Central Bucks School District



Ms. Wiley’s APUSH Period 1 Packet, 1491-1607Name:Page #(s)Document Name2-41) Period 1 Summary: ?s, Concepts, Themes, & Assessment Info5-62) Textbook Assignment7-83) Timeline9-134) “The Forgotten Minority”14-155) Aaron Huey Ted Talk Analysis16-206) Columbus: Man vs. Myth Analysis 21-227) Las Casas Reading Analysis23-298) American Genocide Debate30-329) Touch the Earth Literature Analysis 33-3410) Aztec Case StudyPeriod 1 SummaryKey Questions for Period 1:Who were the first Americans? What were the Americas like, prior to European arrival?What were the positive and negative impacts of European conquest of the Americas?How has the Columbus story been told? How should it be told? What issues related to historiography are presented by the Columbus story?Did a genocide of Native Americans take place in American history?How was the African slave trade initiated and what was its impact?Where are Native Americans today? What is their political, economic, and social status?5071110635000The Key Concepts, Related Ideas/Examples, and Course Themes outlined below are copied directly from the College Board to show you their curriculum outline. These are the specific items they may evaluate on the national exam. It makes for extremely dry reading, but I wanted to be as transparent as possible with regards to what the College Board exam may focus on: Key Concept 1: As native populations migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America over time (before the arrival of Europeans), they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments through innovations in agriculture, resource use, and social structure. Related Ideas/Examples:right41719500Present-day Mexico and northward into present-day American Southwest spread of maize (corn) cultivation supported economic development, settlement, advanced irrigation, and social diversification among societiesGreat Basin and Plains societies responded to the aridity (dry climate) of the Great Basin and grasslands of the western Great Plains by developing largely mobile lifestylesNortheast, Mississippi River Valley, and Atlantic seaboard some societies developed mixed agricultural and hunter-gatherer economies that favored the development of permanent villagesNorthwest and present-day California some supported themselves by hunting and gathering, and in some areas developed settled (permanent) communities supported by the vast resources of the oceanRelated Themes: Migration and Settlement: Analyze causes of internal migration and patterns of settlement in what would become the U.S., and explain how migration has affected American life.Geography and the Environment: Explain how geographic and environmental factors shaped the development of various communities, and analyze how competition for and debates over natural resources have influenced groups/policies.Key Concept 2:Contact among Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans resulted in the Columbian Exchange (see picture on following page) and significant social, cultural, and political changes on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Related Ideas/Examples:European expansion into the Western Hemisphere generated intense social, religious, political, and economic competition and changes within European societies. European nations’ efforts to explore and conquer the “New World” stemmed from a search for new sources of wealth, economic and military competition, and a desire to spread Christianity. The Columbian Exchange brought new crops and new sources of mineral wealth to Europe from the Americas, which stimulated European population growth and facilitated the European shift from feudalism to capitalism. Improvements in maritime technology and more organized methods for conducting international trade, such as joint-stock companies (more on these in Period 2), helped drive changes to economies in Europe and the Americas. 7200906223000The Columbian Exchange and development of the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere resulted in extensive demographic, economic, and social changes.Spanish exploration and conquest of the Americas were accompanied and furthered by widespread deadly epidemics that devastated native populations and by the introduction of crops and animals not found in the Americas. In the encomienda system, Spanish colonial economies exploited Native American labor to support plantation-based agriculture and extract precious metals and other resources. European traders partnered with some West African groups to forcibly extract slave labor for the Americas. The Spanish and Portuguese imported enslaved Africans to labor in plantation agriculture and mining. The Spanish developed a caste system that incorporated, and carefully defined the status of, the diverse population of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans into their empire. In their interactions, Europeans and Native Americans asserted divergent worldviews regarding issues such as religion, gender roles, family, land use, and power. With little experience dealing with people who were different from themselves, Spanish and Portuguese explorers poorly understood the native peoples they encountered in the Americas. Many developed a belief in white superiority to justify their subjugation of American Indians and Africans. Mutual misunderstandings between Europeans and Native Americans often defined the early years of interaction and trade as each group sought to make sense of the other. Over time, Europeans and Native Americans adopted some useful aspects of each other’s culture. As European encroachments on Native Americans’ lands and demands on their labor increased, native peoples sought to defend and maintain their political sovereignty, economic prosperity, religious beliefs, and concepts of gender relations through diplomatic negotiations and military resistance. Similarly, Africans in the Americans strove to maintain their cultural autonomy in the face of European challenges to their independence and core beliefs. Related Themes: Migration and Settlement: Explain the causes of migration to colonial North America and, later, the U.S., and analyze immigration’s effects on U.S. society. Geography and the Environment: Explain how geographic and environmental factors shaped the development of various communities, and analyze how competition for and debates over natural resources have affected both interactions among different groups and the development of government policies. Work, Exchange and Technology:Explain how different labor systems developed in North America and the U.S., and explain their effects on workers’ lives and U.S. society.Explain how patters of exchange, markets, and private enterprise have developed, and analyze ways that governments have responded to economic issues. Analyze how technological innovation has affected economic development and society. Culture and Society:Explain how religious groups and ideas have affected American society and political life.Explain how ideas about women’s rights and gender roles have affected society and politics. Explain how different group identities, including racial, ethnic, class, and regional identities, have emerged and changed over time.America in the World: Explain how cultural interaction, cooperation, competition, and conflict between empires, nations, and peoples have influenced political, economic, and social developments in North America. Assessment Information:The Period 1 exam will consist of approximately 10 short-answer questions that span all Period 1 documents. The assessment will be completed at home. The Midterm exam (administered towards the end of December 2018) does not include much material from Period 1. It is recommended that you review the key tenets of the Columbian Exchange. Most of the exam will cover Periods 2-5.National Exam (May 2018): Period 1 is a short unit that comprises approximately 5% of the national APUSH exam. No DBQ or LEQ will deal with a Period 1 topic exclusively.392367585409400left84108100 Period 1 Textbook AssignmentPage 3, as well as the first paragraph on page 8: What is the traditional stereotype about Native American societies? How is this vision incorrect?Page 4: What were the three different colonial types Europeans carved out in the Americas, from roughly the 1490s through the 18th century? What helped to determine those types?Pages 8: Take bulleted notes on “The First Americans”; be sure to include dates:Pages 8-10: Where were the Aztec and Inca located? Briefly describe some of their key characteristics:Pages 17-18: Take bulleted notes on “Sacred Power”:Page 18, 1st paragraph under “Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World” and page 19, 1st paragraph under “Expanding Trade Networks”: Generate a list of evidence to support the claim that “In 1450, no one would have predicted that Europeans would be the overlords of the Western Hemisphere.” Pages 25-30 and page 35 under “Cabral and Brazil”: Briefly indicate where the Portuguese explored/settled/conquered and when. How were Africans and Native Americans affected?Pages 34-35: After Columbus and his men subdued the Caribbean, the Spanish initiated an invasion of the mainland. Take bulleted notes on “The Spanish Invasion”:Page 42: What methods of control were utilized by the Spanish in the “New World”? How did the Spanish benefit from this system?Page 42: What were the demographics of the new Spanish colonies?Period 1 Timeline Between 13,000 BCE and 28,000 BCE First migrations of Asian peoples to North America across ______________________________The “First Americans” shared a uniform culture historians call ______________________________Approximately 13,000 BCEEnd of the _____________________________ led to climactic changes regional adaptation and variation throughout the Americas (ex: Mesoamerica vs. New England region)1492Columbus lands in the ___________________________, among the __________________________ people, initiating an exchange between Europe, the Americas, and Africa1500s-1800sPortuguese colonization of ___________________________; introduction of African slaves1500s-1800sSpanish colonization of large portions of Central/South America, ___________________________ Islands, and parts of North America (present-day Florida and Southwestern/Pacific Coastal regions of U.S.); ; introduction of African slaves1519-1521After the conquering and Caribbean, the Spanish invade and then conquer the ___________________________ civilization, making Spain the wealthiest country in Europe1542_______________________________ writes The Destruction of the Indies, outlining the moral tragedy of the encomienda system1600s-1783 (for America) / 1800s (for Canada) [Period 2 Content]_______________________________ colonization along the Atlantic coast and parts of Canada1600s-1763 [Period 2 Content]French colonization of parts of ____________________________________ and eastern North AmericaThe Forgotten Minorityright825500We’ll begin Period 1 by exploring American Indian history and literature, along with the social, political, and economic ills many American Indian communities face today. The following source will serve as an introduction to some of the American Indian issues we’ll be investigating in the course. Actively read and respond to all prompts that follow. Photos: Page 1: Edward Curtis; remaining pages: Aaron HueySource: Onkwehón:we Rising: An Indigenous Perspective on Third Worldism & Revolution | “Onkwehón:we Rising’s?primary focus is building support for and popularizing the existence of indigenous struggles against ongoing colonization, genocide and ecocide (destruction of the natural environment).”Title: Living Colonized Today | Author: Enaemaehkiw Keshena | Date: July 4, 2009I often get asked by people, of all backgrounds, what it is like to be an Indian in the United States and Canada these days. My own experience with being an Indian in occupied North America is that we are often the forgotten minority. When people think of us they think of us in a stylized and romanticized historical light. They think of the Lakota racing through the plains on horseback hunting buffalo. They think of Tipis and Long Houses, Peace Pipes and Drums, savage warriors and beautiful princesses, but it almost never enters their mind what it is like to be an Indian today. Even most socialist groups, including those calling themselves revolutionary, who have all kinds of great things to say about the liberation of our Mexicano, African and Puerto Rican brothers and sisters seem to forget about us and our plight. I think that the settler-colonial system that we live under as an internal colony intentionally keeps us and our situation out of common knowledge with the sole intention of finishing the extermination that was begun in 1492.Today the truth is that many, if not most, Indian reservations and reserves are as poor as, or below, the level of the third world countries. Looking at it from my own experience, my own nation’s reservation is gripped by abject poverty and utter desperation and isolation. Alcohol and drug use are killing more of us than Custer and Sherman could have ever have hoped to with guns and bombs, and there is little hope for the future when faced with the full force of the white supremacist, Christian, patriarchal capital-imperialist machine that is the United States Federal pounding this problem is the fact that the typical North American settler knows almost nothing about the situation currently being faced by most Indians on reservations, and if they think they know anything about Indians in general, it is what they have gotten by being exposed to the romanticization and/or caricaturization of Indians they have seen in films as primitive, pagan oddities.With that in mind, it is my intention here to chronicle very briefly the suffering of just one such nation with the goal of dispelling these myths. I will be looking at the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I chose them over other equally or more impoverished peoples because they are well known and because the stats are more easy to come by. With that said however, it should be noted that if one were to only change the names and locales, this article could just as easily be used to describe countless other nations from Alaska to Mexico, including (but by no means limited to): the Diné-Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Tohono O’odham (Papago), Pima, Yaqui, Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek of Oklahoma, Apache, other Lakota such as the Brule’, and my own people, the Menominee. The list is tragic and far from being short.Employment InformationThe unemployment rate in the community is between 83-85%, with higher fluctuations during the winter months when conditions make travel difficult.4432300000As of the year 2006, 97% of the population lives below the federal poverty level.It is made even more difficult to find employment by the fact that the nearest city (Rapid City) is 120 miles from the reservation, while the nearest large city (Denver) is 350 miles. Life Expectancy and Health ConditionsSome figures state that the life expectancy on the Reservation is 48 years old for men and 52 for women. Other reports state that the average life expectancy on the Reservation is 45 years old. These statistics are far from the 77.5 years of age life expectancy average found in the United States as a whole. According to current USDA Rural Development documents, the Lakota have the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. For a global comparison, one can look at life expectancy in Azania (51.6), Haiti (61.4), India (64.1) Jamaica (72.1), Peru (73.5), Libya (74.5) and Mexico (75.3).Teenage suicide rates are roughly 150% higher than they are for the rest of the country.The infant mortality rate is the highest on this continent and is about 300% higher than the U.S. national average.More than half the Reservation’s adults battle addiction and disease. Alcoholism, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and malnutrition are pervasive.The rate of diabetes on the Reservation is reported to be 800% higher than the U.S. national average.Recent reports indicate that almost 50% of the adults on the Reservation over the age of 40 have diabetes.As a result of the high rate of diabetes on the Reservation, diabetic-related blindness, amputations, and kidney failure are common.The tuberculosis rate on the Pine Ridge Reservation is approximately 800% higher than the U.S. national average.Cervical cancer is 500% higher than the U.S. national average.It is reported that at least 60% of the homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation are infested with Black Mold. This infestation causes an often-fatal condition with infants, children, elderly, those with damaged immune systems, and those with lung and pulmonary conditions at the highest risk. Exposure to this mold can cause hemorrhaging of the lungs and brain as well as cancer.A Federal Commodity Food Program is active but supplies mostly inappropriate foods (high in carbohydrate and/or sugar) for the largely diabetic population of the Reservation.Health CareMany Reservation residents live without health care due to vast travel distances involved in accessing that care. Additional factors include under-funded, under-staffed medical facilities and outdated or non-existent medical equipment.Preventive healthcare programs are rare or non-existent.In most of the treaties between the U.S. Government and Indian Nations, the U.S. government agreed to provide adequate medical care for Indians in return for vast quantities of land. The Indian Health Services (IHS) was set up to administer the health care for Indians under these treaties and receives an appropriation each year to fund Indian health care. Unfortunately, the appropriation is very small compared to the need and there is little hope for increased funding from Congress. The IHS is understaffed and ill-equipped and can’t possibly address the needs of Indian communities. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Pine Ridge Reservation.EducationThe school drop-out rate is a staggering 70%.According to a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) report, the Pine Ridge Reservation schools are in the bottom 10% of school funding by U.S. Department of Education and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.Teacher turnover is 800% that of the U.S. national average.right000Housing Conditions and HomelessnessThe small BIA/Tribal Housing Authority homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation are overcrowded and scarce, resulting in many homeless families who often use tents or cars for shelter. Many families live in old cabins or dilapidated mobile homes and trailers.According to a 2003 report from South Dakota State University, the majority of the current Tribal Housing Authority homes were built from 1970-1979. The report brings to light that a great percentage of that original construction by the BIA was “shoddy and substandard.” The report also states that 26% of the housing units on the Reservation are mobile homes, often purchased or obtained (through donations) as used, low-value units with negative-value equity.Even though there is a large homeless population on the Reservation, most families never turn away a relative no matter how distant the blood relation. Consequently, many homes often have large numbers of people living in them.In a recent case study, the Tribal Council estimated a need for at least 4,000 new homes in order to combat the homeless situation.There is an estimated average of 17 people living in each family home (a home which may only have two to three rooms). Some larger homes, built for 6 to 8 people, have up to 30 people living in them.Over-all, 59% of the Reservation homes are substandard.Over 33% of the Reservation homes lack basic water and sewage systems as well as electricity.Many residents must carry (often contaminated) water from the local rivers daily for their personal needs.Some Reservation families are forced to sleep on dirt floors.Without basic insulation or central heating in their homes, many residents on the Pine Ridge Reservation use their ovens to heat their homes.Many Reservation homes lack adequate insulation. Even more homes lack central heating.Periodically, because of the above listed reasons, Reservation residents are found dead from hypothermia.As reported above, at least 60% are infected with the potentially-fatal Black Mold and as such theses homes need to be burned to the ground and replaced with new housing due to the infestation. There is no insurance or government program to assist families in replacing their homes.39% of the homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation have no electricity.The most common form of heating fuel is propane. Wood-burning is the second most common form of heating a home although wood supplies are often expensive or difficult to obtain.Many Reservation homes lack basic furniture and appliances such as beds, refrigerators, and stoves.60% of Reservation families have no land-line telephone. The Tribe has recently issued basic cell phones to the residents. However, these cell phones (commonly called commodity phones) do not operate off the Reservation at all and are often inoperable in the rural areas on the Reservation or during storms or wind. Computers and internet connections are very rare.Federal and tribal heat assistance programs (such as LLEAP) are limited by their funding. In the winter of 2005-2006, the average one-time only payment to a family was said to be approximately $250-$300 to cover the entire winter. For many, that amount did not even fill their propane heating tanks one time.Reservation LifeMost families live in isolated rural areas.There are few improved (paved) roads on the Reservation and most of the rural homes are inaccessible during times of rain or snow.Weather is extreme on the Reservation. Severe winds are always a factor. Traditionally, summer temperatures reach well over 110°F and winters bring bitter cold with temperatures that can reach – 50°F or worse. Flooding, tornadoes, or wildfires are always a risk.The Pine Ridge Reservation still has no banks, discount stores, or movie theatres. It has only one grocery store of any moderate size and it is located in the village of Pine Ridge on the Reservation.Several of the banks and lending institutions nearest to the Reservation have been targeted for investigation of fraudulent or predatory lending practices, with the citizens of the Pine Ridge Reservation as their victims.There are no public libraries except one at the Oglala Lakota College.TransportationThere is no public transportation available on the Reservation.Only a minority of Reservation residents own an operable automobile.Predominant form of travel for all ages on the Reservation is walking or hitch-hiking.AlcoholismAlcoholism affects 8 out of 10 families on the Reservation.The death rate from alcohol-related problems on the Reservation is 300% higher than the remaining US population.The Oglala Lakota Nation has prohibited the sale and possession of alcohol on the Pine Ridge Reservation since the early 1970’s. However, the town of Whiteclay, Nebraska (which sits 400 yards off the Reservation border in a contested “buffer” zone) has approximately 14 residents and four liquor stores which sell over 4,100,000 cans of beer each year resulting in a $3,000,000 annual trade. Unlike other Nebraska communities, Whiteclay exists only to sell liquor and make money. It has no schools, no churches, no civic organizations, no parks, no benches, no public bathrooms, no fire service and no law enforcement. Tribal officials have repeatedly pleaded with the State of Nebraska to close these liquor stores or enforce the State laws regulating liquor stores but have been consistently refused.Water and Aquifer ContaminationMany wells and much of the water and land on the Reservation is contaminated with pesticides and other poisons from farming, mining, open dumps, and commercial and governmental mining operations outside the Reservation. A further source of contamination is buried ordinance and hazardous materials from closed U.S. military bombing ranges on the Reservation.Scientific studies show that the High Plains/Oglala Aquifer which begins underneath the Pine Ridge Reservation is predicted to run dry in less than 30 years due to commercial interest use and dryland farming in numerous states south of the Reservation. This critical North American underground water resource is not renewable at anything near the present consumption rate. The recent years of drought have simply accelerated the problem.Scientific studies show that much of the High Plains/Oglala Aquifer has been contaminated with farming pesticides and commercial, factory, mining, and industrial contaminants in the States of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.What is the author’s view of the “discovery” of the “New World” by Europeans? Do you agree with the author’s view that Native Americans are the “forgotten minority”? Why or why not?Which stats did you find most shocking? Why?Do you think the federal government has a responsibility to assist the reservations (financial/humanitarian aid)? Why or why not?How much of an emphasis should be placed on the Native American narrative in an AP U.S. history course?What do you suspect was the author’s purpose in writing this article? 182880096393000Aaron Huey Ted Talk Analysisright825500TED Talk Source Information: Huey, Aaron. America’s Native Prisoners of War. TED. Sept. 2010. <;. Aaron Huey is a photojournalist and lecturer who documents diverse subjects across the globe. His efforts to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the Lakota (part of the Sioux tribes)—appalling, and largely ignored—compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking history lesson. “My success is not measured in money. I have no financial security, I have no savings account. I measure my success by asking myself if I’m telling a story that the world needs to hear, if I am educating people.”?—?Aaron HueyInstructions: Respond to the questions below as you watch Huey’s TED Talk. Bullets work.According to Huey, the Lakota call white men Wa?í?u. What does this term mean? Describe the events of 1851, as described by Huey:1863:1866: 1871:1887 (highlight information about the Dawes Act): 1890:1900: 1980:List a few of the statistics Huey cites in his attempt to reveal the legacy of colonization:Explain Huey’s “call to action”:Post-Viewing Questions: What is your reaction to Huey’s talk? Was he an effective speaker? Why or why not?According to Huey, what are some of the ways in which Native Americans have been mistreated throughout U.S. history?If you were part of the Lakota tribe today, how would you have felt about the issues described in #9?How should we (as “victors”) feel about this “tragedy” Huey describes? How much of this history is our responsibility today? Is there a good solution? Why or why not? 12966702286000 3279140220488100433696220901400center3943521Photos by Aaron Huey, Pine Ridge ReservationPhotos by Aaron Huey, Pine Ridge Reservation Columbus: Man vs. Mythright825500How should the story of Columbus be told? How should the explorer be remembered? What was his legacy? Should Columbus Day remain a federal holiday? How might answers to these questions change depending on the culture we subscribe to or the color of our skin? This document will explore the various voices and viewpoints on the Columbus story to gain a better understanding of his legacy and how his story should be told and remembered. The way Columbus's story used to be told: "At last the rulers of Spain gave Columbus three small ships, and he sailed away to the west across the Atlantic Ocean. His sailors became frightened. They were sure the ships would come to the edge of the world and just fall off into space. The sailors were ready to throw their captain into the ocean and turn around and go back. Then, at last they all saw the land ahead. They saw low green shores with tall palm trees swaying in the wind. Columbus had found the New World. This happened on October 12, 1492. It was a great day for Christopher Columbus -- and for the whole world as well." From 'My Country," by Merlin M. Ames, elementary school textbook published by California State Department of Education elementary, 1947. Recent U.S. history texts broaden the account: "When Columbus stepped ashore in the Bahamas in October 1492, he planted the Spanish flag in the sand and claimed the land as a possession of Ferdinand and Isabella. He did so despite the obvious fact that the island already belonged to someone else -- the 'Indians' who gathered on the beach to gaze with wonder at the strangers who had suddenly arrived in three great, white-winged canoes. He gave no thought to the rights of the local inhabitants. Nearly every later explorer -- French, English, Dutch and all the others as well as the Spanish -- thoughtlessly dismissed the people they encountered. What we like to think of as the discovery of America was actually the invasion and conquest of America." From 'The Story of America,' by John A. Garraty, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1991 (pg. B7); middle school text. Which of the accounts above seems more accurate based on your background knowledge? Why? Are there any problems with either account? If so, what do you think they are? Schools Growing Harsher in Scrutiny of Columbus, by Sam Dillon, October 12, 1992, The New York TimesEven at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, where the choir still sings the Italian national anthem at gatherings, the Great Navigator is under revisionist siege [revisionist refers to the advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements]. Though Columbus's bust still gazes proudly from a school pedestal, in its classrooms he is a tarnished figure who blundered into the New World and made a hash of its exploration. Compared with that at many schools, though, the treatment is fairly generous. On the 500th anniversary of his landfall in the New World, students across New York and the nation are learning everything from skepticism to contempt for the explorer's exploits. At a Brooklyn high school last week, a 17-year-old debater pilloried Columbus as a pitiful fraud who cheated his sailors and lied about his discoveries. Fourth-grade students at a private school in Greenwich Village rehearsed a play mocking Columbus as a bewildered fool obsessed by gold. In Scarsdale, N.Y., a jury of seventh-grade students voted 4-1 to declare Columbus a villain after a mock trial. One history book popular this year in some area high schools portrays Columbus as a Renaissance Darth Vader who ushered in five centuries of imperialism by enslaving, raping and butchering the native Caribs who greeted his 1492 voyage. "With Columbus, revisionism has carried the day," said Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a New York-based group that reviews educational curricula. "Columbus has undergone what is perhaps the most dramatic reworking of any major historical figure in memory." The assault on Columbus began [as far back as] the 1970's, Mr. Sewall said, with new scholarship partly motivated by mounting interest in multicultural thinking. . . . [But] attacks have ignited a reaction from some indignant Columbian loyalists. One of the most vocal is William E. Simon, the former Treasury Secretary, who is scheduled to deliver a speech today at Adelphi University on Long Island. The speech is billed as a counter to the "Columbus bashing in the news today." "The arrival of this glorious anniversary in the greatest democracy in the history of the world finds Columbus under siege and America divided," Mr. Simon said in an advance text of the speech. According to the revisionists, Columbus "was a villain, a kind of seagoing Genghis Khan," Mr. Simon said in the speech. But "Columbus was above all a right60600man of deep faith. . . . He changed the fate of the whole world forever. And he changed it for the better." Adelphi's president, Peter Diamandopoulos, who invited Mr. Simon to deliver the address, said that Columbus remains "the hero of all heroes," despite his failings. The loyalists appear to be losing ground, however. Tonya Frichner, an Onandaga Indian lawyer who addressed 750 elementary and high school students on Friday at Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem about Columbus's often brutal treatment of Indians, said she had been encouraged by the acceptance she found for her critical views during months of lecturing. Textbooks have played an important role in the changing perceptions. Daniel Boorstin's 1986 "History of the United States" -- one of the more traditional of the mass market high school texts refers to Columbus as a "true leader," but also notes that Native Americans suffered after Columbus's landfall. "For some it meant the end of their Native American civilization," the book says. "For some it meant slavery. For nearly all of them Europeans brought shock, disease and change." At the other end of the spectrum is "Columbus: His Enterprise -- Exploding the Myth," by Hans Koning, a Dutch-born novelist. The book, which has been assigned to students at several schools in the New York region, calls Columbus's first Atlantic crossing a "drama of the murderer coming ever closer to his victims." Columbus and his men seized Caribbean women as "sex slaves," sent attack dogs to maul naked Indians, and disemboweled other natives who resisted conquest, the book says. During Columbus's second voyage, the book reports, Columbus rounded up 1,500 Arawak Indians and shipped 500 to Spain, where 300 were sold into slavery. The other 200 died along the way, according to the book, which is published by the Monthly Review Press. . . . Stephanie Betancourt, a Seneca Indian who is a coordinator of the [Native American Education] program, said: "For Native Americans, every Columbus Day is like salt in our wounds. These are days of mourning." The Koning text was also required reading at Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Teachers, hoping to force students into developing their critical skills by analyzing a controversial text, urged students to read the book with a skeptical eye. But its lurid passages provided seniors with plenty of ammunition for anti-Columbus barrages during a debate on Friday. "Columbus the great navigator wanted to go to India, landed near Cuba and mistook it for Japan," jeered Larksham Guttikonda, a 17-year-old senior. Later Stephane Clare, the captain of the school's debate team, assumed Columbus's ticklish defense to the hoots of a rowdy crowd. "No one is saying that Columbus did not commit atrocities," Miss Clare answered. "It might be frightening, but he was an example of everything that is the American ideal. He was an adventurer, he was an explorer, he was a breaker of new ground." After the debate Miss Clare said, "We shouldn't be putting our 1992 moral judgments on Columbus. He should be taught as a great man who committed atrocities." At the privately run Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village, 9-year-old Carlos Heim played Columbus in a class skit last week written by a parent. "We need gold!" Carlos shouted during a rehearsal. "Find us more gold! I have claimed this land for the profit and glory of Spain!" Other fourth-grade actors, playing Indians, shouted back at Columbus: "We already had languages, ideas and religions. We did not ask for new ones." . . . . At Christopher Columbus High School, the re-evaluation of its namesake has been fueled by increased ethnic diversity in the student body. The school got its name at its 1939 inaugural, when Fiorello H. La Guardia was Mayor and the school's Pelham Parkway neighborhood was overwhelmingly Italian and Jewish. Today its 3,604 students are 42 percent Hispanic, 22 percent black, and 10 percent Asian. Howard Feldman, assistant principal for social studies, said the school's teaching had moved away from a "Eurocentric" view of its namesake, with increased emphasis on the cultures the 15th-century intruders smashed [along with European studies]. Create a list with descriptions or a chart below that highlights some of the different perspectives offered on Columbus from The New York Times article: 4353560000Columbus Day Context & Opposition | Main Arguments taken from Opposing Viewpoints SeriesContext: Columbus Day is a U.S. holiday that commemorates the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World on October 12, 1492. It was unofficially celebrated in a number of cities and states as early as the 18th century but did not become a federal holiday until the 1937. The first Columbus Day celebrations took place out of pride in Columbus’ birthplace and faith; Italian and Catholic communities in various parts of the country began organizing annual religious ceremonies and parades in his honor. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation encouraging Americans to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage with patriotic festivities, writing, “On that day let the people, so far as possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.” In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, largely as a result of intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, an influential Catholic fraternal benefits organization. Originally observed every October 12, it was fixed to the second Monday in October in 1971. It is generally observed today by banks, the U.S. Postal Service, other federal agencies, most state government offices, many businesses, and some school districts. Some states, such as Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, and South Dakota do not recognize the holiday. Some of these states celebrate the day, but for different reasons: South Dakota, for example, celebrates the day as an official state holiday known as “Native American Day” rather than Columbus Day.The Italian-born explorer had set sail backed by the Spanish monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. He intended to chart a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia; instead, he landed in the Bahamas, becoming the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland during the 10th century. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba and believed it was mainland China; in December the expedition found Hispaniola, which he thought might be Japan. There, he established Spain’s first colony in the Americas with 39 of his men. In March 1493, the explorer returned to Spain in triumph, bearing gifts and “Indian” captives. He crossed the Atlantic several more times before his death in 1506; by his third journey, he realized that he hadn’t reached Asia but instead had stumbled upon a continent previously unknown to Europeans.Writer Washington Irving's A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, published in 1828, is the source of much of the glorification and myth-making related to Columbus today and is considered highly fictionalized. For example, Irving's portrayal of Columbus is of a benevolent, adventurous man who was known for his generosity to Indians. In the best-seller, Columbus "was extremely desirous of dispelling any terror or distrust that might have been awakened in the island by the pursuit of the fugitives," after the escape of a group of Indian captives. (Incidentally, A History of the Life was also responsible for the incorrect belief that most people thought the Earth was flat until after Columbus's journey.)Contemporary historians wonder: how did a man who never set foot on North America get a federal holiday in his name? While Columbus did arrive in the "New World" when he cast anchor in the Bahamas, he never made it to the United States. This is in contrast to Juan Ponce de Leon (who arrived in Florida in 1513), Alonso Alvarez de Pineda (whose ships arrived in what's now known as Corpus Christi Bay in Texas in 1519) and fellow Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, who reached New York Harbor in 1524.Some observers mock Columbus because he mistook the islands he landed on as parts of Asia. Does this fact make his story/legacy less of an achievement? Why or why not? Opposition to Columbus Day: Decrying Columbus's and Europeans' actions against the indigenous populations of the Americas did not gain much traction until the latter half of the 20th century. There are two main strands of this critique, which are interrelated. The first refers primarily to the indigenous population collapse and cruel treatment towards indigenous peoples during the European colonization of the American continents which followed Columbus's discovery. Some, such as the American Indian Movement, have argued that the responsibility of contemporary governments and their citizens for allegedly ongoing acts of genocide against Native Americans are masked by positive Columbus myths and celebrations. These critics argue that a particular understanding of the legacy of Columbus has been used to legitimize their actions, and it is this misuse of history that must be exposed. American Indian Movement of Colorado leader and activist Ward Churchill takes this argument further, contending that the mythologizing and celebration of the European settlement of the Americas in Columbus Day make it easier for people today to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions, or the actions of their governments regarding indigenous populations. He wrote in his book Bringing the Law Back Home:Very high on the list of those expressions of non-indigenous sensibility [that] contribute to the perpetuation of genocidal policies against [American] Indians are the annual Columbus Day celebration, events in which it is baldly asserted that the process, events, and circumstances described above are, at best, either acceptable or unimportant. More often, the sentiments expressed by the participants are, quite frankly, that the fate of Native America embodied in Columbus and the Columbian legacy is a matter to be openly and enthusiastically applauded as an unrivaled "boon to all mankind". Undeniably, the situation of American Indians will not — in fact cannot — change for the better so long as such attitudes are deemed socially acceptable by the mainstream populace. Hence, such celebrations as Columbus Day must be stopped.In the summer of 1990, 350 representatives from American Indian groups from all over the hemisphere, met in Quito, Ecuador, at the first Intercontinental Gathering of Indigenous People in the Americas, to mobilize against the quincentennial celebration of Columbus Day. The following summer, in Davis, California, more than a hundred Native Americans gathered for a follow-up meeting to the Quito conference. They declared October 12, 1992, "International Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People". The largest ecumenical body in the United States, the National Council of Churches, called on Christians to refrain from celebrating the Columbus quincentennial, saying, "What represented newness of freedom, hope, and opportunity for some was the occasion for oppression, degradation and genocide for others".Complete the chart below:Summary of First Strand of Columbus Day OppositionYour Thoughts: To what extent is this a valid argument?A second strain of the criticism of Columbus Day focuses on the character of Columbus himself. In time for the observation of Columbus Day in 2004, the final volume of a compendium of Columbus-era documents was published by the University of California, Los Angeles's Medieval and Renaissance Center. Geoffrey Symcox, the general editor of the project, asserted: "While giving the brilliant mariner his due, the collection portrays Columbus as an unrelenting social climber and self-promoter who stopped at nothing— not even exploitation, slavery, or twisting Biblical scripture— to advance his ambitions… Many of the unflattering documents have been known for the last century or more, but nobody paid much attention to them until recently… The fact that Columbus brought slavery, enormous exploitation or devastating diseases to the Americas used to be seen as a minor detail – if it was recognized at all – in light of his role as the great bringer of white man's civilization to the benighted idolatrous American continent. But to historians today this information is very important. It changes our whole view of the enterprise". Historian Howard Zinn described some of the details of how Columbus personally ordered the enslavement and mutilation of the native Arawak people in a bid to repay his investors:Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."right000But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. American Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The most important contemporary documentary evidence is the multi-volume History of the Indies by the Catholic priest Bartolomé de las Casas (picture, see right) who observed the region where Columbus was governor. Las Casas describes Spaniards driven by "insatiable greed" — "killing, terrorizing, afflicting, and torturing the native peoples" with "the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty" and how systematic violence was aimed at preventing "[American] Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings." The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing [American] Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades", wrote Las Casas. "My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write.”Complete the chart below:Summary of Second Strand of Columbus Day OppositionYour Thoughts: To what extent is this a valid argument?Generate a list of at least three arguments/claims that you would like to fact-check or research, based on this material.Las Casas Reading Analysisright000The controversy over the moral dimension of the European conquest is not altogether new. It was initiated more than 400 years ago by a Spaniard, Bartolemé de las Casas, a Spanish historian, social reformer, and priest. His extensive writings chronicle the first decades of colonization of the West Indies and focus particularly on the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples. Interestingly enough, las Casas was originally a Spanish soldier and encomendero who owned Native American slaves in the New World. Encomenderos acted as feudal lords and had a free hand to run their holdings as long as a percentage of gold/silver went back to the monarchy. Natives would extract resources and give tributes in the form of metals, maize, wheat, pork, or any other agricultural product, while encomenderos were to take responsibility for instruction in Catholicism, protection from warring tribes, and development and maintenance of infrastructure. The system led to brutal exploitation and slavery, along with the breakup of family units. In short: First contact experiences on Hispaniola [modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic] included brutal interactions between the Spanish and the Native Americans, with conquistadors subjugating populations primarily to garner personal economic wealth.Las Casas underwent a profound conversion after seeing the widespread abuse of native peoples. As early as 1522 Bartolome de Las Casas worked to denounce these activities on political, economic, moral, and religious grounds by chronicling the actions of the conquistadors for the Spanish court. After reforming his ways, he documented the atrocities he first took part in, and later, sadly observed. What follows is an excerpt from his Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies (1542), which became an international best-seller. Outside of Spain, it generated an entire literature of indictment of Spain and all things Spanish.Bartolemé de las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies (1542)[F]orty-nine years have passed since the first settlers penetrated the land, the first so claimed being the . . . . isle called Hispaniola[, which is] densely populated with native peoples called Indians . . . . And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless (frank, truthful), the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity (hypocrisy), the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges; neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people are the most devoid of hatreds or desire for vengeance of any people in the world. They are also poor people, for they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant, embittered, or greedy. As to their dress, they are generally naked, with only their pudenda (genitals) covered somewhat . . . . They are very clean in their persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile (submissive, obedient) and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, to be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days; and they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons . . . . The island of Cuba is . . . . now almost completely depopulated. San Juan [Puerto Rico] and Jamaica are two of the largest, most productive and attractive islands; both are now deserted and devastated . . . . All the people were slain or died after being taken into captivity and brought to the Island of Hispaniola to be sold as slaves. (Note: concrete evidence to support these numbers cited by de Las Casas does not exist, as census reports were not conducted at this time.)As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts, have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it . . . . Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich, the native peoples so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts. And never have the Indians in all the Indies committed any act against the Spanish Christians, until those Christians have first and many times committed countless cruel aggressions against them or against neighboring nations. For in the beginning the Indians right127000regarded the Spaniards as angels from Heaven. Only after the Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them.On the Island Hispaniola . . . . those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppressions against the native peoples. This was the first land in the New World to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from the Indians to use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven. From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. (Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" After the wars and the killings had ended, when usually there survived only some boys, some women, and children, these survivors were distributed among the Christians to be slaves. How does las Casas characterize the native peoples of Hispaniola? How does las Casas characterize the Spanish treatment of the natives? According to las Casas, what strategies were used to subjugate the native population?How did natives respond to Spanish cruelty?Why is las Casas’s point of view especially informative? Discuss the author’s point of view How might who they are impact that perspective? Is the author reliable? What was their position in society? Is their view/take surprising given that position?American Genocide Debate45631105651500In Aaron Huey’s TED Talk he made mention of the word “genocide” when describing the formation and expansion of the U.S. at the expense of its indigenous people. Many other scholars and historic figures (like Martin Luther King, Jr., for example) have also used the term. Yet other scholars and historical figures strongly oppose this use of the word for the American context, arguing that is either incorrect or hyperbolic. Throughout the course we’ll be questioning whether the claim of genocide is appropriate, misguided, or just downright erroneous. What follows is an excerpt of a literature review on the so-called “American Genocide Debate.” This literature review was part of a larger paper on whether or not the Trail of Tears incident in U.S. history constituted genocide. We will explore that specific issue/debate when we get to Period 4. Instructions: Read actively and respond to all prompts. 495046021013700Relevant vocabulary, individuals, and institutions: Raphael Lemkin, a Polish (and Jewish) lawyer (see picture, right) who emigrated to the U.S. in 1941, coined the term “genocide” in 1944 from the rooted words genos (Greek for family, tribe, or race) and –cide (Latin for killing). Lemkin helped to initiate the Genocide Convention, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, which defines genocide in legal terms. All participating countries are advised to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and in peacetime. Although 146 states have ratified the convention, genocide has occurred across the globe on several occasions since 1948 (Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur). Lemkin’s original definition of genocide: A coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.The United Nations definition (as found in the Convention): . . . any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:Killing members of the group;Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;Deliberately inflicting on the group the conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. What are the similarities and differences between Lemkin’s definition and the UN’s definition of genocide? Are there any problems with either of these definitions?Literature Review on the American Genocide Debate . . . . The literature on the American genocide debate is divisive; while some scholars maintain that the near annihilation of Native Americans was an unintended tragedy caused predominantly by disease, others boldly assert that genocide took place. Between these two extremes exist two more moderate approaches: one that disaggregates the debate [i.e., does not address the genocide question broadly, but rather through individual, tribal case studies throughout U.S. history] but tends to contribute to the notion that genocide did take place, and one that maintains that the story of the “unavoidable” collision between whites and America’s native population does not cast either side as the hero or the villain; thus, the charge of genocide at an entire society is erroneous. Scholars also disagree on how to define genocidal intent, which historian Gregory Smithers, author of numerous books and articles about Native American history, explains in “Rethinking Genocide in North America”: Some…define intent broadly, and refer to both the cultural and biological destruction of indigenous people. Other scholars argue that American history lacks evidence of coordinated government efforts to commit genocide on any group of people. During the early years of the Cold War [when the UN Convention was drafting a definition for genocide], the idea that English colonial authorities or the U.S. government had ever acted with genocidal intentions toward Native Americans undermined the notion of American exceptionalism [the notion that Americans are exceptional, i.e. superior to other peoples/countries], and struck at the heart of America’s self-identification as a beacon for liberty and freedom in the face of Communist oppression. This review will begin with the “unintended tragedy” approach. Historian Steven Katz argues that Native American depopulation “was an unintentional consequence of settler colonialism. . . . [that] occurred despite the sincere and indisputable desire of Europeans to keep the Indian population alive.” Although Katz may use the available demographic statistics to argue that most Native Americans died of disease, rather than colonialism and cruelty, Benjamin Madley, an historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is currently writing a book for Yale University Press on the California Indian Genocide, argues that the “emphasis on disease as the prime agent of American Indian demographic decline tends to overshadow the equally undeniable role of violence in the population catastrophe and in the conquest of the United States.” Furthermore, his belief that Europeans genuinely wanted American Indians to survive can be disproven by the growing body of literature that highlights annihilationist rhetoric and anti-Indian violence throughout U.S. history. Yet Katz often counters claims of genocide in North America, such as the Pequot War (which was an armed conflict between the Pequot tribe and an alliance of English colonists in 1636-1638). By pointing out that Indian warriors and English soldiers fought together against the Pequot, Katz argues that the Pequot War was “neither genocidal nor racially motivated.” This line of thinking, however, is flawed, since the decision to use Indian warriors against the Pequot was more indicative of military convenience and expedience, rather than proof that genocidal intent and racial motivation were absent. Complete the chart below:Describe the “Unintended Tragedy” Approach:Corresponding Flaws of the Approach:Representing the other extreme are scholars who confidently assert that Europeans and Americans (both its government and settlers/citizens) are guilty of genocide against Native Americans. This group includes Mahmood Mamdani, professor of anthropology, political science, and African studies at Columbia University; Ward Churchill, author, political activist, and former professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and David Stannard, professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii. Mamdani argues that the “United States was built on two monumental crimes: the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans. The tendency of the United States is to memorialize other peoples’ crimes but to forget its own—to seek a high moral ground as a pretext to ignore real issues.” Similarly, Churchill and Stannard refer to settler colonialism in North America as “the American holocaust” and view European colonization of the Americas as an example of “human incineration and carnage.” Each of these scholars makes the mistake that Madley cautions against when he writes that it is “difficult to argue meaningfully about genocide on a national level without…robust local studies to support broad conclusions.” As such, both Churchill and Stannard have been criticized for their unsubstantiated and imprecise assessments regarding genocide in North America. Complete the chart below:Describe the “American Holocaust” Approach:Corresponding Flaws of the Approach:The next approach is disaggregated [i.e., does not address the genocide question broadly, but rather through individual, tribal case studies throughout U.S. history] but tends to support the conclusion that genocidal intent and action were apparent at various times in U.S. history. This group includes Gregory Smithers and Benjamin Madley, who were both discussed and cited in the introduction. Smithers acknowledges that the “one narrative approach” to British-American Indian relations is flawed and there existed no structural rationale for genocide in colonial North America; instead, he prefers to use the phrase “selective threats of genocide” against Native Americans. Smithers explores the development and evolution of growing suspicion and anxiety towards Native Americans throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These fears fostered a “nagging sense of vulnerability, … growing racialized distrust of Indians, … [and culminated in the] objective of protecting settler societies by eliminating the threat posed by Native American warriors.” Colonists, being nervous about “unprovoked” attacks, developed a psychology that “in moments of stress…resulted in determination to exterminate.” To prove such claims, Smithers provides short case studies of Virginian and Puritan settlers that fit the UN’s definition of genocide. Smithers then moves to the early republic and highlights how the writing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution “united all white Americans in a socioeconomic community of common interest.” Over time, racial anxiety increased, as did the level of “ideological intensity to frontier violence and the quest for territorial and economic aggrandizement. . . . [Increasingly, there was an] explicit belief that exterminating Native American peoples could indeed be seen as a ‘just’ means for…[expansion] from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.” To prove such claims, Smithers provides short case studies of frontier violence, annihilationist rhetoric of elected officials, the Yuki Indian genocide (when Yuki Indians were massacred through state-sponsored mechanisms in 1858-’59), and cultural genocide (i.e., forced assimilation programs that mandated certain dress, language, religion, etc., for Indian peoples, most notably in the late 19th century and early 20th century), while also exploring the effect of citizenship laws based on race. . . . Madley (introduced on page 2) provides the best examples of sound methodology when it comes to answering the American genocide question. His work includes a detailed analysis of the Yuki Indian genocide and Pequot War (both of which he deems genocidal), along with a rubric of markers for assistance in locating possible occurrences of genocide in North America. For the Yuki catastrophe, Madley asserts that genocide took place, as the events in California (1858-’59) fit the legal definition set forth right-236REMINDER: The United Nations definition (as found in the Convention): . . . any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:Killing members of the group;Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;Deliberately inflicting on the group the conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.00REMINDER: The United Nations definition (as found in the Convention): . . . any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:Killing members of the group;Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;Deliberately inflicting on the group the conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.by the United Nations:First, multiple perpetrators articulated, in word and deed, their “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical racial [or] religious group as such.” Second, at various times a range of perpetrators committed all five acts of genocide listed in the convention. “Killing” included murders and massacres. (A) Rapes and beatings amounted to “causing serious bodily harm” on the basis of group identity. (B)Reservation employees and Washington officials had ample evidence of both Indian malnutrition and settler violence on the reservation, but took little corrective action. By setting and staying this course despite years of severe population decline, some of these officials seem to have been “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” (C)Further, because the imposed conditions of malnutrition and overwork predictably lowered Indian fertility while increasing miscarriages and stillbirths, federal decision-makers also appear guilty of “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” (D)Finally, various state officials, slave raiders, and federal officials were all involved in “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” State legislators legalized abduction and indenture of Indian minors; slavers exploited indenture laws; and federal officials prevented army intervention to protect their legal wards. (E)To fit the UN definition, Madley was obliged to prove intent. To do this he demonstrated how California Governor John Weller and state legislators, though never explicitly calling for Yuki extermination, “emphatically approved genocide ex post facto (retroactive effect or force), by paying… [settlers] for their killings.” These individuals also “commanded soldiers not to intervene to protect their legal wards, . . . and chose not to provide adequate food to reservation Yuki when it was well within their power and responsibility to do so.” Madley also finds evidence to support the claim that the U.S. Congress was guilty of intent, as they approved the citizen killing campaign “by helping California pay for it.”Madley contends that “annihilationist statements, massacres, state-sponsored body-part bounties, and mass death in government custody are four ways of locating, and ultimately, defining prima facie (accepted as correct until proven otherwise) cases of genocide.” To provide strong examples of each, Madley travels through American history, pointing out where each of the four markers emerged and how they evolved over time. His analysis, even before outlining his precise case studies of the Pequot War and Yuki genocide, seems to provide enough evidence that genocide, on the whole, occurred in North America, though that is not his stated purpose in outlining these four markers. Though Madley’s work is impressive, it would be improved with the inclusion of case studies that do not constitute genocide, so as to strengthen his argument by way of comparison. Complete the chart below:Describe the “Disaggregated” Approach:The final approach in the existing literature is best represented by author and former professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Guenter Lewy, who maintains that the sad fate of America’s Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and values. Despite the efforts of well-meaning people in both camps, there existed no good solution to this clash. The Indians were not prepared to give up the nomadic life of the hunter for the sedentary life of the farmer. The new Americans, convinced of their cultural and racial superiority, were unwilling to grant the original inhabitants of the continent the vast preserve of land required by the Indians’ way of life. The consequence was a conflict in which there were few heroes, but which was far from a simple tale of hapless victims and merciless aggressors. To fling the charge of genocide at an entire society serves neither the interests of the Indians nor those of history.Lewy points out that ever since Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor (1881), which documented a series of injustices and crimes towards Native Americans perpetrated by the U.S. government and citizenry, scholars have used “exaggeration and one-sided indictments” when addressing the Native American genocide question. As an example, Lewy discusses how the claims of biological warfare [i.e., colonists giving smallpox infested blankets to natives in an attempt to spread the disease], are extremely unsubstantiated but have come to be regarded as fact. Though Lewy acknowledges the annihilationist rhetoric of settlers, citizens, and, at times, officials throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he argues it is overemphasized in the literature, while the other part of the story—settler and citizen opposition to and criticism of anti-Indian violence and rhetoric—is largely ignored. This is a claim that is easily proved erroneous by investigating the related literature. An additional weakness is Lewy’s argument that the “most important reason for the Indians’ catastrophic decline” was the spread of “highly contagious diseases to which they had no immunity.” This logic is flawed, as disease may have been the leading cause for some Indian tribes, but not all. Lewy admits that the massacres in California, “where both the perpetrators and their supporters openly acknowledged a desire to destroy the Indians as an ethnic entity, might indeed be regarded under the terms of the [UN] convention as exhibiting genocidal intent.” Yet Lewy believes it is ill-conceived to apply [the UN definition of] genocide to events that took place hundreds of years earlier; but if that is to be done, it should never condemn an entire society:Guilt is personal, and for good reason the Genocide Convention provides that only “persons” can be charged with the crime. . . . As for the larger society, even if some elements in the white population, mainly in the West, at times advocated extermination, no official of the U.S. government ever seriously proposed it. Genocide was never American policy, nor was it the result of policy. To put it perhaps more succinctly, one could look to historian Richard White: “…finding specific instances of genocide does not make the entirety of American Indian policy genocidal.”Complete the chart below:Describe the “Irreconcilable Collision” Approach:Corresponding Flaws of the Approach:. . . . The issue of genocide in North America is relevant for policymakers, who, as the truth surfaces, may face increased pressure for apologies and reparations to the 5,220,000 U.S. citizens of self-reported Native American ancestry. This can be likened to the apology and $1.6 billion that Congress awarded to the 82,210 Japanese Americans after the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians found that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II had not been justified by military necessity but rather was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Or perhaps policymakers might experience increased pressure to deal with the tragedy that is Native American reservations today, where close to a million people live in conditions similar to those in the developing world. . . . What responsibility should the U.S. government bear for these tragedies? Detailed case studies will help to answer this question.. . . . As President Andrew Jackson himself once stated, “Our conduct toward these people [Native Americans] is deeply interesting to our national character.” It should be in the name of decency, justice, and historical veracity that Americans seek the truth about how their past influenced, altered, and, in some cases, destroyed Native American cultures and groups. As political theorist Hannah Arendt so eloquently explains, “[e]very generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors.” With those burdens and blessings come responsibilities to seek and speak the truth and make amends for past wrongs. And yet high school teams across America and one NFL team continue to use the Redskins as their mascots, despite the fact that the term has its origins in the bounty programs of colonial America, as explained by one Native American: Back not so long ago, when there was a bounty on the heads of the Indian people…the trappers would bring in Indian scalps along with the other skins they had managed to trap or shoot. . . . The term came from the bloody mess that one saw when looking at the scalp. . . . [W]hen we see or hear that term…we don’t see a football team. [Instead] we see the bloody pieces of scalps that were hacked off of our men, women and even our children…we hear the screams as our people were killed…and “skinned’ just like animals.423793918898What is the different between “Ethnic cleansing” and genocide?Ethnic cleansing seeks the forced removal of an undesired group or groups, in contrast to genocide, which pursues the group’s ‘destruction.’ The two are distinct where ethnic cleansing does not lead to destruction of groups, but extreme forms of ethnic cleansing can overlap with genocide when the means employed to carry out ethnic cleansing lead to genocide. When high mortality through deportation or expulsion is predictable, intended, and expected it makes sense to refer to genocide rather than to ethnic cleansing or to both ethnic cleansing and genocide.00What is the different between “Ethnic cleansing” and genocide?Ethnic cleansing seeks the forced removal of an undesired group or groups, in contrast to genocide, which pursues the group’s ‘destruction.’ The two are distinct where ethnic cleansing does not lead to destruction of groups, but extreme forms of ethnic cleansing can overlap with genocide when the means employed to carry out ethnic cleansing lead to genocide. When high mortality through deportation or expulsion is predictable, intended, and expected it makes sense to refer to genocide rather than to ethnic cleansing or to both ethnic cleansing and genocide.Several high school teams recently caught the attention of whistle-blowers when playing Redskin teams. High school students in Alabama and Tennessee had the audacity to display Trail of Tears signs that mocked the tragic event (an episode of ethnic cleansing (see definition, right) that resulted in the forced removal of 100,000 Native Americans from their homes, 4,000-8,000 of which died in the journey), highlighting what some view as “racism and insensitivity” towards Native Americans. One high school in Alabama created a breakthrough sign for their football team which read, “Hey Indians, get ready to leave in a Trail of Tears Round 2.” Equally as shocking were the corresponding unapologetic student tweets on Twitter in the subsequent days after the images went viral (see images on page 7). Why is ethnic cleansing, death, suffering, and injustice considered a joke at these American high schools? It is likely that dehumanization of Native Americans will continue so long as Americans bask in the glory of their blessings rather than wrestle with the studies of their past sins, genocide or not.Why does the author believe this debate “matters”? Do you agree? Explain. Which approach(es) outlined in this excerpt do you think is/are most persuasive or valid? Why? What is your reaction to the images and tweets below?Answer this question in class, after viewing videos: What is your response to the arguments made regarding “Red Skins” teams and the posters displayed at several high school stadiums?34836106775450078740129730500-6262390266600Touch the Earth Literature Analysis0889000The following excerpts are from Touch the Earth: A Self-Portrait of Indian Existence, compiled by T.C. McLuhan. Each selection was written by North American Indians, chosen to illuminate the course of Indian history and the abiding values of Indian life. Together they recount the nature and fate of the Indian way of life and how it now seeks to resurrect itself as a self-affirming cultural force. These excerpts will help us to get to know the Native American psyche and experience since 1492.Photos: Left: Cheyenne profile, ca. 1910. Right: Bull Chief, Apsaroke (Crow), ca. 1908. Photos taken by Edward Curtis.Instructions: Split up the excerpts with your partner. Briefly summarize and highlight the significance of each excerpt below. Then respond to the prompts that follow.Excerpt 1: Page 6Excerpt 2: Page 15Excerpt 3: Page 23Excerpt 4: Page 64Excerpt 5: Page 99Excerpt 6: Page 102Excerpt 7: Page 103-104Excerpt 8: Page 106Excerpt 9: Page 108Excerpt 10: Page 114Excerpt 11: Page 123-124Excerpt 12: Page 125Excerpt 13: Page 152What range of emotions can you identify from the various American Indian speakers? Which of the excerpts did you find most striking or significant? Why?What critiques do the various American Indian speakers make with regards to the white man? Do you find these attacks warranted? Appropriate? Why or why not?39504675013637Left: Bird Rattle, Piegan, ca. 1910. Right: Nesjaja Hatali, medicine man, Navajo, ca. 1904.Photos taken by Edward Curtis00Left: Bird Rattle, Piegan, ca. 1910. Right: Nesjaja Hatali, medicine man, Navajo, ca. 1904.Photos taken by Edward Curtis794146456501500With insight gained from these excerpts, respond to the following claim made by the author of Touch the Earth: “The only decent future for us who live in America now is through a rediscovery of our environment. We need to establish a right relationship with the land and its resources; otherwise, the destruction of the Indian will be followed by the destruction of nature; and in the destruction of nature will follow the destruction of ourselves. The Indians knew this all along. For many generations they learned how to live in America, in a state of balance; or, as a Christian would say, in a state of grace. Perhaps now, after hundreds of years of ignoring their wisdom, we may learn from the Indians.”Aztec Case Study43999151270000325307753478100Americans often generalize about Native Americans as the “primitive, noble savage”; it has too often been believed that all Native Americans, circa 1500, lived nomadically and communally, chasing buffalo across the Plains. While some Native American groups certainly lived in this way, a majority did not. Other Native American groups had more hierarchical and complex civilizations that are important to explore so as to understand the wide diversity of peoples that populated the continent known to Europeans as the “New World.” In this document, you’ll explore an overview reading about Aztec culture from Dr. Michael E. Smith (pictured right), a renowned anthropological scholar and archaeologist of Arizona State University, who specializes in the Aztecs of central Mexico.Instructions: Actively read the overview reading and respond to the prompts below. (Page 1) Fill in the blanks:In central ___________________, between 1100 and the _______s, the Aztecs flourished. The Aztec are remembered for their innovations in the realm of _____________________________. The civilization was destroyed by the _____________________ in 1519. Since the early 16th century, Aztec peoples have _______________________ with Spaniards. (Pages 1-2) Briefly describe the sources analyzed by historians and archaeologists to better understand Aztec civilization:(Page 2) Describe the organization of Aztec society during the Early Aztec period (1150-1350):(Pages 2-3; stop at “Economics”) Describe the organization and development of Aztec society during the Late Aztec period (1350-1520):right104954700(Pages 3-4) Make a bulleted list of critical features of the Aztec economy:(Page 4) Does the Aztec Empire’s political organization seem mostly similar or different from European political organization (circa 1500; the “Modern Era”) you learned about last year in AP Euro or Modern World History? right000(Pages 4-5) Make a bulleted list of critical features of Aztec settlement patterns: (Pages 5-6) Make a bulleted list of critical features of Aztec religion:(Pages 5-6) Do the features of Aztec religion seem more or less violent than some of the other religions you have learned about in previous classes? Consider the conflicts centered around religion that you have learned about.(Page 6) Fill in the blanks:________________________ observations led to accurate descriptions of the heavens and the development of several calendars. Compared to their Spanish conquerors, Aztec medical specialists were seen as having ___________________ methods. This led Spanish invaders to _____________________ Spanish doctors. (Page 6) Make a bulleted list of critical features of Aztec art: (Page 6) When were the Aztec’s defeated? _____________________________(Page 6) What was the primary cause of defeat? ___________________________1537970104330500(Page 6) To what extent has Aztec culture continued despite the Empire’s defeat? ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download