Lesson Plan
Grade Level: 11
PERCEPTION VS. REALITY: INDIANS / PURITANS
Time Span: Two lessons (55-minute periods)
Essential Objectives: Students will understand how differences in culture and concepts
of land ownership between native Indians and Puritans led to conflict.
Essential Questions:
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How can cultural differences and stereotyping lead to conflict?
How did the Puritans change the New England landscape?
Day 1:
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Write on the board and circle the word Culture.
Define the word culture: All the things that defied a people.
Ask the students to define those things and web the word Culture written on the
board.
Break up students in groups of three; distribute Handout A Great Seal of
Massachusetts.
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Ask the group to study the seal and write a brief paragraph explaining what the
seal says about the Puritan views of Indians.
Day 1: Homework: Distribute Handout B Picture of Indian Village. Study the picture
and write a brief paragraph explaining what the picture tells us about Indian life.
Day 2
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Review previous night’s homework.
Break the class into the previous days groups distribute Handout C The
Perception and Reality Chart. Ask the groups to compare the Great Seal of
Massachusetts and the picture of the Indian Village and complete the chart.
Break class back into their groups and distribute Handout D Indian Life Ways.
Have the groups read the article and answer the question regarding Indian and
Puritan views on property.
Bring the class together and discuss their answers to the reading of Handout D.
Assessment: Upon completion of the lessons students will do of the following:
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Students will select one of the following and write a 1-page essay:
You are an Indian, write a description of Puritan culture.
You are a Puritan write a description of Indian culture.
HANDOUT A
Study his image of the Great Seal of Massachusetts (1629)
What does this image say about the Puritan view of Indians?
Be specific and textual.
HANDOUT B
Study this picture of a New England Indian village.
What can be told about the Indian way of life? Be specific and textual.
HANDOUT C
Using Handouts A and B to complete the chart below.
Great Seal of Massachusetts
Perception
Indian Village
Reality
HANDOUT D
Native American lifeways excerpted from Cronon's Changes in the Land
Native communities in Pre-Colonial Essex County instinctively exploited the seasonal
diversity and practiced mobility. Their principal social organization was the village,
which ranged from a small settlement of a few hundred inhabitants to extended kin
networks and alliances. Larger groups are known as “Tribes” and smaller ones are
referred to as “Bands” and even smaller groups are known as “Families”. Wherever
villages expected to found the greatest food supply is where they went. So, villages were
not necessarily fixed places of occupation
What the Native Americans “owned” or more specifically, what the village gave them
right to – was not the land but things that were on the land during the seasons that they
were there. It was a concept of property shared by many Native people but radically
different from the invading Europeans. Native Americans adapted names for the various
places of the landscape to indicate places where Native People could expect to find food
to sustain them
Money meant nothing to Native Americans. The Native Americans relative indifference
to the accumulation of property is better understood as a corollary to their political and
economic life. (Don’t take it if you don’t need it.) Personal goods could easily be
replaced and accumulation made little sense. Gift giving was a critical lubricant in
sustaining power relationships within a village.
Families enjoyed the exclusive use of their planting fields, on which wigwams stood and
gave appearance of “owning” such lands. But neither the wigwams nor the planting fields
were permanent possessions. Wigwams were moved every few months and planting
fields were abandoned after a few years. What families possessed in the fields was the
use of them, the crops of the women’s labor.
English Perspective Vacuum Domicillum
The Massachusetts Court made its theories on land ownership quite clear when it
declared that: “what lands any of the Indians, within this jurisdiction, have by possession
or improvement, by subduing (living on or growing crops on), they have just right
thereunto.” This English view of land ownership allowed the Puritans to take possession
of much Indian land. In the English view only lands that owned by Indians was land that
was being farmed, fenced in, or used as grazing for cattle. Land not under use was
Vacuum Domicillum or vacant land and could be taken by the Puritans.
How did the lifestyle and culture of the Indians allow the Puritans to justify and possess
Indian lands?