Fluent Essays

Please see the attached documents. WEEK SEVEN SHORT RESPONSES First, wed like you to do some reading to gain a fuller picture of the relationship between Natives and settlers: · And the Strife Never Ends: Indian-White Hostility As Seen By European Travelers in America, 1800 - 1860: A brief article about the way contemporary Europeans viewed the ongoing conflict between Natives and the American government. You can read it at this link. This reading is required. (Link To Article: https://www.academia.edu/44623382/_And_the_Strife_Never_Ends_Indian_White_Hostility_as_Seen_by_European_Travelers_in_America_1800_1860_) · Owning Red: A Theory of Indian (Cultural) Appropriation: An article about the long history of cultural appropriation of Native land, artifacts, property, and other cultural resources by white society. Section II, Indian Appropriation (pages 869 - 891) details the legal history of conflicts between Natives and non-Natives over land and other property. You can read it at this link. Pages 869 - 891 of this reading are required. · (Link To Article: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/4/) Question 1: Name three historical lenses that you could apply to gain a fuller picture of the relationship between Natives and white settlers. Question 2: Revise the thesis statement at the top of this page to reflect a more complex view of the relationship between Natives and white settlers. Your revised thesis statement should be longer than one sentence. The video transcript is attached to the question. The history surrounding the perhaps real, perhaps apocryphal harvest feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag is a complex story in several different ways. The following questions will help you develop your understanding of the concept of historical complexity. Be sure to respond to these questions in one to two sentences, using proper grammar. Question 3: Name three historical lenses that you could use to look at the events described in the video you just saw. Question 4: Massasoit’s decision to approach the Pilgrims about an alliance was contingent on what previous event or events? (Name one or two.) Question 5: Name one short-term consequence and one long-term consequence of the alliance between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims. Because historical events are complex, they are often misunderstood. Only with research and analysis can we move past those misunderstandings and get at the historical truth. Take some time to think about the historical event youve chosen to analyze in this course and how your understanding of it may have changed over the last seven weeks. As you answer the question below, please be sure to include a brief description of your historical event. Be sure to respond to the question in two to three sentences, using proper grammar. Question 6: How has your understanding of the historical event in your essay changed as a result of your research? Describe one instance of a misconception or a wrong idea you had about your topic that has been corrected after researching and writing about it. The Cherokee Removal, and the tragic westward journey along the Trail of Tears, is one of the most sorrowful events in American history. But it is also one of the most complex. The following questions ask you to think about the Cherokee Removal in the way a historian would. Be sure to respond to each question in two to three sentences, using proper grammar. Question 7: Name four historical lenses through which you could analyze the events of the Cherokee Removal. Specify one aspect of this event for each lens that you cite. Question 8: Agree or disagree with the following thesis statement: “The Treaty of New Echota was invalid, and the National Party was correct to oppose Video Transcript The First Thanksgiving The story of the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621 is familiar to most of us. A couple of English speaking natives named Squanto and Samoset befriend the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Squanto teaches the Pilgrims how to plant corn and, after the harvest comes in, the natives and the Pilgrims join together for a feast. Its a heartwarming story, really, but most historians would agree that it never happened that way. For starters, it certainly wasnt the first. There had been Thanksgiving celebrations in North America well before 1621 among Spanish explorers and settlers in Texas and Florida and among the Jamestown settlers in Virginia. Second, the Pilgrims werent much for feasting and merrymaking. They were Puritans, and to them a Thanksgiving was primarily a day of prayer and religious observance declared to express thanks to God for some specific event. While there are records of many days of Thanksgiving being declared in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies in the 17th century, hardly any of them involved a feast. And theres no clear record of one in 1621. Many historians, in fact, believe that traditional Thanksgiving story is a historical myth that for a variety of reasons President Abraham Lincoln seized on when he was trying to unify the North during the Civil War. But does that mean that Squanto, Samoset, and all the other natives, are just a figment of our historical imaginations? Hardly. These were real people and their story is more complex than most Americans realize. For starters, theres Squanto. His name in the Wampanoag language was Tesquantum, which translates roughly to divine rage. How did he just happen to speak English, and why did he approach the Pilgrims so readily? Tisquantum was born in a Patuxet village in what is now southeastern Massachusetts. But as a young man, he was taken captive by English explorers and brought back to England as a slave. He learned English and eventually gained his freedom. Close to fifteen years later, as a member of a British expedition, he finally returned to his homeland, only to discover that the Patuxet had been completely wiped out years earlier by an epidemic of smallpox or a similar disease of European origin. Tisquantum became friendly with Massasoit, the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag people. The Wampanoag, like the Patuxet, had been devastated by disease, and they were being increasingly threatened by the Narragansett people of what is now Rhode Island. Along with another English-speaking native named Samoset, Tisquantum acted as the intermediary between Massasoit and the pilgrim leaders as they forged a political alliance. A treaty between the Pilgrims and Wampanoag, signed on March 22, 1621, committed both sides to a mutual defense alliance against their common enemies. The alliance benefited both sides for a while, but the long term consequences were not so felicitous. Relations between the natives and the settlers began to fray as more Englishmen, both Puritans and non-religious settlers, arrived in New England, tipping the balance of power in favor of the English. Massasoit kept the Wampanoag neutral in the Pequot War of the late 1630s, in which hundreds of natives were killed and hundreds more were taken captive and sold into slavery. But many other Wampanoag were outraged by English atrocities. After Massasoit died, his son Metacomet, often known by his English name King Philip, became leader of the Wampanoag. In 1675, after the English executed three Wampanoag for the murder of another native, Metacomet struck back. In an alliance with their former enemies, the Narragansett, the Wampanoag enjoyed some early battlefield successes in what became known as King Philips War. But the alliance between the Wampanoag and Narragansett soon unraveled, and by 1676 the war, the bloodiest confrontation between natives and settlers in the history of New England, was all but over. Metacomet was killed in June of that year. By the end of the war, the native population of southern New England had been reduced by half, and the Wampanoag and Narragansett had virtually ceased to exist. In late June of 1676, after a series of military successes by the English, the governing counsel of the Puritan town of Charlestown, Massachusetts, decided to celebrate the coming end of the present war with the heathen natives of this land. To mark the occasion, of course, they declared a day of Thanksgiving.