1. A brief summary of the seminar. Include any highlights for you – new information, a particularly useful exercise, a favorite moment. Be sure to identify the main historical themes and the core documents presented in the seminar.

The morning review of the Prucha readings went right past me as I did not have the Prucha readings prior to the seminar, although the discussion of enfranchisement was nonetheless interesting. The later discussion of the Natives and New England Governments was enlightening and the use of primary source documents, with particular regard to the court records was very usefull I thought. Also, I found the discussion of the state border related issues very interesting.

The work with the census documents was fairly confusing at the outset. I was not entirely sure what was expected of us and there was not sufficient time to adequetly work with the census, town and lineage documents provided. The review of the Enumerators instructions was great and gave a solid foundation for moving onto the census documents themselves.

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?

The seminar made me curious about the classification of Native Americans as non compus mentus and would like to follow-up on that, probably using Google/Wikapedia as initial sources of information.

3. How would you use this material in the classroom? If you do not currently teach this material, pretend that you do (you may be teaching it at some point in your career!).
There were a variety of good/applicable ideas discussed in the break-out group at the end of the seminar. Mr. Penny has/will have those on his blog.


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?
By focusing on what is "reality", visa vie census data/town data and court documents, light was shed upon the differences between representation and reality. Indeed, the extent to which "reality" can be determined with any sense of security is all the more suspect in light of the materials presented in the seminar.