Designer: PrimarySourceLearning.org staff

The American Indian Experience

Understanding Goal

American Indians were involved in each step of the history of the North American continent.

Investigative Question

Where is the American Indian in American History?

Mexican Calendar

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/america.html

This image is a manuscript facsimile of an Aztec calendar.  Calendars such as this, created long before European arrival were ubiquitous throughout the Aztec empire and helped each person manage and organize their conception of time.  Calendars usually covered the equivalent of modern "years," though each lasted only 260 days.

Secotan Village Showing Space Utilization

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/1492/america.html

This 1619 engraving, made of an illustration by English Captain John White in the 1580s, shows life in a Secotan village.  The Secotan peoples lived in modern-day North Carolina, along the coast near the Outer Banks.  This illustration shows fertile agriculture, small individual homes, and a series of buildings used to store surplus crops.

The arrival of Hendrick Hudson in the bay of New York, September 12, 1609

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(cph+3b52197))

This secondary source painting, likely from the 19th century, shows a group of Native peoples peering out at the arriving ships of Henry Hudson in 1609.  The painting depicts Native peoples in a highly stylized and idealized form, with a flash of divine light cast behind the approaching European ships.

Chief Little John and the "Trail of Tears"

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/nation/tears_1

John Ross, depicted in the portrait above, was Principal Chief of the Cherokee nation for over thirty years.  Ross oversaw the Cherokee removal along the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Oklahoma, the creation of the Cherokee nation on their reservations there, and their involvement in the Civil War.

Indian Policy

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b43063

This 1881 political cartoon shows Uncle Sam at a table with playing cards labeled "Indian Policy," with white men blowing over the house of cards as Native peoples look on from the sides.   Throughout the post-Civil War years federal Indian policy often left Native peoples out of the policymaking chain.  A series of restrictive policies, culminating in the Dawes Act of 1887, undermined Native rights and helped to enshrine reservations as the organizing principle of Native American life.

Battle of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@1(cph+3a12604))

A member of the Shawneeh tribe, Tecumseh defended the Native Americans' right to land by organizing various tribes in the Ohio Valley and Indiana territories against the U.S. government. With the help of his brother, a prophet named Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh led a series of attacks against the United States during the War of 1812.   Shown here is a battle between a local militia and the British, with whom Tecumseh had sided.  Tecumseh died here, at the Battle of the Thames, in 1813.

Poster for an American Indian Movement Vigil, ca. 1973

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civilrights/cr-exhibit.html

In February 1973, the American Indian Movement (AIM), an activist Civil Rights organization of Native peoples, seized the town of Wounded Knee, the site of an infamous massacre by the U.S. Army in 1890.  The ensuing stand-off between AIM and federal authorities lasted 71 days and included multiple deaths from a firefight.  This poster implores supporters of the AIM to organize and join a vigil on behalf of the AIM in Wounded Knee.

Navajo Smile

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm165.html

Over a forty year periods from the 1890s to the 1930s, Edward Curtis photograph thousands of Native Peoples from a variety of ethnic groups across the United States.  His portfolio of image stands as one of the most extensive photographic catalogues of Native social life in the United States.  This image from Curtis' extensive collection shows a Navajo woman in 1904.