On a Journey Through Hallowed Ground

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Photo, Of the Student, For the Student, By the Student, Chris Preperato
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How do you engage your students in history? Do you introduce them to the lives of other children and students in the past? Explore local history with them? Bring digital media and tools into the classroom? The Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership's education program combines all three techniques to support students in better understanding the past.

In 2008, Congress recognized the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area, a strip of land encompassing 15 counties and more than 10,000 registered historic sites in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Formed to raise awareness of the area and its resources, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership focuses on encouraging not just tourism, but education and historical engagement.

What major events anchor local history in your area? How did young people participate in those events?

"Of the Student, For the Student, and By the Student"—the name of the partnership's award-winning educational program sums up its philosophy. Starting with Harpers Ferry, moving on to Monticello, and then beginning a multi-year project set on the Heritage Area's Civil War national parks, Of the Student, For the Student, By the Student gives middle school students and teachers the knowledge and tools to engage with local historic sites.

At each historic site, teachers, staff, and volunteers introduce students to the site's rich history. Armed with new knowledge and enthusiasm, small groups of students create their own mini-documentary or historical fiction scripts and film "on location" at the historic site. Working together as writers, directors, and actors, students come away from the program with a sense of ownership and a deeper connection to the history of their communities.

Do you have access to a video camera or two? What major events anchor local history in your area? How did young people participate in those events? How were they affected by them? On a smaller scale, you and your students may be able to create historical mini-movies of your own. Check out The Journey Through Hallowed Ground's YouTube channel for more than 40 "vodcasts" created by Of the Student, For the Student, and By the Student participants, or learn more about the project from Teachinghistory.org's peek into student filming at Manassas National Battlefield Park. Does anything inspire you (or your students)?

For more information

Learn more about The Journey Through Hallowed Ground on its official website. Its Education section includes more on Of the Student, For the Student, By the Student and other programs, as well as more than 13 lesson plans.

Think your students are too young for film-making? Think again! Award-winning teacher Jennifer Orr describes how she uses video cameras with her 1st-grade students.

Portal to Texas History

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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.

Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

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Introduces the Omohundro Institute, "the only organization in the United States exclusively dedicated to the advancement of study, research, and publications bearing on the history and culture of early America to approximately 1815." The site provides background information about the institute, including descriptions of its fellowships, publications, conferences, and colloquia.

Also provides tables of contents and texts of selected book reviews from recent editions of The William and Mary Quarterly, articles from Uncommon Sense, and four links to related resources—including one to the Institute's own online discussion forum, H-OIEAHC, which offers 13 syllabi for undergraduate courses on early American history, a bibliography of approximately 50 titles, and links to 102 libraries, museums, historical societies, organizations, online exhibits, and collections of documents pertaining to the period. These latter materials can be valuable to students and teachers of the early American period.

NativeWeb: Resources for Indigneous Cultures Around the World

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Logo, NativeWeb
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A project established in 1994 by a group of historians, independent scholars, and activists "to provide a cyber-place for Earth's indigenous peoples." Offers a gateway to more than 3,400 historical and contemporary resources relating to approximately 250 separate nations primarily in the Americas—but also including groups in Africa, Aotearoa-New Zealand, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Russia—to emphasize "indigenous literature and art, legal and economic issues, land claims, and new ventures in self-determination."

Includes 81 "history" links; bibliographies in 42 categories linking to approximately 1,000 sites with information on books, videos, and music; more than 350 links relevant to legal issues, including government documents; 41 "hosted pages" for a variety of organizations; a news digest; and a section devoted to Native American technology and art.

Resources are arranged according to subject, region, and nation, and the entire site is searchable. "Our purpose is not to 'preserve,' in museum fashion, some vestige of the past, but to foster communication among peoples engaged in the present and looking toward a sustainable future for those yet unborn." The site increases by approximately 10–15 links each week, providing an invaluable resource for those studying the history, culture, practices, and present-day issues confronting indigenous peoples of the world.

NativeTech: Native American Technology and Art

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Logo, Native Tech website
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This site is dedicated to the history and continuing development of Native American technology and arts. It is designed and maintained by Tara Prindle, an archeologist on the Program and Events Committee of the Nipmuc Indian Association of Connecticut. A 500-word historical essay and five to ten illustrated descriptions of techniques introduce each of the 12 sections, including beadwork, stonework and tools, pottery, poetry, and food. A section on beadwork presents seven photos of 18th-century beadwork alongside six technical drawings. For five different kinds of beadwork, from bone to glass, the site provides between ten and 100 illustrations of beads. A section on wigwams contains nine pages of writings about wigwams from the 17th century as well as a photographic guide to building your own wigwam. Special features include more than 50 links to sites about Ojibwe language, history, art, and culture and a collection of illustrated essays (400-1,500 words) about Seminole men's clothing. Links to 58 sites about contemporary issues in Native American art, such as counterfeiting, and more than 100 Native American clubs and message boards. A useful site for research in Native American cultural and material history.

Images of Native Americans

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This collection of materials (more than 80 items) comes from rare books, pamphlets, journals, pulp magazines, newspapers, and original photographs. The illustrations reflect European interpretations of Native Americans, images of popular culture, literary and political observations, and artistic representations. The three main sections are "Portrayals of Native Americans," "The Nine Millionth Volume," and a timeline.

"Portrayals" is divided into four online galleries: Color Plate Books, Foreign Views, Mass Market Appeal, and Early Ethnography. The galleries incorporate the renowned works of George Catlin and Edward S. Curtis, and the lesser-known works of early 19th-century Russian artist-explorer Louis Choris. "Mass market" features 32 illustrations, including colorful images of western novel covers and portraits of southwestern Indians. "Early ethnography" contains a newspaper article about a Native American family, five photographs, and 15 illustrations of Indians at play and at war. "The Nine Millionth Volume" is devoted to James Otto Lewis's historic volume, The Aboriginal Port Folio, a series of hand-colored lithographic portraits of American Indian chiefs.

Ancient Architects of the Mississippi

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Small bowl, Mississippean, Ancient Architects of the Mississippi
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This small website uses essays and images to explain the life, art, and engineering of the Native American moundbuilders who inhabited the lower Mississippi River region from c. 8,000 BC to c. 1500 AD.

The main feature is the exhibits. Three exhibits, each centered on a short essay, focus on different aspects of the moundbuilders' life and culture. "Life Along the River" also has six captioned artist's renderings of life in the moundbuilders' cities. "The Moundbuilders" features a detailed description of Emerald Mound. And "Traders and Travelers" also has four images of the moundbuilders' art work, with explanatory text.

In addition to these three descriptive exhibits, "Delta Voices" offers 16 selected quotes about the mounds from both historical and contemporary persons. Additionally, there is a timeline and a short "context" section, with a map, that helps to locate the moundbuilders in place and history.

Search is limited to a search of all National Park Service websites. This website is a useful starting point for those interested in the history and culture of the Native American moundbuilders.

American Indian Women

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Obleka, an Eskimo woman 1907
Question

What were women treated like in the tribes of the Indians? Were they given more rights than American women of the time?

Answer

In 1644, the Rev. John Megalopensis, minister at a Dutch Church in New Netherlands, complained that Native American women were “obliged to prepare the Land, to mow, to plant, and do every Thing; the Men do nothing except hunting, fishing, and going to War against their Enemies. . .” Many of his fellow Europeans described American Indian women as “slaves” to the men, because of the perceived differences in their labor, compared to European women. Indian women performed what Europeans considered to be men’s work. But, from the Native American perspective, women’s roles reflected their own cultural emphases on reciprocity, balance, and autonomy. Most scholars agree that Native American women at the time of contact with Europeans had more authority and autonomy than did European women.

It is hard to make any generalizations about indigenous societies, because North America’s First Peoples consisted of hundreds of separate cultures, each with their own belief systems, social structures, and cultural and political practices. Evidence is particularly scarce about women’s everyday lives and responsibilities. However, most cultures shared certain characteristics that promoted gender equality.

Kinship, extended family, and clan bound people together within a system of mutual obligation and respect. Lineage was central to determining status and responsibilities, consent held communities together, and concepts of reciprocity extended to gender roles and divisions of authority.

Men were generally responsible for hunting, warfare, and interacting with outsiders, therefore they had more visible, public roles. Women, on the other hand, managed the internal operations of the community. They usually owned the family’s housing and household goods, engaged in agricultural food production and gathering of foodstuffs, and reared the children.

Because women’s activities were central to the community’s welfare, they also held important political, social, and economic power. In many North American societies, clan membership and material goods descended through women. For example, the Five (later Six) Nations of the Iroquois Confederation all practiced matrilineal descent. Clan matrons selected men to serve as their chiefs, and they deposed chiefs with whom they were dissatisfied. Women’s life-giving roles also played a part in their political and social authority. In Native American creation stories, it was often the woman who created life, through giving birth to children, or through the use of their own bodies to create the earth, from which plants and animals emerged.

Some scholars argue that, after contact, women’s authority steadily declined because of cultural assimilation. Euro-American men insisted on dealing with Indian men in trade negotiations, and ministers demanded that Indians follow the Christian modes of partriarchy and gendered division of labor that made men farmers and women housekeepers.

However, other scholars, such as SUNY Fredonia anthropologist Joy Bilharz and University of North Carolina historian Theda Perdue, argue that many indigenous women maintained authority within their communities. Matrilineal inheritance of clan identity remained important parts of many cultures long after contact, and women continued to use their maternal authority to influence political decisions within and outside of their own nations.

For example, as the United States increased pressure against the Cherokee nation to relinquish their eastern lands and move west, groups of Cherokee women petitioned their Council to stand their ground. In these communications, they sternly reminded their “[b]eloved children” that they had raised the Council members on that land which “God gave us to inhabit and raise provisions.” They admonished their children not to “part with any more lands.”

Another Cherokee woman wrote to Benjamin Franklin in 1787, advocating peace between the new United States and the Cherokee nation. She advised Franklin that political leaders “. . . ought to mind what a woman says, and look upon her as a mother – and I have Taken the prevelage to Speak to you as my own Children . . . and I am in hopes that you have a beloved woman amongst you who will help to put her children right if they do wrong, as I shall do the same. . . . ” American Indian women assumed that their unique positions in their societies gave them the right to play the mother card when necessary.

For more information

Primary Documents:
John Megalopensis, “A Dutch Minister Describes the Iroquois.” Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries, vol. I. New York: 1898.

Petitions of the Women’s Councils, Petition, May 2, 1817 in Presidential Papers Microfilm: Andrew Jackson. Library of Congress, series 1, reel 22.

“Letter from Cherokee Indian Woman to Benjamin Franklin, Governor of the State of Pennsylvania,” Paul Lauter et al., eds, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume A: Beginnings to 1800, 6th ed. New York: 2009.

For Further Reading:
Joy Bilharz, “First Among Equals? The Changing Status of Seneca Women” in Laura F. Klein, ed., Women and Power in Native North America. Norman, Ok.: 1995. 101-112.

Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835. Lincoln, Neb: 1998.

Nancy Shoemaker, ed., Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women. New York: 1995.

Bibliography

Images:
"Obleka, an Eskimo woman," Frank Nowell, 1907. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

"Kutenai woman," Edward Curtis, 1910. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Columbus and the Age of Discovery

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Created to help mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus's 1492 voyage to America, this site is a "text-retrieval system," offering more than 1,110 scholarly and popular articles, drawn from journals, magazines, institutions, speeches, reviews, newspapers, student papers, and "other [secondary] sources relating to various encounter themes."

The search functions are cumbersome—the articles are both indexed by portions of the author's last name and arranged by underdeveloped category designations.

Thinking Historically: The Flat Earth

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Students studying maps in the classroom. NHEC
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As part of The National Research Council's How People Learn series, Bob Bain (now a professor of History Education at the University of Michigan's School of Education) described a classroom in which legitimate historical questions were at the center. Through this particular investigation, Bain's students learned about 15th-century Europe, Columbus's voyage, and the nature of history and historical accounts.

What Do Students Think They Know?

Rather than presenting a story of Columbus's journey to his students, Bain first elicited student ideas about the voyage and its context. "What do you know about Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492? What do you know about the people of Europe on the eve of Columbus's voyages?" After hearing students recall the standard flat-earth story about Columbus, Bain asked them how they knew what they supposedly knew. What evidence did they have for their Columbus stories?

Using Frameworks and Organizers

How do you know what you know was the unifying problem across Bain's entire curriculum and this question forced students to confront the uncertain status of historical accounts. Students initially saw no difference between "history"and "the past" and believed there was a one-to-one correspondence between what happened in the past and the history book sitting on their desks.

Bain explained to his students that the past is never fully retrievable and our histories are accounts of that past rather than its mirrors. To make this distinction concrete for students, Bain used an organizer from the outset of his course, "history-as-event" and "history-as-account," (H(ev) and H(ac)). Columbus's voyage is history-as-event; the story we tell about it is history-as-account. This distinction, which students learned and used as touchstone, introduced the necessity of questioning and comparing different accounts of the past.

At the unit level, examining historical accounts meant posing questions about historical stories. Students believed they knew Columbus's story, but could not summon evidence to support it. Successive sets of documents helped them create a more accurate and complete story about Columbus and his time.

First Bain gave students a set of short accounts consistent with their ideas—in other words he set them up. Then he challenged those ideas with a picture of a classical statue of Atlas holding a round globe and an explanation written by Carl Sagan about how Eratosthenes determined the world's circumference in the 3rd century BCE. Given these sources, students wondered why Columbus got credit for the round earth idea.

The next round of accounts, selections from Daniel Boorstin and Stephen Jay Gould, helped students sharpen the historical problem that subsequently guided their study of 15th-century European exploration. Was there a great interruption in European geographic knowledge? Did people in 1492 generally believe in the flat earth? What historical accounts explain European exploration of the Americas? How have those accounts changed over time?

History-Specific Strategies

Bain used history-specific instructional strategies to support and assist students in analyzing and synthesizing historical accounts. Students confronted questions like, When was this written? What other sources support or contest this source? See this example of small, carefully structured, reading and discussion groups.

Learning History: Content and Skills

Through Bain's instruction, students learned that the "flat-earth" story was disseminated by 19th-century writers. Students learned that historical accounts change over time, and that it is the historian's task to sift through evidence and construct a legitimate story warranted by that evidence. At the same time, they learned important content about Columbus's voyage and the context of 15th-century Europe.

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Atlas Farnese, How Students Learn: History, in the Classroom, eds. M.S.
In the Classroom

Seek out significant historical problems and questions to frame curricular units. Historians and other content experts can be helpful in identifying these.

Make historical reading and thinking strategies explicit. Use frameworks and organizers that allow students repeated practice with these strategies.

Surface student beliefs about what they think they know and challenge these beliefs when incorrect with concrete documentary evidence.

Plan instruction so students can distinguish between history and various accounts of it.

Sample Application

The original article includes several sources that Bain used in this unit.

The first source below represents the popularity of the "flat earth"story in the 19th century. The second shows that knowledge of the round earth preceded Columbus and his voyage. And the third addresses one question generated by these two: Was there a great interruption in European geographic knowledge?

1. Columbus was one of the comparatively few people who at that time believed the earth to be round. The general belief was that it was flat, and that if one should sail too far west on the ocean, he would come to the edge of the world, and fall off. (Eggleston, 1904, p.12)

2. Scholars believe the sculpture, Atlas Farnese (above, left), was made sometime after 150 A.D. Named for the collection of which it is now a part, it was found in Rome in 1575. The globe's representation of the vernal equinox helped scholars date the sculpture.

3. Dramatic to be sure, but entirely fictitious. There never was a period of "flat earth darkness" among scholars (regardless of how many uneducated people may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology . . . Virtually all major medieval scholars affirmed the earth's roundness . . . (Gould, 1995, p. 42)

For more information

M. Suzanne Donovan and John D. Bransford, eds., How Students Learn: History in the Classroom, (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2005).

Allan Collins, John Seely Brown, and Ann Holum, "Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible," American Educator. (Winter 1991).

Bibliography

Robert B. Bain, "'They Thought the World Was Flat?' Applying the Principles of How People Learn in Teaching High School History," In How Students Learn: History, in the Classroom, eds. M.S. Donovan and J.D. Bransford (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2005).