Carlisle Indian Industrial School Research Pages.
09: Conquering the West
Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum - Transcontinental Railroad
California History Collection
16 short articles that trace the history of California
The Gold Rush Trail
Illustrations, articles and photos from the San Fransisco Chronicle
Frederick Jackson Turner: The Frontier In American History
Full text of book in which Jackson argues the idea of the frontier shaped the American being and characteristics. He writes of how the frontier drove American history and why America is how it is today. Turner reflects on the past to prove his point by noting human fascination with the frontier and how expansion to the American West changed people's views on their culture. From the University of Virginia
Kansas Historic Trails - Western Trails History
Information, articles and links on the famous cattle-driving trails of the old west.
Blazing Guns & Rugged Heroes: Kansas in the Westerns
Summary of how Kansas is portrayed by Hollywood in the westerns of the 302, 40s and 50s. From the Kansas State Historical Society
PBS - Frontier House
Companion site for documentary. Have you ever wondered what life was really like for pioneers living in the American West during the late 19th century? How did they fare without the modern conveniences we take for granted? Could a modern-day family handle a pioneer family's lifestyle?
First Voices Indigenous Radio
Hosted by Tiokasin Ghosthorse
Crash at Crush -- 1896
Almost 50,000 people paid to see two 35 ton locomotives crash into each other head-on at 40 miles per hour in 1896.
Crush's Locomotive Crash Was a Monster Smash » HistoryNet
Crush's Locomotive Crash Was a Monster Smash - article from Historynet
American Experience . Buffalo Bill | PBS
William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's legendary exploits helped create the myth of the American West that still endures today. Companion site for American Experience documentary. Includes timeline and extra information of people and events in film
Rendezvous at Promontory: A New Look at the Golden Spike Ceremony
This lesson investigates the creation of a media event long before television was invented. Students investigate the famous photograph and research its authenticity.
Closing the Western Frontier: Digital History
This chapter chronicles the construction of the transcontinental railroad; the settlement of the Great Plains; the mining, cattle, and farming frontiers; the oil industry’s birth; and popular culture’s treatment of the Western frontier.
Billy the Kid: Perspectives on an Outlaw -(Library of Congress)
This lesson relates to the westward movement in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Students analyze the role that gunfighters played in the settlement of the West and distinguish between their factual and fictional accounts using American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940.
Indian Boarding Schools -(Library of Congress)
Through photographs, letters, reports, interviews, and other primary documents, students explore the forced acculturation of American Indians through government-run boarding schools.
American Indian Reservation Controversies - (Library of Congress)
Using various teaching/learning strategies, which include brainstorming, role playing, and oral presentations, the students access primary sources and other background sources to arrive at a recommendation, based on the information. The teacher, librarian, and other support staff act as guides or advisors through most of the process.
Buffalo Meat & Wounded Knee
In this lesson, students analyze, through paintings, photographs, and letters, how a major change in the Native American’s way of life, the loss of the buffalo, was a partial cause of the Battle of Wounded Knee. This activity is intended to be used with other Social Studies lessons to provide a comprehensive study of Westward Expansion.
CENSORED NEWS: Mohawk Nation News 'Holly Wood Lincoln'
This alternative view of Abraham Lincoln shows what the Mohawk nation thought of the Spielberg movie by pointing out Lincoln's role in the Homestead Act and the largest mass-execution in the history of the United States,
An apology from the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Remarks of Kevin Gover in May, 2000 acknowledging the responsibility of the BIA for ethnic cleansing with regard to western tribes.
As the nation looked to the West
for more land, this agency participated in the ethnic cleansing
that befell the western tribes.
et in these more
enlightened times, it must be acknowledged that the deliberate
spread of disease, the decimation of the mighty bison herds, the
use of the poison alcohol to destroy mind and body, and the
cowardly killing of women and children made for tragedy on a
scale so ghastly that it cannot be dismissed as merely the
inevitable consequence of the clash of competing ways of life
Education in Indian Country: Running in Place - Education Week
In order to place the experience of Native Americans in historical context, students should be exposed to what the Native American experience is today.
MASCOTS - Listings of Schools by State
Teachers looking to incorporate the issue of mascot names into their lessons can use this list to identify schools still using Native American mascot names
Life among the Piutes Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca, (Book)
Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims is an 1883 book by Sarah Winnemucca. It is both an autobiographic memoir and history of the Paiute people during their first forty years of contact with European Americans. It is considered the "first known autobiography written by a Native American woman."[1] Anthropologist Omer Stewart described it as "one of the first and one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books written by an American Indian," frequently cited by scholars
Little War on the Prairie - This American Life
Podcast that can show students the history in their backyard. It speaks to what of the past "becomes" history and how it becomes history - or not.
150th Anniversary Sand Creek Massacre | The Official Site of Governor Hickenlooper
This speech was delivered by the Governor of Colorado in 2014 memorializing the Sand Creek Massacre - buried within it is a brief description of two university studies into the Massacre and the role of then-governor John Evans. They did not come to the same conclusion which demonstrates for students the nature of history to come to different conclusions. It also shows that way in which history is used to understand the past
Wounded Knee Massacre - DBQ
Short context paragraph and 3 accounts of the massacre and two images make for a single class lesson. Black Elk in 1890, Flying Hawk and 1936 and Benjamin Harrison in 1890 - how and why are these accounts different? How do we make history from this?
Native Knowledge 360° - Interactive Teaching Resources - National Museum of the American Indian
US HIstory teachers should at the very least skim through the materials on this site to reflect on what they teach and how they teach the history of indigenous Americans.
Ghost Dance - by Tommy Orange - YouTube
Powerful three minute video that asks important questions about what we decide to keep of our past and what we throw away. Using the very first motion pictures from the Edison archive it directs those questions to our memory of Native Americans. This is a strong discussion prompt for a Wounded Knee or plains war lesson.
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The Visionary John Wesley Powell Had a Plan for Developing the West, But Nobody Listened | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian Magazine
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School: Assimilation with Education after the Indian Wars (Teaching with Historic Places) (U.S. National Park Service)
This site is hosted by the National Park Service of the United States. Students can be tasked with scouring the language of this site, looking closely at the words chosen to describe the schools and what they did. http://www.sagchip.org/ziibiwing/planyourvisit/pdf/aibscurrguide.pdf