AKFCS Teaching American History

1. A brief summary of the seminar. Include highlights for you--new information, a particularly useful exercise, a favoreite moment. Be sure to identify the core documents presented in the seminar.

The seminar covered a variety of interesting topics relating to the place of the Native American in colonial society, and later in American society. I was especially interested in Professor Doughton's notes on Jehovah and the "Uncouth Wilderness": A Native People Doomed to Disappear". Edward Winslow spoke of "a wonderful plague" that left so many Native Americans dead, and their lands available to English settlers. This situation was seen as providential, willed by God that the moral and upright English should inhabit and cultivate the land formerly held by a people who were described by Natick minister Stephen Badger as indolent, lazy, and savage. The Calvinist belief of predestination was applied here, since settlers believed that they were predestined to inhabit and profit from this land in the New World since they led lives dictated by the laws of God, unlike the savage natives who seemed to possess no redeeming values. This point of view persisted throughout American history, because at every turn, the white majority used any means possible to gain the upper hand that led to the ultimate dispossession of Native Americans from their land until 1890 when the frontier was officially closed, the Indian Wars had ended, and Native American population was relegated to government mandated reservations.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to forced removal of many tribes from the southeast to Oklahoma Territory. My students are always amazed that President Jackson ordered their removal without consideration for loss of land or loss of so many lives. The population charts provided by Professor Doughton of slave population in southern states provide a correlation between the removal of Native Americans and the growing number of slaves in the South.

Professor Nash spoke a "ocular" and "specular" interpretation of history. The specular view applies to the dominant view of Native Americans. Professor Nash introduced the concept of Manifest Destiny which dominated American thinking in the 1840's and 1850's. The claims to land by the "right" people, who possess the correct values and civilization again are part of the predestination concept never doubted by Americans. President Polk based his expansion policy on this concept in the 1840's.

When national unity was threatened by the Civil War, Sarah Josepha Hale spoke of images of Thanksgiving in Godey's Ladies Book. After 1890, when an influx of "new immigrants" from southern and eastern Europe arrived, and made Americans uncomfortable, attempts were made to "Americanize" the new arrivals. One tact was to teach them about Pilgrims and Indians and the first Thanksgiving in order to understand American values and identity.


2. What questions did the seminar raise for you and how will you follow-up on those questions? Will you need to do further research--and if so, how will you approach that research and what sources are available to you?

I had questions about the first Thanksgiving and the development of the Thanksgiving holiday. I have read some of the articles on the Plimoth Plantation website that have filled in the gaps for me, but I want to read more and I can access more information at that website. I hope to visit the American Antiquarian Society to look at primary sources from the 17th century relating to thanksgiving celebrations.

I had questions about treaties that were made with Native Americans by the U.S. government,, and the development of U. S. policy toward Indian tribes. Native Peoples of the East from the Revolution to Removal, Notes by Thomas Doughton, gave me a greater understanding of those issues.

3. How would you use this information in the classroom?

In my American History classes, I plan to have my students read Professor Doughton's Notes on "Jehovah and the Uncouth Wilderness: A Native People Doomed to Disappear" to introduce the concept of the "disappearing Indian". We have discussed the Indian Removal Act and its implications on the Native American population. Students have examined the chart "Expansion of Slavery in Area 1820 to 1850", along with the map "Land Cessions of the Five Civilized Tribes".

I plan to include a mini-lesson on Thanksgiving in November using primary sources and images of Thanksgiving presented in the October seminar.

4. How does the material presented in the seminar deepen your understanding of the relationship between representation and reality in the history of New England natives?

Reading primary sources from the colonial era have been very helpful. It is interesting to learn about the colonists' point of view toward, and stereotyping of, Native Americans. Professor Nash's examples of ocular and specular interpretations of history have been helpful in understanding the representation of Native Americans throughout American history. Information from the Kampoosa Bog dig have shed light on the reality of Native American culture overlooked or misunderstood