Conquering a Continent – Week of 1/28
by Dr. H - January 28th, 2013
This week we’re reading and working with the material in Chapter 16 of both the textbook and the reader.
General News: The new correct books are now in stock at the bookstore! To exchange, you’ll need to bring BOTH parts of the bundle you bought there, along with your receipt, and you can get the new set (same reader + 5th edition of the textbook) for a mere $4.51 more. You can’t just bring the textbook and swap it out for the new one, you need to return the entire bundle and get a new bundle in its place.
Also: in class I handed out the updated syllabus page 6, with all the due dates, readings, and topics for the whole semester, based on your votes. I’ve linked to it in the sidebar in case you need another copy at some point during the term. I also handed out a page of advice about the SkillBuilder assignments.
Monday 1/28 – Reading = ACH Ch 16 p. 475 – 484
Wednesday 1/30 – Reading ACH Ch 16 p. 484 – 494. Workshop Day on the “Wild West” – please bring your laptops to class.
Friday 2/1 – SkillBuilder #2 due – if you don’t yet have the reader, please use one of these alternative documents. Reading = ACH Ch 16 p. 494 – 505. Also on this day, an online quiz will open up in Blackboard on Chapter 19 (which we are not covering in class). It will be open until Friday, Feb 8 at 9:00 am and during that time you can take it up to three times. Please remember to take it!
My online article was about Chinese in California and an American Memory Collection. In this memory collection it had photos, documents, diaries and letters from when the Chinese were in the west between 1865-1900. It also showed all the contributions the Chinese had in the economy, business, agriculture, and culture.”Chinatown in San Francisco receives special treatment as the oldest and largest community of Chinese in the United States.” I believe that this “Chinese in California” American Memory Collection would be a reliable source because its has a lot of original documents from that time period.
I did my topic on the “Oklahoma Territory”. On May 2, 1890, the Organic Act for the Territory of Oklahoma provided the customary framework of a territorial government. The Organic Act just divided up what used to be indian territory into six different counties.
Jake Palazola
Ledger Art history is genre of art tht was started by the Aparaho as well as the nothern and southern cheyenne tribes. This art was origionaly created to depict military exploits and to show acts of personal heroism. This eventually caused the Plains Indian men transitioned their drawings to bigger pieces of paper in order to make books. This was considered a new form of Native American artwork. The drawings also reflected cultural changes and in many cases everyday life.
My artical was on the Native American boarding schools. This was a historical and important time for American West history because it sheds light onto what our American ancestors did in order to aquire the land we now call home. Reformers forced children to seperate from their families and tribes in order to stay at a boarding school where they were told to abandon their Native American culture by changing their names to more suitable European-American names, forced to no longer speak their native language, and had their long braids cut off into a shorter style. Having a long braid was significant in Native American culture. Not having a braid was a shameful thing for boys in a tribe and having it cut off was a huge cultural shock for all. “Children were usually immersed in European-American culture through appearance changes with haircuts, were forbidden to speak their native languages, and traditional names were replaced by new European-American names. The experience of the schools was often harsh, especially for the younger children who were separated from their families” It reveals that Americans were definitely not all in the right during this time of new free land and advancement in technology during the American West time. The Wikipedia artical seems accurate in it’s description because of the numerous sources that it has as well as the discussion board where the only slight criticism was when one person said that it should be said that the founding fathers did have good intentions, just a misguided approach as well as a blindness as to other cultures that were not their own.
I did my topic about the Edward Curtis Collection (Library of Congress). Reading the introduction page of the website, I read that “Edward S. Curtis is one of the most significant and controversial representations of traditional American Indian Culture ever produced.†Although he was important in representing the American Indians in the West, he was also controversial and didn’t represent them as well. Edward S. Curtis’ main purpose of the twenty volumes was to capture and document the ways of “old time Indian[s]. Curtis wanted to document the Indians way of dressing, ceremonies, their everyday lives and their manners. Looking at many pictures of the volumes Curtis made, it shows many, if not, all of those things he wanted to include in his volumes. The interesting thing about this volume is that he went around the tribe regions to take the pictures instead of staying in one local area to take the pictures. These pictures would be reliable because it is significant and depicts the American Indian lifestyle.
Leonardo Quezada
1) I played a couple games online on the PBS website. The page was called Texas Ranch House and I got to test my “true grit” which basically means that I got to test my very limited knowledge on the cowboy lifestyle. I also got to test my western vocabulary and I learned about branching, cattle herding, and crossing rivers safely.
2) One of the most interesting quotes I found was about western women and came from the section called “Test Your True Grit”. I said that “western women could be tough as nails, yet they [were] still bound by many Victorian rules of etiquette.” This is basically saying that although these women were independent and strong they still needed to act like ladies.
3)I have seen many Cowboy movies in my time and in every movie I always see the cowboy and his one reliable horse. According to this website though cowboys often had three to six horses for trade reasons. Another interesting fact I learned was that cowboys never talked about how book smart they were. They exchanged tales and stories, true and false, about Indians and thieves and battle but never did cowboys brag about their book-smarts.
Amanda LaSpina