American Indian Viewpoints on 19th Century Developments in the West

 

Introduction

This learning set comprises two lessons that supplement lecture and primary source material for the beginning of a one-year, Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) class. One-year classes demand that the teacher get through all of American history quickly, emphasizing breadth over depth. Generally, teachers shortchange important aspects of American Indian history. Native peoples are touched on as contributing to the Columbian Exchange (primarily in references to disease), some contact with the Pilgrims and Jamestown settlers, a bit in the wars with France and England, Jackson’s Indian Removal policy, and a little in the coverage of the Indian Wars in the late nineteenth century. A few major terms receive coverage, such as Trail of Tears, the Dawes Act, and the Indian Reorganization Act.

In addition to neglecting important content, the APUSH teacher does not necessarily touch adequately on American history from Native perspectives. These perspectives are important for at least four reasons: students benefit from looking at U.S. history and American culture (including place names, Hollywood films, etc.) from more than one perspective; the marginalization of American Indians is made worse by ignoring their viewpoint; students can view current events about American Indians with more understanding and empathy; and simple justice demands that American students reflect on the viewpoint of the subjugated nations.

It is recommended that the teacher first try to impart some pre-contact history of Indian nations in different regions, emphasizing a few key aspects of culture and differences between culture groups. Even teaching “Plains Indians” should be done with care, since the Sioux are very different from the Mandan, for example. Then, the two lessons in this set help to introduce students to some American Indian viewpoints of their contact and conflict with Anglo Saxons or European-Americans. The first lesson is a careful analysis of an essay written by a Native writer, “Now I Will Speak (Naawah Ti Waako’): A Sahnish Perspective on What the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Others Missed,” by Loren Yellow Bird. Students will read this essay and extract the most important points and intentions of the author through guided questions and discussion.

The second lesson is a group activity involving a “you are there” approach to understanding difficult American Indian decisions at critical moments in their contact with Anglo Saxons and Europeans in the nineteenth century in order to engender empathy and an appreciation for the situation of Native people today and their resilience.

Lesson 1:  The Lewis and Clark Expedition from an Indigenous Point of View

  • Grades 9–12
  • Length of Lesson:  a minimum of parts of two class periods (involves a homework assignment, too)
  • Lesson Topic: Meriweather Lewis and William Clark are almost always considered great and heroic explorers in U.S. history. A strong case can be made for this point of view. However, their intentions, the accuracy of their journals, and their “achievements” can become more suspect as American Indian perspectives enter the mix.  A taste of such a perspective can be found in Loren Yellow Bird’s article, “Now I Will Speak (‘Naawah Ti Waako’): A Sahnish Perspective on What the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Others Missed.”

Enduring Understandings

    1. History can be described and interpreted from different perspectives.
    2. Knowledge of the religious beliefs and practices of American Indians nations can affect non-Native understandings of their values.
    3. Lewis and Clark, reflecting many biases of outsiders, failed to adequately respect the culture of the American Indian nations they encountered between St. Louis and the Pacific Coast.
    4. American Indians have experienced extreme upheavals and trauma in their lives—deadly diseases, resource destruction, dislocations—as a result of contact with and colonization by Anglo- or European-Americans.

Essential Questions

    1. Why is it important to learn history from American Indians’ perspectives?
    2. What is the value of learning about a people’s spirituality or religion?
    3. In their journals, how did members of the Lewis and Clark expedition describe and evaluate American Indians?
    4. What is the cost to a people to have its culture denigrated?
    5. What is the cost to America if a constituent community is marginalized?
    6. How can we improve these issues in education?
    7. Can outcomes for American Indians and all of society be improved?

Discussion Questions (to raise in class when assigning  Loren Yellow Bird’s article)

    1. Why is it important to learn history from American Indians’ perspectives?
    2. What do you know about the Lewis and Clark expedition of the early nineteenth century?
    3. What has this expedition typically been framed for traditional American history (the history contained in most American history textbooks since textbooks began)?
    4. How might American Indians view the “Corps of Discovery” differently? Can more than one perspective have truth to it?

Introduce the Reading Assignment:  Teacher will introduce the author, Loren Yellow Bird (Leo deCaprio’s teacher!), his article, and the Arikara (his culture; also called Sahnish). Resources about Loren Yellow Bird include:

Articles with Videos:

Explain Labels:  Tell students that “Arikara” and “Sahnish” refer to the same American Indian nation, located in what is today the state of North Dakota. Anglo- and European-Americans often applied names to Indigenous culture groups, places, and things that differed from those used by the nations themselves. This was usually owing to challenges of translation, but sometimes the outsiders picked up slurs from other tribes, such as getting the term “Sioux” (snakes) from the Ojibwa, which entered English by way of the French. (You can explain that the Sioux Confederacy was composed of peoples speaking Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota, occupying what is now North and South Dakota.)  Another example of misnomers is the way the term “Anasazi” (a Navajo for enemy or foreigner) came to be applied by outsiders to the Pueblo peoples of what has become the U.S. Southwest, and the Puebloans prefer not to use the label Anasazi to refer to their ancestors.

Assign Homework: Loren Yellow Bird’s article, “Now I will Speak for homework, and distribute the guiding questions below for them to address in writing as they read or immediately after completing the reading assignment.

Guiding Questions for the Reading Assignment (provide on a handout for the homework)

    1. What does the author, Loren Yellow Bird, see as some of the problems with using the expedition’s journals for a description of his people?
    2. Why do you think the author begins a description of his people by telling their origin story?
    3. What happened in the 1700s affecting the Arikara/Sahnish that was a major problem for Indigenous peoples around the world after trans-Atlantic contact? Do the Arikara/Sahnish blame the Anglo or European-Americans? Why or why not?
    4. What was Clark’s view of Arikara spirituality? Given what the author has written since the start of the article, why might this be particularly offensive? What are meant by the terms “cultural baggage” and “Eurocentric arrogance”? What does the author speculate would have been different if Clark had been more open minded?
    5. What is the difference between the view of the council boycott held by Lewis and Clark as compared to the author’s view of the boycott?
    6. Consider how Clark’s slave York was perceived by the men of the expedition as compared to the way he was received by the Native people who encountered the expedition. How and why might there have been differences?
    7. What does the author say are the effects of Lewis and Clark’s visit in the paragraph beginning, “The Lewis and Clark expedition left Sahnish country…”?
    8. The author gives two descriptions of the causes of the Arikara War in 1823, the Anglo- or European-Americans’ view and his tribal nation’s view. Which do you find more credible? How would you research more on this battle to see if the author’s description is fair? Why do you think the “Sioux” Indians aided the Anglo- or European-Americans in this battle?
    9. Why did the Arikara/Sahnish eventually provide “scouts” for the American government? Do you think these American Indians betrayed their people and their history?
    10. The author writes that federal policy prevented the Sahnish from practicing their religion. Why do you think Anglo- or European-Americans created such a policy? The author does not give his feelings about this. However, given what he has emphasized in this essay, what do you think his feelings are about this policy and why? Should American Indians continue to practice their ancient ceremonies and hold their own beliefs (why or why not)?

Discussion Questions (for the entire class upon completion of the written assignment)

    1. Why did the author write this article? Answer in terms of his point of view and his intended audience.
    2. Do you think Anglo- or European-Americans had reasonable motives for treating Native peoples the way they did?
    3. Is there a danger of viewing history through a “presentist” approach? Are we unfair in expecting modern values and views from people of the past?
    4. Are there lessons from studying Native American viewpoints that are relevant for everyone today?

Review:  The Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings should be reviewed. Tell students that throughout the course they should be evaluating how descendants of the colonizers of America have treated the American Indians as they moved west and to consider the Indian perspective on each of these developments. Refer them to the book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for more on this perspective.

 

Lesson 2: Decisions, A Timeline Activity

  • Lesson Topic: Confrontations with the U.S. government and military left American Indians facing very big and often impossible decisions in a very short amount of time in the nineteenth century. This lesson gives some limited exposure to some of these decisions through examples.
  • Grade Band: 9-12
  • Length of lesson: a minimum of 80 minutes

Big Idea

If you lived to 90 years old and were an American Indian you could have been on hand for two momentous encounters with outsiders:  1) you could have welcomed Lewis and Clark to the West at a time when there were still millions of large mammals and millions of indigenous people and 2) you could have been present at the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, when the animals and people were vastly diminished and your land and freedom were almost all gone, too. Over your lifetime, you would have witnessed the death of many thousands of your relatives as a result of battles, massacres, and European diseases. In this brief amount of time you were confronted by explorers, traders, trappers, settlers, squatters, miners, ranchers, farmers, federal agents, military units, and others, and you would have been subject to policies and laws aimed to eradicate your culture and treaties that were continually broken. You would have faced removals as well, including your children being removed to boarding schools across the country where the “kill the Indian, save the man” policy was enacted. American Indians had agonizing choices as events unfolded. This activity will help students relate to those choices. Would you have behaved differently with the knowledge they had at the time? Knowing what we know now, should they have chosen differently?

Enduring Understandings

    1. Knowledge of the supremely difficult choices people face can help observers to empathize with those people and their choices.
    2. American Indians had extreme upheavals and trauma in their lives—as a result of deadly diseases, resource destruction, and dislocations—as a result of contact with Anglo- and European-American colonizer-settlers.
    3. People should not be put in impossible situations if this can possibly be avoided.
    4. The U.S. government’s treatment of American Indians could have been different. What happened was not inevitable. Colonizers had choices.
    5. American Indians had choices in how they responded to colonization.

Essential Questions

    1. How do people react to big changes or attacks on their way of life?
    2. How does one react to a new and dominant colonizing authority that demands drastic changes from a group of people?
    3. Why is it important to learn history from American Indian perspectives?
    4. What is the cost to a people to have its culture denigrated?
    5. What is the cost to America if a constituent community is marginalized?
    6. How can we improve these issues in education?
    7. Can outcomes for American Indians and all of society be improved?

Procedure:

Teacher to Students:  You will try to put themselves in the moccasins of a member of a particular Indigenous nation at a particular turning point. For each turning point or series of events (listed below), you will answer the following questions:

    1. What are your choices?

Depending on you and your scenario, you might think of certain verbs as a starting point, or a combination of verbs, such as: ignore, fight, kill, run, help, collaborate, negotiate, relocate, assimilate, farm, reeducate, or board (at a boarding school). But you should also consider the consequences of your actions.

    1. What will you do?
    2. Would you have chosen differently if you had current knowledge?
    3. What actually happened?
    4. Present to the rest of the class. They will take notes and comment.

Scenarios/Series of Events

    1. The Lewis and Clark meeting with the Arikara (1803).
    2. The Indian Removal Act, as it affected the Cherokee (1830).
    3. The Fort Laramie Treaty, Badland Purchase Effort, and the Order to Return, as they affected the “Sioux” and “Crow” (who prefer to call themselves the Apsáalooke) (1854).
    4. The Nez Perce War (1877).
    5. The Dawes Act and Boarding Schools, as they affected the Navajo (1887).

Small Groups:  Discuss and Present

Break into groups of three, four, or five, depending on the size of the class.

Have students consider the questions provided and prepare presentations.

After the groups have presented, share with them the most important information they need to know about each scenario. Be sure to include issues of starvation and food supply.

For the remaining time (possibly another class period), have the students conduct research, using the Internet, to look for current events and quality of life today for the American Indian nations whose choices they explored. Ask groups to consider the following questions:

      1. How did what happened in the nineteenth century influence quality of life for American Indians today? Feel free to include events that happened in the 20th or 21st centuries.
      2. What successes are there for the nation you have studied? What challenges?

Review the “Essential Questions” and “Enduring Understandings” with the class and discuss.

Assessment can be a written quiz with a selection of these questions at the beginning of the next class, or simply a cruise around the room to ensure understanding is taking place.

Possible Expansion

Time allowing, it would be useful to preview the major developments in American Indian history wherever there is time throughout the rest of the course. In particular, it would be important to emphasize the concepts of manifest destiny, “savage” and “noble savage”, treaties and the end of treaties in 1871, removal, pioneers and settlers (outsiders), major acts of Congress, forced assimilation, allotment, reservations, and termination.