Welcome to
History in the Heartland
Explore History
Webinar:
American Indians
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Presenter: Glenn McCaskey, A.B.D.
mccaskey.7@osu.edu
Our Readings
• Calloway, New Worlds for All  “textbook”
• Calloway, ed. The World Turned Upside Down
 “reader”
• Covers many significant topics in Native
American history:
– Creating a New World, Land, Disease, Religion and
Conversion, Warfare, Frontiers, New Societies
• A few scattered points of reinforcement….
Stereotypes and Misconceptions
1. A “Wilderness”
A quote from a social studies textbook for home
schooled elementary students:
The year was 1585, and the English people were
ready to begin a very difficult task. They were
going to plant a colony in the wilderness, a wild,
empty land that has not been settled. America
was that wilderness. Of course there were many
Native Americans living in America. Some
stayed in one area and farmed while many
others traveled from place to place. But for the
most part, America was still a wilderness—a
wild, unsettled land.
2. Weaponry and Technological
Advantages
• Hernán Cortéz and the Aztecs (1519-21)
– Horses, firearms, steel weapons
– Indian allies  The Tlaxcalans
• Pequot War (1637)
– The Massacre at Mystic
• King Philip’s War (1675-76)
– Smoothbore flintlock muskets replace the matchlock
– The Philip and his allies enjoyed the matchlock, but
the English preferred the flintlock
• Forges, but not gunpowder
– Burning towns (Where did Philip learn this?)
3. “Discovery”: The Red Paint
People
• Maritime Archaic
• Flourished 5,000
BCE
• Fished for
swordfish and
whales
• Red ocher dyes
• Remains found in
Brittany and
Norway
4. Timelessness / Unchanging
Societies
• They always…
• All cultures undergo
change over time
Newark Earthworks, Newark, OH
Serpent Mount, Adams County, OH
Models of Colonial Settlement
Three
colonial
modes:
expulsion,
articulation,
stratification
Source: D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of
America: A Geographical Perspective on
500 Years of History; Volume One: Atlantic
America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986), 71.
Stratification of European elites over
Native peoples: Spain
Articulation/intermingling of colonizers
with Native peoples: France
Expulsion of Native peoples for European
settlement: England
Encountering the Other
Sir Walter Raleigh
and his son Wat.
Painting by John White
labeled “great Lorde of
Virginia”
John White’s painting of
the Roanoke chief
Wingina
Can we get at an American
Indian Perspective?
The Problem of Sources
TAKE up this subject in order to
add or correct in my preceding
Relations what from day to day I
discover to be new or more
positive information. Let us begin
with the feasts of the
Savages. They have one for
war. At this, they sing and dance in
turn, according to age; if the
younger ones begin, the old men
pity them for exposing themselves
to the ridicule of the others. Each
has his own song, that another
dare not sing lest he give
offense. For this very reason, they
sometimes strike up a tune that
belongs to their enemies, in order
to aggravate them. An unusual
exhibition of nakedness sometimes
slips in, not through lewdness, but
to propitiate the Manitou, who, they
say, is pleased with this. Father
Buteux wrote me, that the Prince
one day absented himself from the dance of
the naked girls, "Because," said he, " he who
has made all hates these indecent acts, and
Father le Jenne would be angry with me if I
went there." They have the usual food at these
feasts,—except that in accordance with their
dreams they occasionally eat a dog, a dish as
shameful in the eyes of our Montagnés as it is
rare and delicious in those of the Hurons.
I have already mentioned how the
Charlatans, or jugglers and Sorcerers are
obeyed here; sometimes more than he who
has made all, as we say in these. Countries, is
obeyed by those who acknowledge him. One
of these new Physicians one day ordered a
patient to get a pair of stockings like those of
the Black robes, the name they give us. When
Father Buteux visited this poor man, his
relatives declared that the patient's recovery
depended only upon him. The Father asking
what they meant, they replied, " Give him thy
black stockings, and thou wilt soon see him
upon his feet, for thus the Manitou has told
him." …
For Further Reading
and
For Further Reference
Best References
Carl Waldman, Atlas of the North American Indian.
3rd ed. New York: Checkmark Books, 2009.
Contains more than 120 color maps and more than 140
photographs, along with descriptive chapters on history,
traditions, and conflicts.
R. David Edmunds, Frederick E. Hoxie, and Neal
Salisbury, The People: A History of Native
America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
I find this to be the best available textbook on Native
American history, covering pre-contact to the present
day.
Other highly accessible studies:
Clara Sue Kidwell and Alan Velie, Native American
Studies. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
2005.
Describes the key issues behind the Native American
Studies approach.
Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The
Native American West before Lewis and Clark.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
Historians have given the American West renewed
attention in the past few years. Here, in this 631-page
study, Calloway provides a sweeping history of Native
peoples of the American West.
Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian
Country: A Native History of Early America.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
We tell a story of the westward rush of settlers to the
New World, but how might American history look
different if we face east, from an Indian perspective?
John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family
Story from Early America. New York: Knopf,
1994.
The story of Eunice Williams, who was seven years old
when she was captured in the Mohawk raid on Deerfield
Village, Massachusetts, in 1704. Adopted into Mohawk
society, Eunice would remain the “unredeemed captive,”
refusing to return to her Puritan family.
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English:
Facing Off in Early America. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2000.
Explores how English and Indian encountered each
other in early America.
Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763
and the Transformation of North America. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
A fast and enjoyable read, Calloway links the conclusion
of the Seven Years’ War, Native American history, and
the coming of the American Revolution.
James Axtell,
1. The European and the Indian: Essays in the
Ethnohistory of Colonial North America.
2. After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of
Colonial North America.
3. Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North
America.
4. Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins
of North America.
All from Oxford University Press.
Collections of essays by a senior scholar of Native
American history at the College of William and Mary.
For Reference: The French and
Indian Wars
1. King William’s War, 1689-1697
– War of the League of Augsburg
2. Queen Anne’s War, 1702-1713
– War of the Spanish Succession
3. King George’s War, 1739-1748
– War of Jenkins’ Ear, merging with
– War of the Austrian Succession
4. French and Indian War, 1754-1763
– Seven Years’ War
Questions? Comments?
• Please enter a “take-away
point” in the chat window—
– an insight you gained from the
textbook,
– something new you learned,
– or a new perspective offered by
the textbook.
Modeling: How to read historical
documents
• In our reader: “Powhatan’s Speech to John
Smith,” page 39 of our reader.
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
– Invert it!
•
•
•
•
•
Summarizing
Contextualizing
Inferring
Monitoring
Corroborating
Summarizing:
• What type of document is this?
• What information does the document
provide?
• What is the subject or purpose of the
source?
• Who was the author and audience of the
source?
Contextualizing:
• When and where was the source
produced?
• Why was the source produced?
• What was happening within the immediate
and broader context at the time the source
was produced?
• What summarizing information can place
the source in time and place?
Inferring:
• What is suggested by the source?
• What interpretations may be drawn from
the source?
• What perspectives or points of view are
indicated in the source?
• What inferences may be drawn from
absences or omissions in the source?
Monitoring:
• What evidence beyond the source is necessary
to answer the historical question?
• What ideas, images, or terms need further
defining from the source?
• How useful or significant is the source for its
intended purpose?
• What questions from the previous stages need
to be revisited in order to analyze the source
satisfactory?
Corroborating:
• What similarities and differences are there
between different sources?
• What factors could account for the
similarities and differences?
• What conclusions can be drawn from the
accumulated interpretations?
• What additional information or sources are
necessary to answer more fully the guiding
historical question?
Based upon the “SCIM-C
Explanation,” by Peter Doolittle, David
Hicks, and Tom Ewing.
http://www.historicalinquiry.com.
Now its your turn!
Let’s get into the
documents!