As outlined in the detailed Schedule and Reading List the program of study for this Institute will synthesize secondary source readings with primary source documents, first-hand observation, and experiential learning. It will emphasize the conscious consideration of how history is crafted, with the constant close examination of methods of observation and interpretation, always keeping an eye on the prize of a more judicious and balanced understanding of the past. It will emphasize a collegial intellectual inquiry into Native cultures and their histories that recognizes a plural America with a diverse and yet also shared the experience. Participants will be exposed to a number of tribes and a range of humanities subject matters:
- human origins;
- early lifeways;
- the nature and impact of cross-cultural contact, exchange, and conflict;
- reservations, missions, and boarding schools;
- the preservation of languages and traditions;
- and, with some attention to the makeup of contemporary rural and urban indigenous communities.
Our Projects page also provides more specific, narrower topics for your consideration.
Participants may choose a topic within these broader subject areas to develop as a new lesson or curricular unit. Because many of the sources for these neglected subjects will not be traditional written records, and since the Institute will examine so many cultures and histories, the project team will also encourage participants to choose and analyze additional source materials (e.g. paintings, objects, stories, etc.). The leadership team will provide teachers with individualized assistance, organizing group discussions about how to interpret such sources and how to make historiographical practice more transparent to their students.
Oral traditions are one such essential source. In 2003, preparations for the anniversary of Lewis and Clarks’ Corps of Discovery brought a sea change in the presentation of this landmark period in U.S. history. Thanks to the leadership of National Park Superintendent Gerard Baker (Mandan-Hidatsa, from North Dakota), a vast array of oral traditions were gathered, allowing that the story of the encounters of Euro-Americans and Native Americans along the Trail could be told with greater inclusivity and even-handedness than ever before. Baker’s insistence upon creating safe spaces for everyone along the Trail to come out and share their views on the Lewis and Clark expedition—from pre-contact stories, through the fateful meetings of 1804-06, their aftermath, and recent ideas for crafting a more harmonious future—resulted in an outpouring of oral traditions from more than 50 tribes captured in the traveling “Tent of Many Voices” (see page 21 in this National Park Service publication about the planned events.
Tent of Many Voices. Harry Beauchamp and son (Assiniboine), 2005. NPS.
Hundreds of hours of video recorded the remarkable stories told in the Tent of Many Voices. Tribal Legacy, a superb collection of video clips is now served in open Internet access from the University of Montana with keywords and transcriptions; additional oral traditions will be shared face-to-face with participants during the Institute. We will also read first-hand indigenous people’s accounts, such as Buffalo Bird Woman’s 19th-century story of Mandan farming methods, Josephine Waggoner’s boarding school experience, or Sitting Bull’s activities and thoughts while imprisoned (1881–1883). And we will explore oral influences in these accounts and compare them with oral traditions.
To all of this the Institute will add a consideration of the important (though often overlooked) records of Native activities in two- and three-dimensional material-culture artifacts, architectural remains, living performances, and the like, and how astute observers can weave these cultural threads together as a coherent understanding of the past. For example, in our program of study, we will examine pictographs and petroglyphs, painted and carved messages on stone, hide, and pottery by the earliest Americas, as readable forms of record keeping. A phenomenon that can be found globally, what does rock art convey about early human expression and its posterity? What do local examples tell us about the American experience? Such images—both historical and contemporary—will present themselves on the journey across both Montana and North Dakota. If we find a dichotomy between Native interpretations and scholarly explanations of such markings, we will consider how and why these issues arise and ask ourselves how to create the most accurate summary from diverse perspectives. How were petroglyphic images made? What were the possible aims of the author-artists? Who were (and are) their potential audiences? What might have been their social, political, and biographical meanings? What are the challenges of dating these graphics? Participants will consider suggestions that they may be religious expressions, evidence of shamanistic rituals, visions or dreams, fertility rites, origin stories, and/or hopes for (and boasts about) successful hunts and wars.
Ledger Art. “Cheyenne Pictures. High Wolf Kills a Shoshonee or Snake Indian.” 1894. Smithsonian.
Participants will also read about—and observe in the sites we visit—pictographs and other symbols that were painted on bison robes and cotton, as well as scholarly and ethnographic interpretations. The Lakotas have traditions of mnemonic “winter counts” (wniyetu wowapi), records of annual events, with winter (from the first snow) serving as the year marker. Not only do they represent the illustrated event, they provide memory clues and encoded information to aid the count keepers’ recitation of narratives and connected stories.The Blackfeet, Mandan, Kiowa, and other Plains peoples also kept these kinds of archives of yearly events. An essay by Ron McCoy from the American Indian Art Magazine (30:1, 2004), walks us through examples of winter count paintings that include eclipses, cold winters, floods, deaths, supernatural phenomena, struggles for survival, and the acquisition of rare trade goods, such as Navajo blankets. What does the recording for posterity of celestial and meteorological conditions or personal and community catastrophes tell us about the nature of daily life in these cultures? We will have a rare opportunity to hear answers to this essential question in Bismarck from Dakota Goodhouse (Hunkpapa Lakota/Yanktonai), a contemporary winter count keeper. As bison hides became less available in the later 19th century, pages from “ledger” (account) books became the medium for Native paintings. Goodhouse will introduce some of these to the group, too, along with other examples of material culture. As well, the group will visit the site of the 1876 battle of the Little Big Horn (Montana Territory) and read about it through the lens of ledger art, pictographs, and other works created by 26 indigenous artists, comprising over 220 images, that play a significant role in the retelling of the story of “Custer’s Last Stand” (examined in Rubbing Out Long Hair by Rodney G. Thomas, on the Institute reading list).
Artifacts of material culture, added to indelible footprint remains of villages and camps, provide more content to excavate intellectually and “read” for embedded meaning. Thus, we will investigate archaeological methodology as another primary contributor to the historical record. Participants will read about archaeological controversies, such as the reliability of data about the antiquity of the North American human occupation and of the sources used to date it. We will come to understand, through village remains, how the trope of “unstructured nomadism” inadequately describes Native settlements on the Plains, whose mix of part-time agriculture with hunting and gathering more properly deserves to be considered “semi-sedentary.”
The Institute is dedicated to diversifying its sources to achieve the most well-rounded view. For this reason, journals and letters left by the earliest Euro-Americans—fur traders, members of expeditions, fort builders and dwellers, trading post keepers, missionaries, and emigrants—will be another key source of information. NEH funded the creation of a stunning digital collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln based on the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition, a wonderful resource for teachers. The Library of Congress also has created extensive open-access digital resources, such as “Rivers, Edens, and Empires” and “Fill Up the Canvas.”
The letters and journals of travelers can be seen, in some cases, as amateur ethnographies, describing Native peoples and lifeways in minute detail. We will discuss ways to take their descriptions with a grain of salt, considering how relatively brief first encounters can be plagued with inherent biases, misunderstandings, and inaccurate readings of unknown cultures. One must consider what is unsaid, distorted, and what the words meant in the period they were written. On the other hand, if we were to ignore these texts, we would deprive ourselves of important information about customs now lost or drastically changed as a result of contact and colonization.
Just as words can mislead, so can images. But images can similarly supplement extant material about communities of the past. So it is crucial to examine sketches, paintings, photographs, and maps created by artist-ethnographers who came through Indian country in the 19th century in the wake of earlier cross-cultural interactions. An article published by the Smithsonian Magazine (December 2002), “George Catlin’s Obsession,” illuminates an approach to visual sources. According to author Bruce Watson, Catlin (1796–1872) was “the first [artist] to picture [American Indians] so extensively in their own territories.” Catlin began seeking out Native American subjects in 1830, and William Clark, then U.S. Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Western tribes, took him 400 miles up the Mississippi to meet with a tribal council. By 1837, Catlin had visited 48 tribes, capturing 300 portraits and nearly 175 landscapes and rituals; a Smithsonian digital exhibition hosts some of these resources for teachers. We will also find reproductions and some originals of Catlin’s work along our journey and be able to interview park interpreters and indigenous collaborators about them. At Fort Clark State Historic Site, for example, the group will learn how Catlin had the good fortune to witness and document sacred ceremonies.
George Catlin, I-o-wáy, One of Black Hawk’s Principal Warriors, 1832. Smithsonian. Public domain.
NEH Summer Scholars will mirror the creation of journals, sketches, and photography that early explorers made on the Trail, drawing from that example but also following contemporary protocols of respectfulness. Keeping a journal will have multiple goals: to make observations of the peoples and places participants are witnessing, but with an awareness of one’s own method of interpretation; to record stories that are being shared, but adding as few filters as possible; and, to reflect on the readings and discussions with an eye to developing curricular materials that encompass the new sources and methods emphasized by the Institute. Favorite examples from each Summer Scholar’s journal will be made available to the wider group and beyond by way of an interactive map that the official Trail cartographer will help create for the Institute website.
This institute is being funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this web resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.”