The Time Boston Banned Christmas | Mental Floss
With the emphasis on teaching the canon of "Freedom of Religion" students will miss the fact that there was very little religious freedom in the colony we celebrate for it.
01: Colonization
Pox Americana
This interactive map presents geographic and historical information regarding Smallpox epidemics in American history.
Badass of the Week: Hannah Duston (Dustin)
If you can excuse the language in this article, it presents colonial history in a manner few teachers have the guts to teach, regardless of how much more accurate it may be than the saccharin-laced Disney-history most students are fed. Why not cull out the expletives and have students react to this story?
Early America’s Jewish Settlers
Proving there's no end to discovery in history, this Gilder Lehrman article explores the settlement of the first Jewish people in North America. When students and teachers think they have studied every perspective and aspect of a period and place in history, more information and more specific people are found to build the breadth of complexity necessary to truly understand an era/
"For a Noble Man, a Prince": Images and Identity in Colonial America
Images and objects from paintings to wallpaper and almanac prints to furniture served to shape their owners identities in British America before the revolution. This activity assists in deciphering the messages in visual images that convey social status and economic power in the late colonial period.
This is part of the "Lessons for Looking" project out of the City University of New York
Picturing Colonial America
This essay provides a brief chronological overview of the visual evidence available for teaching about the British colonies in North America. Mancall provides information on some of the first European images of America from the 1590s that were crucial for Britain’s colonizing mission, the depictions of the Pequot War, and the drawings that addressed the political crisis of the 1760s.
Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center
A collection of primary resources-historical documents, literary texts,and works of art-thematically organized with notes and discussion questions from National Humanities Center from National Humanities Center
American Beginnings: 1492-1690, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center
A collection of primary resources-historical documents, literary texts,and works of art-thematically organized with notes and discussion questions from National Humanities Center from National Humanities Center
Colonial Era Overview - Digital History
Colonial Era - Textbooks Readings - Digital History
1492 - BackStory with the American History Guys
This program has several segments that could be used with students through all of them would be of interest to teachers. Take a listen to the "Who was Christopher Columbus?" or "Making a Myth". These segments can be used as a homework "reading" assignments in US History I 9th grade.
Our Mother Tongues
ALthough this site was create to preserve native american languages, it can be used by teacher to show the diversity in native american culture. It allows students to create their own epostcards in various languages as well
The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem
From Davidson and Lylte's "After the Fact", this chapter explores a scientific explanation for the mass hysteria associated with the Salem Witch trials. What can explain the physical manifestation of witchcraft? - this chapter ties to explain.
Encyclopedia Virginia: An Act directing the trial of Slaves, committing capital crimes; and for the more effectual punishing conspiracies and insurrections of them; and for the better government of Negros, Mulattos, and Indians, bond or free
Instead of giving students excerpts from a set of documents and asking them to analyze and interpret them, you could ask them to just comb through one giant document and find what they could find. This would be the document, and slavery in the colonies would be the topic. Here they'll find explicit punishments that include getting ears nailed for giving false testimony and death for conspiracy. Students will also see how difficult it is to free slaves under this 1723 law
Hannah Duston Monumental Dilemma
This blog entry presents a rather comprehensive account of the first woman in the United States to be memorialized by a statue. The account of the Native American attack on Hannah Duston, her abduction and her killing of nine of her abductors and their children is just the sort of story left out of most accounts of Colonial America
The Middle Passage | Stanford History Education Group
Simply a "must-do" lesson in which students read well-selected, edited and presented documents (Portuguese text book from 1994, ship captain, ship doctor and slave autobiography) to corroborate their information and test their reliability. Excellent lesson from SHEG
Animated interactive of the history of the Atlantic slave trade.
20, 528 slave voyages are shown moving across this map, tracing each trip from Africa to North and South America. Notice when the volume of slaves is at its highest - notice also where more of them go. What's happening to all of the slaves going to Latin America? Why aren't more going to North America?
Natural Man
Book review that digs into what we really know and what we don't know about Native American cultures. Teachers developing US History lessons need to take heed of the questions raised here.
New Haven Colony bestiality trial: The twisted, Puritan origins of our modern justice system.
Teachers will have to judge carefully whether they share this story with high school students, but they themselves should know of it. The gap between what life was like in the colonies and the way the history of the colonies is taught is deep and wide, and with every story like this, it gets even wider.
1491 - The Atlantic
It is absolutely essential that high school US history teachers read this article. Perhaps it can be edited down or excerpts from it can be read by students. Elementary teachers, who tell students quite a bit about Native Americans, should read this also. It's likely they'll never describe Native Americans before Colombus the same way again.
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Why Christopher Columbus Was the Perfect Icon for a New Nation Looking for a Hero | History | Smithsonian
It is not enough to disassemble the Columbus myth, it is necessary to ask why it was created in the first place. This article suggests the source can be found in the need for the colonial US to establish independence outside of a English (John Cabot) story.
Massachusetts Body of Liberties, 1641
In 1641 in the colony US students are taught was founded on the basis of freedom of religion, made the worship of any other God punishable by death. The law that sentences a man to death for worshiping another God is in a document entitled the "Massachusetts Body of Liberities"
Native American slavery: Historians uncover a chilling chapter in U.S. history.
This article explains how recent scholarship has found a much closer connection between the history of Native Americans, African Americans and slavery than was ever thought before. Should the teaching of the Pequot War include mention of its unique role in evolution of slavery in North America? Students are often taught of the first recorded shipment first shipment of African slaves to Virginia. Why are they not taught about the first recorded law regarding slavery in Massachusetts in 1641?
The Great Dying: New England’s Coastal Plague, 1616-1619 | CVLT Nation
Although many students think of the pilgrims as settling in bucolic wilderness populated by some Indians, it might be more accurate to think of pilgrims settling in a ghost town that had just experienced a demographic disaster. Although this article is posted on a site that may (and should) trigger some validity concerns, the articles is stocked up with more than forty footnotes. Perhaps a paragraph or two could be shared with students, or at least the quotes - though this is of real value to teachers .
Alfred W. Crosby on the Columbian Exchange | History | Smithsonian
Countless students have drawn diagrams of the "Columbian Exchange", this is an interview with Alfred Crosby, the man who coined the term in 1972. That date should surprise teachers, environmental history of this sort, an area popularized recently by Jared Diamond, is a relatively recent phenomenon
1491 - The Atlantic
This immense article by Charles Mann, author of "1491", should be required reading for every teacher who ever stands up in front of a room of students and says anything about Native Americans. The native population was larger and more sophisticated before European contact than is commonly acknowledged.
H-Net Reviews Mosquito Empires
Columbian Exchange - 1493 (Charles Mann) excerpts reading lesson
There are three excerpts, each with close reading questions from the book 1493, by Charles Mann. The first excerpt is a general overview of the Exchange, in the second students will explore a specific example of unintended consequences of the Columbian Exchange, when settlers thought they were simply bringing in an enjoyable food, but they wound up with an invasive pest. Finally, in excerpt three you can see the devastating effects of the Columbian Exchange upon the Taino Indians, the residents of Hispaniola before Columbus arrived.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Ground Zero for any teacher or student investigation of slavery and the slave trade. This database aggregates the statistics of the slave trade from Africa. Teachers can simply let student loose in this site and let them craft their own understandings. Then their peers and teachers could subject those conclusions to critical thinking questions and analysis.
Bartolomé de las Casas A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES written 1542, published 1552
THE primary document that provides the most evidence of European treatment of Native Americans in the late 15th century. This can be used with students