. Remind students to keep in mind that the source provides only the information that this group of Comanches wanted the government of Mexico to know.


Questions for students to consider:

  • Why do you think the Comanches recorded this information and sent it to the governor of Mexico?
  • How might the Comanches stand to benefit from the result of this battle?
  • This map was created in 1787, one year before the U.S. Constitution was ratified and over 50 years before “Manifest Destiny” was first used. In what ways does this source make us reconsider what was happening in the American West at this time?

Source activity 2: Geography

By the 1840s, Comanchería, as the territory the Comanches controlled was called, stretched from Sante Fe in the West to San Antonio in the East. In the North, it stretched to approximately the Arkansas river in the North and in the South to the Pecos river. While powerful, the Comanche also remained “hidden” in a sense. The Comanches allowed and even sometimes encouraged settlements in their territory, but then also gained economically from those territories through raids and trade. Thus maps of the period tended to downplay the range of territory that the Comanche controlled.

Primary Source #2:
A new map of Texas, Oregon and California. 1846 https://www.loc.gov/item/00561203/.

For students to gain a better understanding of the geography of the Comanche influence in the Southwest, have them analyze this map. So that the students can zoom in on parts of the map this activity would work best on a computer - either as a whole class with the map projected on a screen or individually or in pairs with personal laptops or tablets.

First, draw their attention to the area shaded green and labeled “Texas” in the bottom part of the map. Zoom in or have students zoom in and examine this area closely. The Comanche controlled region at the time the map was made extended roughly to the following:
Eastern border - Warrenton on the Red River
Western border - Santa Fe in the West
Northern border - Arkansas River
Southern Border - Pecos River

Key questions:

  • What evidence is on the map that the Comanches lived in this region?
  • Would they conclude from that map that the Comanches controlled the territory? Why or why not?
  • Students could additionally find the same area on a map in the textbook from this chapter - Are the Comanches are mentioned at all?

Source Activity 3: Trade Network and Economic Power
The Comanche’s power in the Southwest was fueled by a vast trade network that connected various American markets. This trade network featured a supply chain that provided horses and mules to the growing Euro-American settlements in Missouri, Arkansans, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In addition to livestock, the Comanche traded bison hides from animals they hunted on the prairie which were highly sought after by buyers in cities on the east coast of the United States. In addition to these exports, the Comanche imported goods from all over the continent. Staples like maize from New Mexico, molasses from New Orleans, and coffee and wheat flour from the United States. Blankets were imported from Navajo country and metal goods such as kettles, pans, and knives came from eastern U.S. cities. Vast supplies of weapons too entered Comancheria in the form of lead, powder, and muskets which further bolstered the Comanches ability to conduct raids into Mexico and Texas.

A key part of this trading network and a key part of the Comanches success overall was the ability to acquire and trade horses. To give students a sense of how horses fit into the culture of the Comanche and other Southern Plains groups have them examine this collection of sources from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian https://americanindian.si.edu/exhibitions/horsenation/trading.html

Questions to consider about these sources:
Choose one of the sources in the NMAI gallery to examine in detail

  • What purpose did the object serve?
  • What details do you notice?
  • What evidence is there that this object took a long time to create?
  • What evidence is there that this object took expertise to create?
  • What do these sources tell us about how the Comanches along with the Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, Ute, and Shoshone valued horses?

In discussing this vast Comanche trading network with students, teachers could return to the 1846 map (Primary Source #2) or any other map from their textbook and see if they can locate  Bent’s Fort. On the 1846 map it is obscured by shading but it can be found on the Arkansas River on the northern edge of Comanchería. Bent’s Fort was a U.S. military fort but it also served as a trade hub for the trade goods listed above coming into and flowing out of Comanchería. Students could then find locations like New Orleans, New Mexico, Navajo country to appreciate the reach and extent of this trade.

Along with examining the map and considering the trade that centered at Bent’s Fort, Students could also examine a drawing of the fort itself:
Drawing of Bent’s Fort, 1859 https://www.loc.gov/item/2004661632/

Land Theft and Extermination of the American Bison
The United States did eventually expand into Comanchería, but this expansion could not be called Manifest Destiny. Instead it was a drawn out process that met with fierce resistance from the Comanche and relied on the purposeful extermination of almost an entire species of animal. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the U.S. government turned its attention to settling the west and devoted increased military resources to accomplish this goal. To open up the land for settlers, the U.S. planned to designate tracts of land as reservations for Native Americans to live on. Another goal of this policy was to assimilate Native Americans into white-U.S. culture and to end the practices associated with hunting and religious practices.

One group of reservations would be for Indians of the northern plains, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, Northern Arapahoes and Crows, and would be located in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. Another group of reservations would be for the Indians of the Southwest and southern plains, including the Comanches, Kiowas, Naishans, Southern Cheyenne, and Southern Arapahoes, and would be located in what is today western Oklahoma.

In 1867, the Medicine Lodge Treaty officially created the southern reservations. The Comanches and several allied groups agreed to the terms but had their own interpretation of what those terms meant. The treaty also granted bison hunting rights to the Comanche in the region south of the Arkansas River. These hunting grounds extended beyond the reservation tract and to the Comanches thinking that meant that this land had not been ceded. Comanche made use of the reservation but only seasonally — raiding and hunting in the spring, summer, and fall and then returning to the reservation in the winter. Thus while the U.S. government sought to end the way of life of the Comanche and other southern plains Native people, the Comanches instead incorporated the reservation into their seasonal migration. With bison to hunt the Comanche did not need the support of the U.S. government that the reservation represented.

Unable to control the Comanches using military force, the U.S. government’s response was to eliminate their means of support: the bison. Beginning in 1868, under the direction of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and his subordinate Gen. Philip Sheridan, the U.S. Army actively engaged in the mass killing of bison and encouraged private hunters by organizing hunting excursions and even supplying firearms when requested
.  
Primary Source #4
Sherman to Sheridan, 10 May 1868, The Papers of Philip H . Sheridan, microfilm reel no. 17, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter Sheridan Papers)
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss39768.017_0007_0246/?sp=4
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss39768.017_0007_0246/?sp=5
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss39768.017_0007_0246/?sp=6

Handwritten letter excerpted above

Handwritten letter excerpted above.

Handwritten letter excerpted above.

Handwritten letter excerpted above.

By some estimates, this campaign resulted in the killing of 31 million American bison between 1868 and 1881. Some were harvested for their valuable hides or meat, but many were just left to rot. The purpose was to deny the resource to the Native people. Thus deprived of their primary source of food and their most valuable trade good, the Comanche were unable to mount as formidable a military force as they had in the pre-Civil War period. As historian David D. Smits argues: “In the end, the frontier army’s well-calculated policy of destroying the buffalo in order to conquer the Plains Indians proved more effective than any other weapon in its arsenal.” Under the charismatic leadership of Quanah Parker, however, the Comanches continued to hold out against efforts by the U.S. Army to confine them to the reservation. Not until September 28, 1874 with the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, part of what was known as the Red River Wars, were the Comanche forces defeated.

Born in 1845 to a Comanche leader (Peta Nocona) and an Anglo American mother (Cynthia Ann Parker), Quanah Parker was not only an effective and resourceful military leader but was also representative of the Comanche’s flexible understanding of race and tendency to incorporate captives into their society.

Primary Source #5

[Quanah Parker, Comanche Indian Chief, full-length portrait, standing, facing front, holding feathers, in front of tepee] | Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/89714963/

Questions to ask about this source:

  • Why do you think Quanah Parker chose to present herself in traditional Native clothing.
  • What might have been his reasons for this choice?

Comanche Nation Today

Despite the efforts of the U.S. government to undermine the Comanches, the Comanche Nation still exists today with approximately 17,000 enrolled tribal members. The Comanche Nation Constitution ratified in 1966, declares that the mission of the Comanche Nation is to:
“1. To define, establish and safe guard the rights, powers and privileges of the tribe and its members.
 2. To improve the economic, moral, educational and health status of its members and to cooperate with and seek the assistance of the United States in carrying out mutual programs to accomplish these purposes by all possible means.  
3. To promote in other ways the common well-being of the tribe and its membership.

The headquarters for the Comanche Nation is located in southwestern Oklahoma in a town called Lawton. In 2007, the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center opened in Lawton. https://www.comanchemuseum.com/index.html

Manifest Destiny - Additional Approaches

Other sources to explore

An important source for understanding the history of Indigenous people are the collected stories passed down from ancestors. A Comanche man, Francis Joseph Attocknie, collected the stories of his grandfather and great grandmother passed their ancestor, Ten Bears, who was a Yamparika Comanche leader who lived from 1790 to 1872. Attocknie compiled these stories in the book The Life of Ten Bears: Comanche Historical Narratives. Attocknie writes of these collected stories:


The greatest and most reliable source of Comanche history was the enjoyable, time-passing evening sessions of storytelling by wise, ancient, and loving grandfathers and grandmothers. Those story sessions entertained as well as taught. Sometimes there would be more than one person holding the session; a visiting ancient one might collaborate or add bits here and there, or just audibly agree to the account as it unwound and held spellbound its listeners, both young and adult. Repetition never bored the enthralled listeners. In fact, the young, especially, often asked for repeats of favorite accounts of certain events or stories. These stories, too, often had musical tones as the storyteller interspersed the accounts with an appropriate song that had a place in the telling of an account.

Other lessons

“How Did Six Different Native Nations Try to Avoid Removal?” National Museum of the American Indian
An excellent lesson plan about the strategies that six American Indian nations tried to avoid removal from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Afterwards students select a case study and closely examine the sources that tell a story of removal.
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/removal#titlePage

The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) has put together a great activity with primary sources that demonstrates the multiple motivations behind expansion as well as sources from those at the time who opposed this expansion. https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons/manifest-destiny

Other approaches

In addition to incorporating an activity on the Comanches, there are a number of other ways teachers can help students understand the complexity behind Manifest Destiny and territorial expansion.  Students can, for example, consider the writings of John L. O’Sullivan, the columnist who coined the term Manifest Destiny, in their historical context. O’Sullivan was an enthusiastic advocate of westward expansion, and used Manifest Destiny in a column advocating for the United States to annex the then independent republic of Texas in 1845. The very fact that O’Sullivan was trying to make the case for annexation implies strongly that not everyone agreed with his position. Clearly not everyone in the United States at the time felt that the United States had a moral obligation to expand. O’Sullivan himself gives more than one rationale for expanding, noting that a U.S. that spread across the continent would engender the “immense utility to the commerce of the world” which hints that there were also economic reasons to support expansion.

Teachers might introduce a unit on Manifest Destiny by playing this brief audio clip (~5 minutes), a group of historians explain what Manifest Destiny means and how they approach the topic with students. https://www.r2studios.org/show/consolation-prize/season-2-trailer-what-is-manifest-destiny/  
The terminology might be difficult for some students, but even if not used in the classroom the clip is helpful for teachers looking for a brief but scholarly perspective on Manifest Destiny.

Teachers could also have students search Manifest Destiny on Google Books Ngram Viewer <https://books.google.com/ngrams/>. This search engine charts the frequencies of any word or phrase using a yearly count found in printed sources that have been digitized by Google. The graph shows that the term was used increasingly in the 1840s through the 1850s. Teachers could ask students why they think that was the case. It seems to suggest that rather than describing that the Manifest Destiny served as a justification after the expansion occurred.  https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=manifest+destiny&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

 

General Tips for Teaching Controversial Subjects

  • Center activities on primary sources. Primary sources are tangible evidence that allow students to engage directly with history. These primary sources in particular were preserved and digitized by the Library of Congress because they were deemed important to the history of the United States.
  • Discussion and analysis of these sources can be wide ranging, but within each class those discussions can always be turned back to the source itself.
  • The sources are also, by definition, only pieces of a puzzle. They bring us closer to understanding the past but there is always room for doubt and uncertainty.  
  • Questions, Observations, and Reflections should come from students. These are primarily student-directed learning activities. It is the instructor's role to create a space for inquiry and empower students to drive the inquiry.
  • It may help to remind students at the outset that it is normal for different individuals to come to different conclusions, even when we are looking at the same sources. Further, it would be strange if we all agreed completely on our interpretations. This can normalize the strong reactions that can come up and enables educators to discuss the goal of historical research, which is to hopefully go beyond the realm of individual  perspective to access a fuller understanding of the past that takes multiple perspectives into account.
  • Teaching historical topics that involve violence and other trauma can be traumatic for some students as well. Providing students with previews of what content will be covered and space to process their emotions can be helpful. The following video series from the University of Minnesota contains further tips for teaching potentially traumatic topics: https://extension.umn.edu/trauma-and-healing/historical-trauma-and-cultural-healing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rethinking "Westward Expansion": A Guide for Preservice Teachers

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Article Body

What is it?


“Westward expansion” is a topic covered in many U.S. history textbooks and one that appears in most every state's social studies standards. At the same time, most states also mandate that students be taught to consider history from multiple perspectives or points of view. But what does it mean to consider multiple perspectives about westward expansion? What would it mean to consider the point of view of Native Americans who were the most directly affected by the process called western expansion? A change of perspective might reveal a great deal. As historian Daniel Richter notes in his book, Facing East From Indian Country, “if we shift our perspective to try to view the past in a way that faces east from Indian country, history takes on a very different appearance.” Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz makes a similar point in her 2015 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, “Writing US history from an Indigenous peoples' perspective requires rethinking the consensual national narrative. That narrative is wrong or deficient, not in its facts, dates, or details but rather in its essence. Inherent in the myth we've been taught is an embrace of settler colonialism and genocide.” This guide provides teachers with resources to analyze Library of Congress primary sources so that students can account for Indigenous perspectives that “faced east” in their analysis of westward expansion, colonialism, and land rights.

Key points:

  • The activity outlined here will take one 90-minute period or two 45-minute periods. It is appropriate for a high school U.S. history classroom, but can be modified for a variety of learners.
  • Students will analyze, interpret, and evaluate primary sources. 
  • Students will learn about Native peoples responses to the settlement of the western U.S. and gain new perspectives to better understand "Westward Expansion".

Approach to Topic

Even the term “westward expansion” assumes a facing-west point of view rather than a perspective of someone already living in the west. While U.S. history textbooks now include more topics related to Native people, these topics are typically presented as a subset of a larger story about westward expansion. For example, in McGraw Hill’s United States History and Geography, the chapter on westward expansion, “Settling the West,” contains a section titled “Native Americans”, but it comes after two other sections: “Miners and Ranchers” covering the California gold rush and cattle ranching in the west, and “Farming the Plains” which deals with white settlers seeking farmland in the west. Framing and organizing the topic this way presents Native people as obstacles or complications to the westward movement of settlers. This framing also implies that westward expansion was more or less inevitable rather than a series of deliberate choices, an idea often closely linked with the concept of “manifest destiny” as a divinely-ordained establishment of the United States.

The textbook narrative obscures the fact that the taking of Native people’s land was an intentional project backed by the U.S. federal government. Instead of emphasizing the deliberate dispossession of Native land, students usually read about a series of general breakdowns in relations between two groups, settlers and Native people. For example, the 1867 Indian Peace Commission is presented under a subheading of “Doomed Plan for Peace” while the 1887 Dawes Act is presented as a largely positive plan to help Native Americans that simply “failed to achieve its goals.” In other places the purposeful destruction of Native resources is described in the passive voice, such as “The buffalo were rapidly disappearing.” In response to these textbook depictions, teachers can encourage students to analyze how these topics are framed in their textbooks and think about how they might look from another point of view.

To teach students to consider the multiple perspectives on westward expansion, it is also important for teachers to think critically about their own relationship to place and support their students in doing the same. The history of “westward expansion” involved a series of events where Native people were displaced, removed from their land, and coerced into signing disadvantageous treaties many of which were later broken by federal, state, or territorial governments. As scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang have written:

In order for the settlers to make a place their home, they must destroy and disappear the Indigenous peoples that live there. Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to be in a particular place - indeed how we/they came to be a place . . . For the settlers, Indigenous peoples are in the way and, in the destruction of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities, and over time and through law and policy, Indigenous peoples’ claims to land under settler regimes, land is recast as property and as a resource. Indigenous peoples must be erased, must be made into ghosts.

In teaching this topic to students, it is therefore necessary to not make Native people into the “ghosts” that Tuck and Yang reference and to understand that Native people did not disappear, indeed they refused to, despite the repeated efforts of governments and settlers.

One challenge to including the perspective of Native people at this time is that colonial record-keeping disproportionately documented the perspectives of white men in positions of social authority this is part of the same disappearing process described by Tuck and Yang. Though the sources are sometimes more difficult to locate, resources do exist to help teachers actively include the perspectives of Native people and share it with students. Many Native people throughout the past and up to the present day have continued to assert their points of view in spaces visible to the wider U.S. public. Their voices are sometimes visible within colonial sources, including through a process of reading against the grain. Indigenous people have vigorously defended against settler land theft and continue to invest in their cultural, governmental, artistic, linguistic, and social systems today, despite centuries of colonial disruptions.

This guide will focus on two examples of Indigenous people who advocated for Indigenous rights in the early 1900s: Zitkala-Ša (also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)  and Charles Eastman (also known as Ohiyesa). Both were important figures in the Society of American Indians, an organization established by Native intellectuals from across the country in 1911. The members of the SAI, in scholar Philip J. Deloria’s words, “worked actively to preserve elements of Native cultures and societies from destruction.” Through their words and actions teachers can locate an alternative to the westward expansion point of view and make a different history more apparent.

Description

Zitkála-Šá
Zitkála-Šá (pronounced Zeet-KA-la-sha) was Yankton Dakota, born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1876. Like many thousands of Native children at the time was also forced to attend a boarding school far away from her home. At eight years old, Zitkála-Šá left Yankton and her family to attend the Indiana Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana over 700 miles away. At the institute she was given the name Gertrude Simmons (later Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) which she also used at various points in her life. Zitkála-Šá would attend the boarding school for three years and there learned to play violin and piano. She returned to Yankton, and then went back to the institute three years later. Upon graduation, she took a position as a music teacher at the school. Zitkála-Šá/Gertrude Simmons became an expert at navigating two cultures. Some scholars have seen Zitkála-Šá as a person who assimilated into white-U.S. culture, but more recently scholars have emphasized how she used these cultural skills to support and defend Native people and culture. As historian Tadeusz Lewandowski writes in his biography of Zitkála-Šá, she “fought the dispossession of Indians with every tool of white society she had mastered.”

In her life, Zitkála-Šá rose to prominence as a musician, writer, and political advocate. An accomplished violinist, she performed at the White House for President William McKinley in 1900 and as a soloist at the Paris Exposition that same year. A prolific writer, Zitkála-Šá’s presented depictions of American Indians that emphasized family and community in books such as American Indian Stories and presented her own experiences in personal essays for Harper’s Monthly and The Atlantic Monthly.

In perhaps her most famous work, The Sun Dance, Zitkála-Šá translated the sacred, ceremonial dances performed by various Native groups across the Americas - dances that had been declared illegal by the federal government - into an opera. Working with composer William F. Hanson, Zitkála-Šá used her training in western music and her knowledge of Native culture to demonstrate the beauty of these dances in a form that would draw the attention of the larger U.S. public.

For more background on how The Sun Dance opera came to be written by Zitkála-Šá and Hanson have students listen to an excerpt from this interview with Zitkála-Šá P. Jane Hafen from the podcast Unsung History https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/zitkala-sa/. The excerpt on The Sun Dance is from 21:16 to 25:53. 

Questions to ask about this source: In what ways was The Sun Dance a product of western culture and in what ways was it a product of Native American culture? How does it demonstrate Zitkála-Šá’s understanding of two cultural worlds?

Zitkála-Šá also used her cultural expertise to lobby the government directly on policies that affected Indigenous people and in particular advocated for the government to protect Native people and culture.

Primary Source #1
“She is Watching Congress,” Evening Public Ledger, February 22, 1921 https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1921-02-22/ed-1/seq-20/

Primary Source #2
“Sioux Princess Closely Watches Indian Welfare,” The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, February 26, 1921 https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86058226/1921-02-26/ed-1/seq-15/


Questions to ask about these primary sources:

  • Although white reporters regularly used stereotypical and condescending terms to refer to Zitkála-Šá (i.e. describing her as a “Sioux princess” who was “watching Congress”), she chose to present herself in traditional Native clothing. What might have been her reasons for this choice?
  • How might this decision have fit with her goals to influence Congress on Native issues?
  • Compare these photos to a photo of Zitkála-Šá in western clothing: https://www.nps.gov/people/zitkala-sa.htm
  • Why might she choose one form of dress over another depending on the situation?
  • How might her choice of clothing affected how audiences viewed her?
  • How might her choice of clothing made it more likely for white audiences to listen to her?

Along with other members of the Society of American Indians, Zitkála-Šá advocated for Native Americans to receive the full benefits of United States citizenship including the right to vote. Scholar K. Tsianina Lomawaima argues that the Society for American Indians saw citizenship as a tool to defend Native people from dispossession and protect their land. The Dawes Act, also known as the General Allotment Act of 1887, converted Indigenous territories from collective management and converted that territory to private, transferrable land deeds for individual land tracts based on western land ownership. As a result of the Dawes Act, Indigenous people lost 90 million acres of land in less than fifty years.

Under the Dawes Act, Native people whom the US government did not see as “competent” had their land (called an “allotment”) held by the US government. Though Native people were already citizens of their Native nations and did not necessarily want US citizenship, Zitkála-Šá saw U.S. citizenship as one possible form of protection against land loss. She not only advocated for citizenship for Native Americans but also for women to receive the right to vote. In this source from 1918, Zitkála-Šá addressed the National American Women's Suffrage Association and tied together the causes of the women’s vote and the vote for Native Americans:

Primary Source #3:
Maryland Suffrage News, June 15, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060379/1918-06-15/ed-1/seq-5/

Question to ask about this primary source:

  • Why might Zitkála-Šá have decided to speak to the National American Women's Suffrage Association?
  • What were her goals? [For more resources on Native American women advocating for womens’ suffrage, see the guide on Native Women and Suffrage]

In 1924, partially as a result of the lobbying of Zitkála-Šá and the Society of American Indians, the Indian Citizenship Act was passed. This concluded the process of making all Native people born in the United States citizens. Although it is important to note that states could restrict the Native people’s right to vote and states such as Utah and New Mexico did just that. Zitkála-Šá continued to speak out on Native issues to both national and local groups. For example, in 1928 in Bismarck, North Dakota she gave a talk on the history of Native people and the current Native issues to the Rotarians, a community-based organization.

Primary Source #4:
“Rotarians Hear Famous Woman at Weekly Meeting,” The Bismarck Tribune, June 14, 1928. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042243/1928-06-14/ed-1/seq-7/


Questions to ask about this primary source:

  • According to the newspaper article, what did Zitkála-Šá tell the Rotations about the history of Native people?
  • Why do you think the article addresses Indigenous participation in the World War?
  • What did she say about the current situation faced by Native people?
  • Why do you think she chose to emphasize these issues?

Charles Eastman
 As was the case with Zitkála-Šá, Charles Eastman’s upbringing involved direct experience with white society, his Dakota nation, and a variety intertribal communities. He too developed skills to move within and between these social spaces. Born in 1858 near Redwood Falls, Minnesota to a Dakota woman named Winona who died in childbirth, he was given the name “Hakadah.” He fled with his family to Canada following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. As an older child, he was given the name Ohiyesa (pronounced oh-he-yes-suh and meaning “the winner”) after a victory in a lacrosse match. When he was 15, his father — who had been estranged from the family — returned and demanded that Ohiyesa live with him in Dakota Territory near present day Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Ohiyesa’s father had converted to Christianity and taken the name “Jacob Eastman”. His father changed Ohiyesa’s name to “Charles Alexander Eastman” and enrolled him in white schools. Similar to Zitkála-Šá, Eastman grieved about the separation from the culture he was born into while, at the same time, he also excelled in his new environment. After secondary school, he attended college at Beloit College and then Dartmouth, and eventually earned his degree in medicine from Boston Medical School in 1890.


Eastman sought to use his training to help Native people so shortly after earning his degree, he accepted a position on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. On December 29, 1890, only a few weeks after Eastman’s arrival, 500 soldiers of the United States 7th Cavalry confronted a band of 350 Miniconjou Lakota Indians that included women and children and fired on the unarmed group killing more than 150 people. It is important to emphasize that this incident, which would become known as the Wounded Knee Massacre was not an isolated incident but part of a pattern where U.S. military forces, often commanded by officers with little to no knowledge of Native people and irrationally paranoid about their safety fired on defenseless Native groups that included unarmed men, women, and children with deadly results. Soldiers and travelers took souvenirs and graphic photographs document the carnage. At Pine Ridge, Eastman helped treat the few who survived. For more on the Wounded Knee Massacre read this entry from the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains: http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.war.056

In addition to his career as a physician, Eastman wrote about Native American people and culture in a way that both defied the stereotypes prevalent among whites at the time and also countered the prevailing notion that Native Americans were a disappearing people and culture. In this account, Eastman related a visit to the Objibwe of Northern Minnesota.

Primary Source #5:

As I approached the island next morning. I saw a pretty procession of birch-bark canoes converging upon it. This was evidently a gathering of the clans whose highway is the blue water, and the graceful canoe their sole means of transportation. Invariably the man sits in the bow of the light craft, his wife at the stern, and the children by pairs between so low that only the tops of their black heads are visible. All the household effects are carried, except the dogs, who are obliged to run along the shore and swim the narrows from island to island.

The whole family, even little children, paddle the canoe, and such skill, confidence and safety I have never seen elsewhere. "When the wind rises and the water is so rough that no one can be found willing to venture out in launch or row boat, these people may be seen skimming the big waves like aquatic birds. Along the shore I saw women here and there, setting their gillnets for the wily pike and bass. Most of them do this as an every-day duty. In camp, some were making nets, others working upon their birchen cones, preparing the bark and the cedar bindings, or soaking the strappings and boiling pitch to glue the seams.

Majigabo's immediate village was the meeting-place, and there was the "sacred ground" where they initiate new members into their lodge, consecrate some of the children, celebrate old rites, and commemorate the departed. There were feasts galore of the delicious wild rice, venison, dried moose meat, bear steaks, and sturgeon. Maple sugar packed in small birchen boxes called "mococks" was plentiful and of the finest flavor. Here is one chief just beyond sight of the smoke of the locomotive, in the heart of a wilderness already penetrated by the whistle of the saw-mill, who still preserves many of the ancient usages of his forefathers.

 Charles Eastman, “My Canoe Trip Among the Northern Ojibwe Indians of Minnesota The Oglala light. [volume], May 01, 1911. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2017270500/1911-05-01/ed-1/seq-13/

Questions to ask about this primary source:

  • What year did Eastman write this account? 
  • In what ways does the account reveal the persistence of Indigenous intellectual traditions and technologies despite colonial pressures to assimilate? 
  • How does this reshape the narrative about westward expansion present in your textbook?
  • In what ways did Eastman emphasize family, community, and land relations in his description? Why do you think he did that?

In the Classroom
The primary sources above can be incorporated into a unit that also covers westward expansion. Teachers can use this opportunity to have students reflect on how the term “westward expansion” only considers some perspective while leaving others out — namely the perspectives of those in the “west” who are “facing east”.

In the classroom, students can be prompted to reflect on these east-facing perspectives:

  • In a 5 minute think-pair-share activity, students can think of their own response, talk it through with a partner, and then “share out”.
  • Then students can be asked how they could learn about the missing points of view - what kind of evidence or sources might provide these perspectives? Again students can come up with ideas in another 5 minute think-pair-share activity.
  • The class can then transition into analyzing the primary sources included in this guide.  Communicate to students that this is one way to consider multiple points of view. Referencing their list of other points of view to consider and what evidence might be used, teachers can and should acknowledge that not all points of view are being considered nor will they be able to analyze and consider all of the evidence, but the sources they will examine do provide a valuable perspective that is not present in most textbooks.
  • Put the students in groups of 3-4 and give them a selection of 2-3 sources.
  • As the students examine the sources, prompt them with the guiding questions included above with each primary source.  For more scaffolding, teachers may have students fill out primary source analysis sheets for one or more of the sources: https://www.loc.gov/programs/teachers/getting-started-with-primary-sources/guides/
  • After examining the sources, ask the students to discuss in their groups: What issues related to Native people were Charles Eastman and Zitkála-Šá most concerned with?  What perspective do these sources provide on westward expansion? How does the term “westward expansion” hide other perspectives, namely the struggle of Indigenous people over their homelands and livelihood? What would an east facing version of this story look like?

Extension/enrichment ideas: Students could research further into the history of the Society of American Indians or any of its prominent members such as Rev. Sherman Coolidge, Arthur C. Parker, Angel DeCora, Francis LaFlesche, or Marie Bottineau Baldwin. Using this research students could then develop a multimedia digital project that presents a “facing east” history of westward expansion. As part of this project students should reflect on what they would want to communicate about this point of view, to show that “westward expansion” was not inevitable and to show how Native people persisted and refused to simply disappear. Primary sources like those above and others from the Library of Congress could be featured in a website or slide presentation. As part of the project, students might also research the history of their own communities and the Native people who lived there in the past and live there in the present.

Teaching history inevitably means teaching about topics that generate strong reactions from a wide range of people. While not every reaction can be anticipated, the following tips can provide a strong basis for a rationale for your learning activities:

General Tips for Teaching Controversial Subjects

  • Center activities on primary sources. Primary sources are tangible evidence that allow students to engage directly with history. These primary sources in particular were preserved and digitized by the Library of Congress because they were deemed important to the history of the United States.
  • Discussion and analysis of these sources can be wide ranging, but within each class those discussions can always be turned back to the source itself.
  • The sources are also, by definition, only pieces of a puzzle. They bring us closer to understanding the past but there is always room for doubt and uncertainty.  
  • Questions, Observations, and Reflections should come from students. These are primarily student-directed learning activities. It is the instructor's role to create a space for inquiry and empower students to drive the inquiry.
  • It may help to remind students at the outset that it is normal for different individuals to come to different conclusions, even when we are looking at the same sources. Further, it would be strange if we all agreed completely on our interpretations. This can normalize the strong reactions that can come up and enables educators to discuss the goal of historical research, which is to hopefully go beyond the realm of individual  perspective to access a fuller understanding of the past that takes multiple perspectives into account.
  • Teaching historical topics that involve violence and other trauma can be traumatic for some students as well. Providing students with previews of what content will be covered and space to process their emotions can be helpful. The following video series from the University of Minnesota contains further tips for teaching potentially traumatic topics: https://extension.umn.edu/trauma-and-healing/historical-trauma-and-cultural-healing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information

Additional Readings/Viewings

Sabzalian, Leilani. Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools.
“Stories I Didn’t Know,” Rita Davern and Melody Gilbert dir. https://www.storiesididntknow.com/
Christine Sleeter, Critical Family History, https://www.christinesleeter.org/critical-family-history
Zitkala-Ša, “Why I am a Pagan,” The Atlantic, 1902. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1902/12/why-i-am-a-pagan/637906/
“Zitkala-Ša”, Nation of Writers Podcast, Interview with scholar P. Jane Hafen,
 https://americanwritersmuseum.org/podcast/episode-13-zitkala-sa/
“Zitkala-Ša”, Unsung History Podcast, Interview with scholar P. Jane Hafen
https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/zitkala-sa/
On the history of the Dawes Act: Indian Land Tenure Foundation, https://iltf.org/land-issues/history/
Ohiyesa: The Soul of an Indian dir. Std Beane https://visionmakermedia.org/ohiyesa/
Documentary made by Eastman’s descendents
Kiera Vigil, Indigenous Intellectuals: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the American Imagination, 1880-1930, Cambridge University Press, 2018
Dr. Vigil discusses her book on the podcast here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/kiara-m-vigil-indigenous-intellectuals-sovereignty-citizenship-and-the-american-imagination-1880-1930-cambridge-up-2018

 

Statistics in Schools jbroubalow Tue, 09/03/2019 - 10:58
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This website makes U.S Census data accessible to K-12 social studies students through 20 classroom activities. Divided by grade-level, these activities trace change over time in the United States using statistics. Activities address civil rights, continental expansion, the treatment of Native Americans, immigration, and other topics related to demographic change.

With schools placing a greater emphasis on the STEM fields, these activities are helpful for social studies teachers who are trying to make cross-curricular connections. Each activity requires students to analyze data to draw conclusions, clearly demonstrating how teachers can use non-textual primary sources to encourage historical thinking in the classroom.

These activities are also very clear about which standards (Common Core and UCLA National Standards for History), skills, and level of Bloom’s Taxonomy they address. However, it would be helpful if it were possible to search activities based on at least one of these categories, rather than by grade range only. Nevertheless, a well-designed website with well-written activities for thinking historically with diverse types of sources.

Quantitative Evidence
K
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Data
Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s
Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
Contemporary US, 1968-Present
African Americans
American Indians
Business
Cities & Suburbs
Economy
Ethnicity
Immigration

Stereotypes in the Curriculum

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silkscreen, Indian court, 1939, Louis B. Siegriest, LOC
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In his article “Popular Culture, Curriculum, and Historical Representation,” John Wills sought to examine the perpetuation of stereotypes in the American History curriculum by examining the treatment of Native Americans. Wills found that despite a variety of representations of Indians in the curriculum, teachers and students tended to emphasize a romanticized stereotype of Plains Indians. What did this indicate, he wondered, about the possibility of challenging narratives shaped by racial and ethnic stereotypes in American history?

Refuting one stereotype of Natives as uncivilized savages, teachers perpetuated another: the romanticized image of Natives as buffalo-hunting nomads.

Wills, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside, spent an academic year in three 8th-grade classrooms exploring the interaction between cultural texts and their readers. He observed and videotaped 130 lessons at a predominantly white suburban middle school in San Diego County, transcribing teacher lectures, class discussions, and multimedia and student presentations.

What he found was that although these teachers were concerned with challenging stereotypical representations of Native Americans, they often struggled to move past overly simplistic portrayals. Refuting one stereotype of Natives as uncivilized savages, teachers perpetuated another: the romanticized image of Natives as buffalo-hunting nomads. So what did this indicate about American history and the portrayal of racial and ethnic minorities?

Natives and “the Story” of American History
As research by other scholars has revealed, American history classrooms are often characterized by a dominant narrative of perpetual progress. In this narrative, Americans of European descent drive history forward to produce expanded rights and opportunities, with the exception, as one teacher put it, of “a few black marks.” The consequence of this, Wills pointed out, was that racial and ethnic minorities remain largely incidental to the story being told. The exceptions are the stories of the enslavement of African Americans and the removal of Native Americans from conquered territory.

Wills showed that despite changes in textbooks, Native Americans were still confined to a small place in popular historical narratives. Natives only “fit” into the story during the period of westward expansion, when nomadic Plains Indians presented an obstacle to settlers. Because this was the established “place” of Native Americans in the popular story of American history, they were predominantly represented as nomadic, buffalo-hunting Plains Indians.

The addition of more racial and ethnic minorities, as well as women and members of the working class, to the story of American history provides students with more diverse images of particular groups. Wills argued, however, that as long as these images are framed by the dominant narrative of perpetual progress, students’ understandings will be limited and partial, compromised by stereotypes of these groups.

In the Classroom
  • Ask students to describe or depict a Native American from the past.
  • Some students will focus on Plains Indians, emphasizing aspects of nomadic life like the construction of teepees and the hunting of buffalo.
  • Ask students where those images come from. Popular media? Textbooks? This kind of discussion can help show students the relationship between popular historical narratives and the more complex realities of the past.
  • Take a look, either during a unit, or over the course of the year, at how different tribes of Indians lived at different points in history and in different regions. Who were the Indians encountered by the Puritans? How did the Five Civilized tribes get the moniker "civilized"? What are some issues facing particular tribes today?
Sample Application

One of the teachers in Wills’s study opened the year with a lesson on early contacts between Europeans and Native Americans. Using the textbook A More Perfect Union she encouraged the students to consider what life was like for Indians living on land that would later be colonized:

“Not all Indians were nomadic. They didn’t all travel around and follow buffalo herds. Some of them farmed. And they needed land to farm on.”

After this unit, the class did not talk about Native Americans again for several months, until they moved on to the exploration of the West and the concept of Manifest Destiny. Encouraging students to consider the perspective of those who removed Natives from the land, the teacher referred to John Winthrop’s claim that in order to have a right to land it had to be farmed, mined, or changed in some way. She then followed up with a question that, for at least one student, seemed to draw on their earlier lesson:

Teacher: “Okay. Now, that’s a real important point because did the Indians farm, mine or, build very often?”
Student: “Farmed.”
Teacher: “They farmed, some did farm, some were farmers. But they would were farmers and…Well, that’s real funny ‘cause some of those…Okay…Most of them did not, farm, most of them traveled around. And so, one of the reasons that, the people who were moving west—though it seems very racist—but at the time, they had this idea in their head that: “Hey, if they haven’t improved the land, then it’s not really their land.” So it wasn’t like they went in and they uprooted these guys’ houses and stuff…”

Having painted herself into a corner, the teacher struggled to reconcile what she had taught the students earlier in the course—that not all Natives were nomadic buffalo hunters—with the dominant image that “fit” into the traditional story of American history. Indian removal is a tougher, more complicated topic when Natives are represented as farmers rather than nomads. Such a representation, however, is not only more historically accurate, but also challenges students to think in more complex ways about American history.

For more information

These two Ask a Master Teacher posts deal directly with the issue of incorporating Native American history into the normal curriculum:

Also check out these posts in the Ask a Historian field for specific information on Native Americans:

In addition, the National Museum of the American Indian by the Smithsonian Institution is an excellent resource for in-depth information on Native American history.

Bibliography

Wills, John S. “Popular Culture, Curriculum, and Historical Representation: The Situation of Native Americans in American History and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes.” Journal of Narrative and Life History (1994): 277–294.

Portal to Texas History jmccartney Wed, 09/09/2009 - 17:12
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Postcard, postmarked October 9, 1907, Portal to Texas History
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This archive offers a collection of more than 900,000 photographs, maps, letters, documents, books, artifacts, and other items relating to all aspects of Texas history, from prehistory through the 20th century. Subjects include agriculture, arts and crafts, education, immigration, military and war, places, science and technology, sports and recreation, architecture, business and economics, government and law, literature, people, religion, social life and customs, and the Texas landscape and nature. Some subjects include sub-categories. For instance, social life and customs, with 694 items, includes 13 sub-categories, such as clothing, families, food and cooking, homes, slavery, and travel. The visitor can also search the collection by keyword.

Resources for educators include seven "primary source adventures," divided into 4th- and 7th-grade levels, with lesson plans, preparatory resources, student worksheets, and PowerPoint slideshows. Subjects of the lessons include Cabeza de Vaca, Hood's Texas Brigade in the Civil War, life in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the journey of Coronado, the Mier Expedition, runaway slaves, the Shelby County Regulator Moderator war, and a comparison of Wichita and Comanche village life. This website offers useful resources for both researching and teaching the history of Texas.

Cartoons
Literary Sources
Maps
Newspapers and Periodicals
Paintings and Prints
Personal Accounts
Photographs
4
7
Images
Text
Three Worlds Meet, Beginnings to 1620
Colonization & Settlement, 1585-1763
Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s
Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
Contemporary US, 1968-Present
African Americans
American Indians
Business
Cities & Suburbs
Consumer Culture
Daily Life
Economy
Education
Environment
Family Life
Immigration
Legal History
Literature
Military History
Politics
Popular Culture, Leisure
Religion
Science & Tech.
Slavery
Southern States

Missouri Digital Heritage

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Painting, Portrait of a Musician, Thomas Hart Benton, 1949
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This massive mega-website presents thousands of documents and images related to Missouri's social, political, and economic history, linking to collections housed at universities, libraries, and heritage sites across the state. These resources are organized both into archival collections (by topic and source type) and virtual exhibits.

Archival collections include maps, municipal records, government and political records, newspapers, photographs and images, books and diaries, as well as topical collections on agriculture, medicine, women, business, exploration and settlement, art and popular culture, and family, rendering the website's resources as useful for genealogists as for those interested in history.

Exhibits encompass a diverse range of subjects, and include topics of relevance to Missouri history (Miss Carrie Watkins's cookbook from the mid-19th century, several exhibits on life at the University of Missouri and Washington University, Truman's Whistle Stop campaign), and topics outside of Missouri (the body in Medieval manuscripts, Roman imperial coins, propaganda posters from World War II, and drawings documenting dinosaur discovery before the mid-20th century).

Teachers will be especially interested in the large Education section, which includes curricular resources on topics such as African Americans in Missouri, Lewis and Clark's Expedition, Missouri State Fairs, and the history of dueling.

Advertising
Architecture
Cartoons
Literary Sources
Maps
Newspapers and Periodicals
Official Documents
Paintings and Prints
Personal Accounts
Photographs
Political Documents
Travel
Missouri
Images
Text
Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
Contemporary US, 1968-Present
African Americans
American Indians
Art
Business
Economy
Environment
Ethnicity
Global Contact
Health & Medicine
Immigration
Literature
Media
Midwestern States
Military History
Politics
Popular Culture, Leisure
Religion
Science & Tech.
Women

Annie Oakley

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Photo, Annie Oakley
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Born Phoebe Ann Moses in 1860 in rural Ohio, Annie Oakley became one of the most famous female entertainers of her day, performing for many years with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Her life spanned a time of dramatic cultural change in the United States, and some of the most important years of the women's movement. This website accompanies a film on Oakley's life and work. While offering only a few primary sources, the website is rich with secondary source documentation. Users unfamiliar with Oakley's story may want to begin with the extensive timeline of her life, which traces her early years on a poor farm in Ohio, her involvement with the Wild West Show in the 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s, the libel lawsuits she filed against 55 newspapers in the early 1900s, and her later years teaching women to shoot and raising funds for World War I.

The website includes profiles of 10 major people and events in Oakley's life, illustrated with thumbnail-sized photographs, as well as more extensive information on the Wild West Show's stints in New York City in the mid-1880s, including transcriptions from New York newspapers describing the shows. A gallery of six posters from the Wild West Show showcases Oakley's fame as one of the greatest marksmen of her time. The website also includes a transcript of the film, with extensive commentary by scholars of Oakley's life.

Newspapers and Periodicals
Paintings and Prints
Photographs
Wild West
Images
Text
Women's History Month
Splash Pullout Women's Month
Learn Women's Month
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
American Indians
Popular Culture, Leisure
Western States
Women
Interactive Exercises—Analyzing Artifacts bhiggs Wed, 07/18/2012 - 10:04
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Developed as part of the America’s History in the Making program, this interactive exercise introduces students to the process of analyzing and contextualizing historical artifacts using two different kinds of objects. Following simple, step-by-step exercises, users are asked a series of “W” questions (who, what, when, why) that require them to first closely examine the features of a Native American mask and/or read short passages from related primary sources in order to determine its creator, context, audience, and purpose. Based on these criteria, the exercise ends with asking students to choose the most accurate summary of the historical significance of the mask. Users can then practice this process of analysis with another historical object: a clock.

These two exercises clearly demonstrate that the historical significance of an artifact is accessed through observation in conjunction with related primary sources.

Website
History in the Making: Interactive Exercises&#8212;Analyzing Artifacts
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