TWO PHOTOS/ MANY STORIES

Activity. You will work in an assigned group.

First Class

Step One.  First, working as an individual, examine the two photos.* Observe closely.  Look closely for detail.  Then -- based on your careful observation and whatever prior knowledge you bring to the task --,  write a few paragraphs explaining what you see. Your writing can take the form of a story, poem or historical comment.   You will write your story in BlackBoard.  

click picture   click picture          

Step Two. Share your writing with your group (by reading one another's posts on BlackBoard). Collaborate on a list of what you observed in the two photos and what hypotheses you might draw from those observations and whatever prior knowledge you bring to the task. Then create a brainstorming list about what else you need to find out in order to explain and put the photos in some meaningful context.   If there is time, as a group post your brainstorming list and questions to BlackBoard.

Next,  go to the Archives of the West/ Episode Seven website <http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/seven/>. Find and identify the images. 

Second and Third Class Session

Step Three. Create a division of labor with your group for the following task. Gather information in secondary and primary sources in text, images and audio that help you situate and understand the two photos using the:

  1. Henrietta Chief, I Just Loved That School
  2. Edward Goodbird, The White Man's Road is Easier
  3. Ellis Childers, "All That is Passed Away" : A Young Indian Praises U.S. Government Policy Policy in the Late Nineteenth Century
  1. Sun Elk, He is Not One of Us
  2. Lone Wolf, None of Us Wanted to Go
  3. Luther Standing Bear, Back to the Blanket
  4. Old Lady Horse, There was War between the Buffalo and the White Man
  5. Richard Pratt, Kill the Indian, Save the Man
  6. President Arthur, To Introduce Among the Indians the Customs and Pursuits of Civilized Life
  7. American Progress (lithograph)
  8. American Progess (text document)

Then pick three documents — if possible, one text, one image, and one oral — that you think will best add context and meaning to your initial reaction to the photographs.

Step Four. Go to BlackBoard.  Write a group post explaining why your group chose your three documents and how (together with your reading of The Iron Horse vs the Buffalo and your viewing of the film In the White Man's Image) they better enable you to explain the photographs and put them in historical context.  

Step Five.  Read the comments your classmates wrote to complete step four.  Write an individual response to another group's post.  In your post, consider the following questions:

Related Reading:  Iron Horse vs. the Buffalo

*How to look at photographs.  For assistance in evaluating photographs as historical evidence, you might want to check out the following:
--Document Analysis Worksheet for Photographs (National Archives and Records Administration)
--Making Sense of Documentary Photography (History Matters)
 

 

TEACHER'S ANNOTATION

The intent of this exercise is to provide students with a sense of how historians practice their craft. It presents students with two pieces of visual evidence – before and after pictures of three Lakota boys at the Carlisle Indian school circa 1879. There is no prior background reading specifically geared to this assignment. However, students do get a primer on how to look at photos as historical evidence.

Students interrogate the photos, first developing a hypothesis or story about their meaning.

Next, they accumulate more evidence to expand their understanding and add historical context. In the process, they may change or deepen their original hypothesis. Finally, they create their own historical narrative about the de-culturalization of Lakota students at Carlisle.

The point is that they wrestle with evidence to create historical meaning rather than have someone else interpret it for them (the teacher and/or a textbook). The assignment does not preclude students from reading secondary sources about the attempts to de-culturalize and assimilate the boys and girls at Indian schools. Rather it encourages them to first build their own narrative and understanding about the processes of assimilation and the makeover of personal identities. Then, when they read a secondary source or listen to a lecture, they can accept, amend or reject the interpretation of others. The hope, then, is that they will read and listen more critically.

The activity, of course, does NOT exactly replicate the experience of the professional historian in the archives. But, in a structured way, it gives students a sense of the historical craft and research. The primary documents they access are (1) chosen by me and (2) easily retrieved from the Web. This structure or scaffolding makes the assignment doable in a relatively short period of class time.

The Web enhances an activity like this because it:

  1. Serves as a digital archive for primary sources collected on sites created by universities, colleges, libraries, museums, government agencies,  individual scholars and others.
  2. Provides materials in multimedia, meaning that students in this activity can examine images, text and oral history recordings.
  3. Enables electronic discussion that extends asynchronous discourse beyond the physical classroom and archives student contributions to that dialog.

In sum, the Web has enabled me to stretch the possibilities of the history classroom.

Prof. William Friedheim
Borough of Manhattan Community College
City University of New York