(Click icon for citation)
Theme: Thinking About History
Overview
Perhaps the most important part of thinking like a historian is knowing how to think about history. That means understanding how history can affect you, in your own life—and knowing how historians go about the business of explaining history to others.
The process of researching a historical event—the process you’re going through in this course—will change you in many different ways. Obviously, it will give you new perspectives and new insights about the event you’re researching. But it will also give you new perspectives and new insights about how the world works.
One of the insights you’re likely to gain involves the idea of historical complexity. That’s the idea that there are no easy or simple explanations for historical events; the process of historical change is the product of a complicated array of causes and contingent events, all of which need to be understood in the context in which they took place.
The idea that there are no easy explanations applies not just to history but also to life. Being able to recognize that complexity, and to avoid simplistic reasoning, is a life skill that will serve you well in whatever field you choose to pursue. In this theme, we’ll introduce you to the idea of historical complexity and ask you to think about how different historical situations may be more complex than they first appear.
Thinking about history also means knowing how to apply historical concepts to your own life. In this theme, we’ll ask you to think about the impact that historical thinking may have on the choices you make in your academic career. And you’ll see how the skills you’ve acquired in this course can be applied to other academic disciplines.
At the end of Theme: Thinking About History, you’ll have the opportunity to apply these concepts directly. That’s when you’ll be asked to submit the final version of the essay containing your historical event analysis.
Learning Outcome
After completing this theme, you should be able to:
Illustrate the impact of historical thinking on your personal and professional experiences
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An exhibit of buffalo hide artwork at the National Museum of the American Indian. (Click icon for
citation)
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 7-1: Civil Rights and Economic Liberty
Rights, Opportunity, and Native Americans
Americans like to think of the United States as the “Land of Opportunity”—the place where anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can build a better life. The promise of opportunity has traditionally been a lure to immigrants, millions of whom came to America in search of better conditions than they left behind in their homelands.
But what of all those people whose ancestors were not immigrants, as we commonly use the term—the millions of Americans whose forebears were already living in what is now the United States, long before the first Europeans stepped off the boat? The relationship between the American government and Native Americans, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, has been a complex, contentious, and sometimes tragic one.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the term Native American comprises two groups: American Indians and Alaska Natives. Together, these groups make up the Native American population; Native Hawaiians are counted separately, because their Native groups were not indigenous to North or South America.
Beginning in the 16th century, American Indians in what is now the United States were subordinated militarily, culturally, and economically by the descendants of the European settlers. Prevailing attitudes toward Natives among early white settlers were a mixture of contempt and fear; one of America’s seminal documents, the Declaration of Independence, refers to “merciless Indian savages” bent on the “the undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” Consistent with the view that Natives were savages, many American Indians were not recognized as U.S. citizens until the 20th century.
From the early 19th century—when the U.S. military began forcibly relocating Native tribes to an area known as “Indian Territory,” west of the Mississippi River—through the Indian Wars of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the federal government tended to treat Natives either as foreigners who were potentially enemies, or as uncivilized dependents incapable of managing their own affairs.
The government’s policy, during that time, of restricting Native Americans to specific parcels of land known as reservations had the effect of sharply limiting the economic opportunities available to Natives. (Wilson, 2000) At the same time, misguided educational policies and the lack of quality schools led to a distrust of public education among many Natives and low levels of educational attainment, which in turn further limited economic opportunity. (Giago, 2006)
The impact of these policies continues to be felt. In the 21st century, Natives enjoy the same panoply of legal rights as other citizens, and fouroffive (78%) live outside a reservation. (Office of Minority Health, 2016) But Natives still rank significantly below the national average in many key socioeconomic indicators, including household income, employment, educational attainment, and life expectancy. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012; Indian Health Service, 2016)
The history of Native Americans and Alaska Natives clearly illustrates that securing legal rights—by itself, a long and difficult struggle for Natives—is no guarantee of economic liberty or success. In this theme, we will look at two instances where the rights of Natives came into conflict with the economic interests of nonNatives, with differing results.
In the 1830s, the demands of white settlers led to the forced relocation of thousands of Cherokee from the southeast United States to lands west of the Mississippi River, in a tragic episode known as the Trail of Tears. In the 1960s and 1970s, the land claims of thousands of Alaska Natives threatened to delay or prevent construction of the TransAlaska Oil Pipeline; Congress responded by passing legislation that gave the Natives more than 40 million acres of land to settle their claims and set up a system of Native corporations that has helped to spur economic development and reduce poverty in the Native community.
We will use these case studies to illustrate the concept of historical complexity and to help you understand the impact that historical thinking can have on your own life and career.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Review the historical context behind Native Americans’ struggle for civil rights and economic opportunity, the core concept of this theme Apply different historical lenses to develop a more complex understanding of a historical event
References
Giago, T. (2006). Children Left Behind: Dark Legacy of Indian Mission Boarding Schools. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.
Indian Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2016). Disparities. Retrieved from www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/.
National Center for Education Statistics (2012). Fast Facts: Degrees Conferred by Sex and Race. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72
Office of Minority Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2016). Profile: American Indian/Alaska Native. Retrieved from minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=62.
U.S. Census Bureau (2013). Poverty Rates for Selected Detailed Race and Hispanic Groups by State and Place: 2007 2011. Retrieved from www.census.gov/library/publications/2013/acs/acsbr1117.html.
Wilson, J. (2000). The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America. New York: Grove Press.
Natives and the Land
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 2.9 million people identified themselves as Native Americans or Alaska Natives in the last federal census. (Another 140,000 identified themselves as Native Hawaiians, but this group is not counted as part of the nation’s Native population.) Combined with the number of people who claim Native heritage in addition to some other racial or ethnic background, about 5.2 million people can be considered Natives. (Norris, et al, 2012) There are currently 566 Native tribes that are recognized by the federal government; this figure includes roughly 230 tribes of Alaska Natives. (National Congress of American Indians, 2016)
Native Americans and Alaska Natives are believed to be descended from Asians who came to Alaska from Siberia roughly 12,000 years ago, traveling across a land bridge that traversed what is now the Bering Strait. (Wang, et al, 2007)
This image shows the shrinking of the Bering land bridge over the last 21,000 years. (visit the online learning resource for an animated
version of this image) (Click icon for citation)
Bering Strait. (Wang, et al, 2007) Estimates of the Native population in North America at the time of Columbus’s first voyage range from a low of 2.1 million to a high of 18 million. Following the arrival of the Europeans, however, Native populations were decimated by diseases from Europe— including smallpox, typhus, measles, and influenza—for which the Natives had no natural immunity. (Thornton, 1990)
Relations between Natives and European settlers during the Colonial Period—that is, from the early 17th century through the American Revolution—were mixed. Some tribes traded with the settlers and coexisted peacefully with them; others forcefully resisted attempts by the Europeans to encroach on their territory. While many history texts focus on conflicts between Natives and the English—including the Powhatan Wars in Virginia and King Philip’s War in Massachusetts— there was also considerable conflict in the Spanishheld Southwest; in 1680, Popé’s Rebellion, an uprising by Pueblo Natives, drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for a dozen years. (Riley, 1995)
Some of these conflicts arose from attempts to “Christianize” or “civilize” the Natives; others, such as the French and Indian War, found some Native tribes forming alliances with one group of European settlers against another. But arguably the most frequent source of conflict was land.
Traditional Native attitudes toward land were significantly different from those that characterize American society today. In Native culture, land was seen as a source of life; it was something to be shared communally, not owned by any individual. While we can’t generalize about the expectations and understanding of all European settlers, it is clear that many of them saw land as a commodity that could be bought and sold; they revered the idea of private property, a concept that did not even exist in Native culture. (Cronon, 2003)
This fundamental disjunction of beliefs placed settlers and Natives at odds from the earliest colonial days. Conflicts grew more acute after the American Revolution, when the new American government adopted a series of policies aimed at displacing Natives to make room for a rapidly expanding national population. In the late 18th and early 19th century, suddenly, Natives were not arguing about land with isolated groups of settlers or explorers, or trying to play off the British against the French; they were confronted by a unified national government that was pursuing a consistent policy and which had the potential to back up that policy with military force.
Conflicts over land occurred on every virtually all of the new nation’s frontiers. One area that attracted a great deal of attention in the early 19th century, both from prospective settlers and from officials in Washington, was the Southeast United States—Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. This included the tribal lands of the [?]Five Civilized Tribes[/?]—which during the colonial era had enjoyed relatively peaceful relations with European settlers—as well as several other tribes. (Williams, 1979)
The Southeast was desirable to settlers because the land was fertile for farming, with conditions ideal for the production of cotton. (The opening of the Southeast to cotton farming by nonNative settlers later proved to be a major factor in the dramatic increase in cotton production in the South between 1830 and 1850.) The discovery of gold in Georgia in 1829 only increased the land’s value, in the eyes of prospective white settlers. (Gregg, 2009)
An 1834 portrait of Peter Pitchlynn, later chief of the Choctaw Nation.
(Click icon for citation)
Betsy Brown Stephens, pictured here in 1903, survived the Trail of Tears as a teenager. (Click icon for citation)
Pressure to acquire these tribal lands resulted in passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which authorized the President to negotiate with Native tribes about their removal—essentially to offer them federal land west of the Mississippi River in return for their tribal homelands east of the Mississippi. President Andrew Jackson, a forceful proponent of such land trades, signed the Indian Removal Act into law and began pressuring the tribes to sign landswap treaties.
Some groups of Natives went more willingly than others.
The Choctaw
In September 1830, representatives of the Choctaw Nation signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, ceding their tribal lands in Mississippi in return for a similar amount of land in Indian Territory, in what is now eastern Oklahoma. About 15,000 Choctaw moved west; another 5000 or so remained in Mississippi and became U.S. citizens, with each family receiving a relatively small, 640acre parcel of land. (Satz, 1986)
The Cherokee
The Cherokee Nation, located primarily in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, resisted removal more vigorously. Cherokee leaders, facing pressure not just from the federal government but also the state government of Georgia, responded with lawsuits as well as political lobbying. But divisions within the Cherokee leadership undermined their resistance; one faction, which saw removal as inevitable, negotiated the Treaty of New Echota (1835), which was quickly renounced by leaders of the other faction. The federal government recognized the treaty as valid, however, and in 1838 sent federal troops to begin the forced relocation of the Cherokee to Indian Country. An estimated 4,000 Cherokee died on the thousandmile trek west. (Prucha, 1984)
Micanopy was the principal chief of the Seminole during the Second
Seminole War. (PD) (Click icon for citation)
The Seminole
In Florida, the Seminole—who had already signed a treaty giving up their land in return for a reservation in the central part of what was then the Florida Territory—forcefully resisted efforts to relocate them a second time, to Indian Territory. The resulting Second Seminole War lasted from 1835 to 1842 and was arguably the bloodiest of the 19thcentury “Indian wars.” (Lancaster, 1994) But in the end, the vast majority of Seminoles were forcibly relocated to the west; Washington had prevailed, and the Southeastern United States was no longer Native land.
References
Cronon, W. (2003). Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of Colonial New England rev. ed. New York: Hill and Wang.
Gregg, M. (2009). “Shortchanged: Uncovering the Value of PreRemoval Cherokee Property.” The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 87 (Fall 2009), 320 335.
Lancaster, J. (1994). Removal Aftershock: The Seminoles’ Struggles to Survive in the West, 18361866. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.
National Congress of American Indians (2016). An Introduction to Indian Nations in the United States. Retrieved from www.ncai.org/abouttribes/indians_101.pdf, June 8, 2016.
Norris, T. et al (2012). 2010 Census Briefs. Retrieved from www.census.gov/history/pdf/c2010br10.pdf
Prucha, F. (1984). The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Riley, C. (1995). Rio del Norte: People of the Upper Rio Grande from Earliest Times to the Pueblo Revolt. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Satz, R. (1986). “The Mississippi Choctaw: From the Removal Treaty to the Federal Agency”. In Wells and Tubby, ed. After Removal, The Choctaw in Mississippi. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
Thornton, Russell (1990). American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Wang, S. et al (2007). “Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans”. PLoS Genetics. Vol. 3, No. 11, 185.
Williams, W. (1979). “Southeastern Indians before Removal, Prehistory, Contact, Decline” in Southeastern Indians: Since the Removal Era. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 7-2: Historical Complexity
Complexity Made Simple
The past was messy, and things were never as simple as we’d like to think. That’s the uncomplicated truth behind the concept of historical complexity.
Complexity is the last of the “5 C’s of Historical Thinking” that we first encountered back in Theme: Approaches to History: Change, Context, Causality, Contingency, and Complexity.
Complexity means that historical events rarely have simple explanations. It also means that it’s too simplistic to describe a historical event in terms of absolutes—to say that something is always true, or that no one ever espoused a certain position. Absolutes are for people who see the world in black and white; historians revel in all the shades of grey that come with the study of complex events.
In this learning block, we’ll look at some of the factors that contribute to historical complexity—and we’ll also see how one historical event, familiar to all, was actually much more complicated than many of us may think.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Analyze different factors that contribute to historical complexity Apply different historical lenses to produce a more complex picture of a historical event
Factors That Lead to Complexity
One of the principal goals of teaching history is “to prepare students to tolerate complexity, to adapt to new situations, and to resist the first answer that comes to mind.” (Wineburg, 2010) Okay, so history is complex—but why?
One reason is that there are so many different historical lenses that can be applied to any given historical event. A historian who’s doing research (as you are doing for this course) will typically look at a historical event through one lens. Let’s say you’re researching the French and Indian War; you might use the lens of military history to look at the relative significance of some key battles. Fair enough, but the French and Indian War was more than just a series of battles.
It was also an outgrowth of the Europeanwide conflict known as the Seven Years’ War, which you could look at through the lens of diplomatic history. It was sparked by conflicts between French and British traders in the Ohio Valley, which you could look at through the lens of economic history. The alliance between the French and Indians was an outgrowth of the exceptionally close relations that the two groups had shared from the earliest colonial days—far closer than the relations between Natives and the British—which you could look at through the lens of social history. Finally, it resulted in the takeover of heavily Catholic French Quebec by the Protestant British, who guaranteed French Catholics in Quebec the right to practice their faith—an issue you could look at through the lens of religious history.
The point is that to get a complete picture of any historical event, you’ve got to look at it through multiple lenses. And that necessarily makes the picture more complex and more difficult to describe in simple terms.
History can also raise questions of moral complexity. That is to say, when you’re studying history it’s not always easy to tell the “good guys” from the “bad guys,” because most people are neither wholly good nor wholly evil. And sometimes, trying to figure out who the good guys are (or whether there are any good guys at all) can only distract you from the task of historical analysis.
Complexity also arises because of the nature of causality. Historical events almost always have more than once cause, and those causes may be either proximate or ultimate; some may be necessary while others are contributory. Ascribing a historical event to just one cause is a simplistic approach that is usually mistaken.
Historical complexity is also a function of contingency. Just as events almost always have multiple causes, they also have multiple consequences; each historical event sets in motion many other events, which in turn cause still more events to take place. Describing a historical event in terms of just one of its outcomes does not present the full picture of its historical significance.
References
Wineburg, S. (2010). Historical Thinking: Memorizing Facts and Stuff? TPS Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter, 2010). Retrieved from www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/quarterly/historical_thinking/article.html.
The campaigns of the French and Indian War. (Click icon for citation)
An idealized view of the “first Thanksgiving” (Click icon for citation)
Thanksgiving: A Complex Story
Most Americans are familiar with the story of the first Thanksgiving: how a friendly Native named Squanto befriended the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, taught them how to plant corn, and introduced them to other Natives. After a difficult winter, the Pilgrims brought in a good harvest in 1621 and invited the Natives to join them in a great feast, to thank God for their survival.
That’s the familiar story, anyway. Historians argue with several elements of that description—starting with the idea that this was the first Thanksgiving. The Spanish explorer Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and his men held a thanksgiving celebration in what is now Texas in 1541; settlers in Maine (1607) and Virginia (1610) also held thanksgiving celebrations well before the 1621 feast at Plymouth. (Library of Congress, 2016)
There’s also the fact that the Pilgrims didn’t call their celebration a “thanksgiving”; it was simply a “harvest feast.” The Pilgrims were Puritans, members of a dissenting sect of English Protestants who sought to “purify,” or reform, the Church of England. To them, the term “thanksgiving” had a specific meaning: it was a religious holiday, a day of “prayer and pious humiliation,” proclaimed to mark some particularly auspicious event. The first “thanksgiving” proclaimed by the Pilgrims was in 1623, to mark the end of a severe drought. (Plimoth Plantation, 2016)
The holiday that we call Thanksgiving had its roots in the Civil War. Although the First Continental Congress declared a day of national thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War, and President George Washington did likewise in 1789, the holiday did not become a national fixture until 1863. In that year, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed not one but two days of Thanksgiving—the first, in August, that celebrated the Union victory at Gettysburg and the second, on the last Thursday in November, that established the current national tradition. (Plimoth Plantation, 2016)
But even if the “harvest feast” at Plymouth wasn’t the first Thanksgiving—or really a Thanksgiving at all, as we now know the term—the history of that event, its causes and consequences, provides a more complex picture of relations between Natives and the early English settlers in New England.
Video Transcript: The First Thanksgiving
The story of the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621 is familiar to most of us. A couple of English speaking natives named Squanto and Samoset befriend the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Squanto teaches the Pilgrims how to plant corn and, after the harvest comes in, the natives and the Pilgrims join together for a feast. It’s a heartwarming story, really, but most historians would agree that it never happened that way.
For starters, it certainly wasn’t the first. There had been Thanksgiving celebrations in North America well before 1621 among Spanish explorers and settlers in Texas and Florida and among the Jamestown settlers in Virginia. Second, the Pilgrims weren’t much for feasting and merrymaking. They were Puritans, and to them a Thanksgiving was primarily a day of prayer and religious observance declared to express thanks to God for some specific event. While there are records of many days of Thanksgiving being declared in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies in the 17th century, hardly any of them involved a feast. And there’s no clear record of one in 1621.
Many historians, in fact, believe that traditional Thanksgiving story is a historical myth that for a variety of reasons President Abraham Lincoln seized on when he was trying to unify the North during the Civil War.
But does that mean that Squanto, Samoset, and all the other natives, are just a figment of our historical imaginations? Hardly. These were real people and their story is more complex than most Americans realize.
For starters, there’s Squanto. His name in the Wampanoag language was Tesquantum, which translates roughly to “divine rage.” How did he just happen to speak English, and why did he approach the Pilgrims so readily? Tisquantum was born in a Patuxet village in what is now southeastern Massachusetts. But as a young man, he was taken captive by English explorers and brought back to England as a slave. He learned English and eventually gained his freedom. Close to fifteen years later, as a member of a British expedition, he finally returned to his homeland, only to discover that the Patuxet had been completely wiped out years earlier by an epidemic of smallpox or a similar disease of European origin.
Tisquantum became friendly with Massasoit, the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag people. The Wampanoag, like the Patuxet, had been devastated by disease, and they were being increasingly threatened by the Narragansett people of what is now Rhode Island. Along with another English speaking native named Samoset, Tisquantum acted as the intermediary between Massasoit and the pilgrim leaders as they forged a political alliance.
A treaty between the Pilgrims and Wampanoag, signed on March 22, 1621, committed both sides to a mutual defense alliance against their common enemies. The alliance benefited both sides for a while, but the long term consequences were not so felicitous. Relations between the natives and the settlers began to fray as more Englishmen, both Puritans and nonreligious settlers, arrived in New England, tipping the balance of power in favor of the English. Massasoit kept the Wampanoag neutral in the Pequot War of the late 1630s, in which hundreds of natives were killed and hundreds more were taken captive and sold into slavery. But many other Wampanoag were outraged by English atrocities.
After Massasoit died, his son Metacomet, often known by his English name King Philip, became leader of the Wampanoag. In 1675, after the English executed three Wampanoag for the murder of another native, Metacomet struck back. In an alliance with their former enemies, the Narragansett, the Wampanoag enjoyed some early battlefield successes in what became known as King Philip’s War. But the alliance between the Wampanoag and Narragansett soon unraveled, and by 1676 the war, the bloodiest confrontation between natives and settlers in the history of New England, was all but over. Metacomet was killed in June of that year. By the end of the war, the native population of southern New England had been reduced by half, and the Wampanoag and Narragansett had virtually ceased to exist.
In late June of 1676, after a series of military successes by the English, the governing counsel of the Puritan town of Charlestown, Massachusetts, decided to celebrate the coming end of “the present war with the heathen natives of this land.” To mark the occasion, of course, they declared a day of Thanksgiving.
References
A Puritan’s Mind (2016). The First Thanksgiving. Retrieved from www.apuritansmind.com/thechristianwalk/the firstthanksgiving/, June 14, 2016.
Library of Congress (2016). Thanksgiving Timeline. Retrieved from www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/ presentationsandactivities/presentations/thanksgiving/timeline/1541.html. June 13, 2016.
Plimoth Plantation (2016). Thanksgiving History. Retrieved from www.plimoth.org/learn/multimediareference library/readarticlesandwritings/thanksgivinghistory. June 13, 2016.
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 7-3: Putting It All Together
In Theme: Analyzing History, you learned about the different ways you can include evidence in your essay to support your argument. An historical research paper requires information from different sources to support your thesis, but you need to make sure that most of the paper is in your own words. If you rely too heavily on your evidence, your voice and your argument will get lost in others’ words.
Understanding how to use and incorporate evidence will be helpful in other history courses and future classes you take at SNHU. Knowing how to support an argument effectively is also valuable in the real world.
You will submit the first draft of your essay at the end of Learning Block 4. In this learning block, you should plan to devote at least one to two hours to working on your essay.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Incorporate historical evidence to support your analysis Use a citation wizard to ensure you have accurately formatted your APA citations Question the way your research has given you a more complex view of your historical event
Best Practices
When writing your historical analysis essay, it is necessary to integrate sources in a way that makes it clear which thoughts are yours and which thoughts come from your sources. Remember to focus on your ideas and argument and be sure not to overuse source material. Evidence is necessary to support your thesis statement, but your entire paper should not be someone else’s words.
When you use other people’s words or ideas, it’s essential that you cite your sources. Failure to do so could leave you open to an accusation of plagiarism, which is the use of someone else’s words or ideas without acknowledging that person’s authorship. Plagiarism doesn’t have to involve wordforword copying from another author; simply using similar ideas and phrases, without attribution, is enough to land you in deep trouble. The best way to avoid that kind of problem is to make sure that all of your sources are properly cited.
There are some rules you can follow to make sure that you integrate sources into your writing in a way that helps your audience understand how each source supports your point.
Cite often
Not every sentence in a paper needs to have a citation. It is only necessary to cite often enough to make clear beyond doubt where your information is coming from. If the first sentence of a paragraph cites Gonzalez and Dutt, you wouldn’t need to cite the very next sentence; citations should be placed regularly throughout paragraphs, however. In addition, you would need a citation near the end of the paragraph and at the beginning of the next paragraph.
Even if Gonzalez and Dutt are mentioned by name later in that paragraph, the year does not need to be included because the source is already clear.
If another source is cited between two references to Gonzalez and Dutt, both Gonzalez and Dutt mentions need to include the year, whether in parenthetical citations or blended into the text.
In that example, the Clark study intervenes between the two mentions of Gonzalez and Dutt’s work, so the reader needs to be reminded which Gonzalez and Dutt study is meant.
Four parts
APA format requires four parts to a citation: 1) an introductory phrase, 2) the paraphrase or quotation used as evidence, 3) an intext reference, and 4) a reference page citation.
You will learn more about the specifics of APA style citations at page 2 of this learning block.
In the examples below, the introduction is yellow, the paraphrase or quotation used as evidence is pink, and the intext reference is blue. The reference citation follows.
Gonzalez and Dutt’s (2010) research on decision making is part of a
turn toward new models. In that research, they found that old models are
insufficient for real progress in the field. It was also made clear that . . .
Gonzalez and Dutt’s (2010) research on decision making is part of a
turn toward new models. Clark (2009), however, takes a different tack.
Gonzalez and Dutt (2010) argue that . . .
According to Allen (2007), thimerosal is a preservative that helped
keep vaccines aseptic and contains mercury—49.5% by weight.
References
Allen, A. (2007). Vaccine: The controversial story of medicine’s greatest
lifesaver. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
The list of introductory words below will help you integrate your quotations and paraphrases into your sentences.
Provide context
Creating intext references isn’t just a matter of formatting your parenthetical references correctly— though that’s certainly a concern. When inserting an intext reference, you need to give your reader enough context so that he or she understands whether you are quoting or paraphrasing words or ideas. Readers also need to understand why you are citing another author: Are you giving voice to a counterargument? Or are you providing evidence for a major point?
Signal to your reader why you are citing by using introductory phrases, such as the one highlighted in the excerpt below:
Galanti (2004) asserts, “In some cultures, part of the ‘job’ of the
family is to make sure that the nurses are spending enough time caring for
their loved one” (p. 87).
References
Galante, G. A. (2004). Caring for patients from different cultures.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Introductory words
acknowledges concludes elucidates offers
admits contends expresses presents
advises criticizes illustrates refutes
agrees demonstrates implies rejects
argues describes insists replies
asserts disagrees lists reports
believes discusses maintains responds
claims disputes notes suggests
concedes emphasizes objects writes
The highlighted sentence explains why the reference is important—the writer of this paper wanted his readers to know that sustainability isn’t just for particular industries, and he has support for this claim. He follows up that introductory sentence with supporting information from the source. The paraphrased information is introduced with a statement that suggests that another author wrote the idea originally. He then provides the authors’ names and the year of the article’s publication.
Avoiding Dropped Quotations. To avoid plagiarism, you’ll want to make sure that you are using the four parts of a citation described in the “Four parts” tab. But you’ll need a fifth part, placed in bold below, to avoid dropped quotations and to keep your writing fluid.
When writers don’t provide an introductory or concluding statement to indicate why a source is brought into the conversation, we call this a dropped quotation because the quotation is seemingly dropped into the paragraph from nowhere. When citing the work of others, you need to give your reader enough context so that he or she understands whether you are quoting or paraphrasing words or ideas. Readers also need to understand why you are citing another author: Are you giving voice to a counterargument? Or are you providing evidence for a major point?
Be sure that every time you include a quotation in your paper, you have all of the following parts:
1. An introductory phrase that includes an introductory word, the name of the author, the publication date, and perhaps the title of the resource. On subsequent quotations from the same source, however, you can place the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number at the end of the citation. Remember that you will need to place a comma between the introductory phrase and the quotation.
2. The quotation, surrounded by quotation marks. If the quotation ends in an exclamation point or a question mark, put that punctuation right before the closing quotation mark.
3. An intext reference with the author’s name and publication date (if either of these were not included in your introductory phrase) and the page number. Place a period after the closing parenthesis of the intext reference.
4. At least one sentence that sums up why that quotation was so important to your thesis statement or the major point you are supporting in that place in the paper. This usually means that you should not end a paragraph with a quotation because you would not be providing enough context for why the quotation is important.
5. A reference page citation.
Every time you cite a source, you should include the author’s name, the date of publication, and the page number (if you are quoting). That won’t change.
However, the location in which you provide this information will change depending on whether or not you write the author’s name as part of the sentence. A later paraphrase or quotation by the same author in the same paragraph would not necessarily need to reiterate the author’s name to introduce the quoted or paraphrased content, but it would need to include the name of the author, the publication date, and—if you are quoting—the page number in the parenthetical citation.
Though some believe that sustainability is the domain of industries
such as farming, education, or the automotive industry, the authors’ review
of research addresses the current thoughts about sustainability in many
industries and suggests that in every industry, companies need to focus on
their image in order to stay competitive (Beheiry, Chong, & Hass, 2006).
You will notice in the excerpt below that the author uses an introductory statement to explain why the quotation is important to his major point. After reading the first sentence, we know the quotation is going to tell us more about why the authors are interested in researching multinational corporations rather than governments or smaller businesses.
The conclusion sentence further explains why the quotation and paraphrased content are important to the research paper as a whole.
Sentence grammar
Remember that when you use a quotation, you must still write complete sentences. Every sentence of your writing must be grammatically correct. When you use quotations, you need to incorporate them into your own sentences. Even if you use only part of a sentence from your original source, it is your responsibility to use the correct grammar so that it fits comfortably into your own writing. Break quotations into smaller pieces if you need to and combine paraphrases with quotations. But ensure that you don’t change the meaning of the quotation by eliminating important words when you trim quotations down.
The sentence below contains a quotation in the middle of a sentence. Pay special attention to the way in which this quotation is cited.
Beheiry, Chong, and Hass (2006) explain their interest in finding a
business case for sustainability in specifically multinational corporations:
“Unlike many governments, multinationals have interests and influence
that go beyond national borders. Many multinational corporations already
have environmental management systems (EMSs), pollution reduction,
and energy saving practices in place” (p. 385). Though the authors admit
that corporations have not solved sustainability issues yet, they suggest
that corporations will eventually find the need to compete on a balanced
sustainability more compelling than the need for the shortterm savings
represented by the status quo—wasteful use of resources (Beheiry, Chong,
& Hass, 2006).
Beheiry, Chong, and Hass (2006) explain that their experiment
suggested that companies that were more committed to all three pillars of
sustainable business practices—social development, environmental
sustainability, and economic development—were more likely to see
projects coming in under budget and on schedule. This is important, the
Remember that, regardless of the punctuation that the intext reference precedes, the closing parenthesis of the citation falls before the closing punctuation. Never place the closing punctuation of the sentence inside the parenthetical reference.
Making changes to quotations. This may be surprising, but in order to keep your writing grammatically correct and concise, you can actually make changes to quoted material.
For example, you can change the first word of a quotation to an uppercase or lowercase letter so that the quotation better fits into the grammar of your own sentence. In the example below, Reyes actually began her sentence with “Developing,” so the first letter was capitalized in the original. But that didn’t fit in the grammar of the new sentence, so the letter was made lowercase.
You can also change the punctuation mark at the end of a quotation so that it fits the grammar of your own sentence: for example, a comma can become a period. Don’t change the punctuation marks, however, in any way that would change the quotation’s meaning. You wouldn’t want to insert a question mark where an author was making a factual statement, for instance.
If you remove anything from the middle of a quotation, use three spaced ellipsis points ( . . . ) to indicate the omission:
Never remove a citation from the middle of a quotation. For example, if you want to quote this sentence from ShuFen Kao and B. Lusk’s article “Attitudes Towards Death and Dying,” you may not remove the citation of Benoliel, even if you are removing material around the citation:
authors claim, because “the historical tendency to focus on environmental
sustainability overaligned SD [sustainable development] with the green
movement and alienated the business executives” (Beheiry, Chong, &
Hass, 2006, p. 384). The authors argue that the reason many companies
are slow to embrace sustainable practices is that there is no relevant
business case to persuade those in charge that sustainability will increase
value to shareholders. The results of this experiment may be used to
support the idea that sustainability can reduce costs, which might
encourage business owners to adopt sustainable management practices.
One study found that “developing social networks on campus
counteracted isolation and invisibility” (Reyes, 2011, p. 257).
“For small firms . . . fixed costs are of special concern” (Gerhard &
Milkovich, 1990, p. 667).
You might alter the quotation in this way:
But you may not alter the quotation by removing the citation and anything around it:
You do not need to add sources cited within quotations from sources you are using to your own reference list.
To quote or paraphrase?
In general, paraphrasing sources will keep your own writing from becoming choppy and seemingly thrown together. However, you might quote content directly if you feel that the author’s original phrasing offers a tone or a concision that you would not want to disrupt. The paragraph below uses a quotation that imparts a tone that uniquely and powerfully describes the type of projects that citizens may object to, so the writer of this paper chose to keep the quotation intact because it offers more concision than he could replicate.
“This behavior might be explained by Benoliel (1987–1988), in her
review of the research literature concerning health care providers and
dying patients, that there is some evidence that avoidance of dying patients
is a preferred coping strategy for nurses.”
“This behavior might be explained by Benoliel (1987–1988) . . . that
there is some evidence that avoidance of dying patients is a preferred
coping strategy for nurses.”
“This behavior might be explained by . . . some evidence that
avoidance of dying patients is a preferred coping strategy for nurses.”
Beheiry, Chong, and Hass (2006) suggest that “New roads in a
picturesque countryside, refineries in coastal wetlands, and dams on scarce
river resources are typical projects that attract fierce debate” (p. 385), but
then acknowledge that market forces generally are an important
determining factor for which projects are built where.
A portrait of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, after Benson Lossing’s engraving. (Click
icon for citation)
President Andrew Jackson was a forceful advocate of Indian
removal. (Click icon for citation)
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 7-4: The Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears
As we saw in Learning Block 71, the early 19th century saw widespread conflict between Native tribes and white settlers, and the Southeastern United States was one of the major arenas for this conflict. As the nation’s population increased and settlers began to push westward, the huge stretches of Native tribal land in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi seemed a ripe target—especially because this land was ideal for cultivating cotton, an extremely valuable cash crop.
Starting with Thomas Jefferson, American Presidents had envisioned that Natives living east of the Mississippi River would have to give up their land. As Jefferson saw it, those who wanted to remain in the east could become citizens and receive a 640acre plot of farmland, while those who wanted to maintain their tribal sovereignty could trade their Native lands for federal land west of the Mississippi. (Jefferson, 1803) In either event, the Natives would not remain on their own land.
The War of 1812 was a major turning point in relations between Natives and American settlers. Before the war, the British had used their military presence in Canada to help Indian tribes in their battles against encroaching American settlers; the British hoped to establish a Native state in the American Northwest that would serve as a buffer between Canada and the United States. During the War of 1812, the British formed an alliance with a confederation of Native nations, led by the Shawnee chief, Tecumseh; British soldiers fought sidebyside with Natives in many engagements before Tecumseh was killed in 1813.
The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, also ended any alliances between Natives and the British. In return for the Americans’ pledge to respect Canada’s border the British abandoned the idea of establishing a Native buffer state, and promised not to arm American Natives. (Turner, 2000) Without the British as a potential ally, Natives had less leverage to resist the efforts of white settlers to claim their land.
In 1825, President James Monroe proposed the first plan for Indian removal. Under this plan, Natives living east of the Mississippi would voluntarily trade their homelands for similarly sized stretches of western land, in Arkansas Territory and Indian Territory. Congress approved the plan and Monroe and his successor, John Quincy Adams, sought to convince the Natives to move by peaceful means. At the same time the state government of Georgia, eager to seize land from the Creek and Cherokee, exerted political pressure on Adams to negotiate treaties that were favorable to Georgia’s interests. (Prucha, 1997).
In 1828, Andrew Jackson, who’d gained fame in large part for his military exploits against the Creek and Seminole Indians, won election as the nation’s seventh President. The veteran Indian fighter took a much tougher line than his predecessors, calling for the removal of all Natives east of the Mississippi. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized Jackson to negotiate treaties with each
of the Indian nations, with the goal of relocating each one. (Foreman, 1932)
As we saw in Learning Block 71, different Native groups responded to the Indian Removal Act in different ways. The response of the Cherokee was one of the more complex—and, ultimately, tragic—of those responses.
This learning block looks at the history of the Cherokee Removal as an example of historical complexity, and uses it to help you use historical evidence to draw conclusions about the nature of historical events.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Assess the complexity of a historical event Use historical evidence to draw conclusions about a historical event
References
Foreman, G. (1932). Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Jefferson, T. (1803). Letter to William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indiana Territory. Retrieved from www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/indian_removal/jefferson_to_harrison.cfm
Prucha, F. (1997). American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Turner, W. (2000). The War of 1812: The War That Both Sides Won. Toronto: Dundurn Press.
Cherokee Removal
The ancestral lands of the Cherokee Nation included parts of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. But the bulk of Cherokee land was in Georgia, and it is there that the story of the Cherokee Removal is centered.
In 1802, the fledgling federal government made a deal with the state of Georgia. In return for ceding its western land claims (which would become the states of Alabama and Mississippi), Georgia received a promise that the federal government would negotiate treaties to remove all Natives from the state.
Here we see a clear example of the historical concept of change over time. In the 21st century the forced relocation of an entire racial or ethnic group would be considered ethnic cleansing, a term coined in the 1990s and legally viewed as a “crime against humanity.” (U.N. General Assembly, 1992). But this concept did not even exist in the 1800s, and the forced relocation of American Native tribes occurred frequently during the 19th century.
Some Cherokee did agree to relocate voluntarily to Arkansas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; these “Old Settlers” eventually established the Western Cherokee Nation, but the bulk of the Cherokee remained in Georgia.
As part of their effort to remain on their ancestral lands, the Cherokee—who, along with the other “Civilized Tribes,” had adopted many aspects of EuropeanAmerican culture—strove to assimilate even further. By the early 19th century, the Cherokee had adopted a written language and a constitution modeled on that of the United States, and they had built a capital city at New Echota in Georgia. Many Cherokee married white settlers; John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866, had largely Scottish ancestry and was only oneeighth Cherokee. The Cherokee traded extensively
The Great Seal of the Cherokee Nation. (Click icon for citation)
John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. Note his European style of dress,
emblematic of the Cherokee’s assimilation. (Click icon for
citation)
with white settlers, and many dressed in westernstyle clothing; some of the wealthiest Cherokee owned tobacco or cotton plantations as well as black slaves.
Nonetheless, pressure for removal increased as cotton became the dominant cash crop in the state, because the Cherokee’s land was particularly wellsuited for cotton production. (Fite, 1949) The discovery of gold in 1829, and the ensuing Georgia Gold Rush, only intensified the pressure. (Williams, 2016)
In 1828, the state of Georgia enacted a series of statutes that effectively stripped the Cherokee of their rights under state law. Rather than resort to violence the Cherokee took the state to court; the tribe appeared to be vindicated when the Supreme Court ruled, in Worcester
v. Georgia (1832), that individual states cannot interfere with Natives’ tribal sovereignty. But Georgia flatly refused to comply with the Court’s ruling and President Jackson, firmly committed to his policy of Indian removal, refused to enforce the Court’s decision. When Georgia condoned armed raids on Cherokee territory and went ahead with a state lottery to distribute Cherokee land, the federal government essentially looked the other way. (Foreman, 1932)
Faced with Jackson’s refusal to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision, the Cherokee leadership split. One faction, led by Principal Chief John Ross, continued to resist the federal government’s pressure to negotiate a treaty for Cherokee removal. Another faction, led by tribal elder Major Ridge and his son, John, came to believe that removal was inevitable—and that, no matter how much they personally opposed the idea, the Cherokee should negotiate with Jackson to get the best deal possible.
The division in the Cherokee leadership led to political brinksmanship and, eventually, violence. The proRoss faction organized itself into the “National Party” while the proRidge faction called itself the “Treaty Party.” In 1832, Ross canceled tribal elections and the Cherokee National Council threatened to impeach Major and John Ridge; later, a prominent Treaty Party member was murdered. But John Ridge and other members of the Treaty Party continued to meet secretly with federal officials. (Berry, 2012)
References
Berry, C. (2012) Factionalism, Fighting, and the Tragedy of the Trail. Retrieved from www.allthingscherokee.com/factionalismfighting tragedytrail/
Fite, G. (1949). “Development of the Cotton Industry by the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 15, No. 3. 342 353.
Foreman, G. (1932). Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
United Nations General Assembly (1992) Resolution 47/121, December 18, 1992.
Williams, D. (January 12, 2016) Gold Rush; New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved from www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/historyarchaeology/goldrush
John Ridge, a leader of the Treaty Party, was assassinated in 1839. (Click icon for citation)
The Tragic Journey West
In 1835, about 400 supporters of the Treaty Party—a small fraction of the 16,000 Cherokee then living east of the Mississippi—met with a federal negotiator in the Cherokee capital of New Echota. On December 29, the group’s negotiating committee approved the Treaty of New Echota, under which the Cherokee would relocate to Indian Territory in return for $5 million (along with another $500,000 in educational funds), and land equal to the amount they were giving up.
The original treaty also contained a clause that would have allowed individual Cherokee to remain east of the Mississippi and become American citizens if they gave up claims to their land, but President Jackson rejected that provision. (Perdue and Green, 2004)
The Cherokee Removal was dramatized in a 2009 documentary, “We Will Remain: The Trail of Tears.” To see all or part of this documentary, click here. You can watch as much of the documentary as you’d like, but the part relevant to the Trail of Tears consists of Segments 18 28. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials to access this streaming video.
John Ross promptly denounced the treaty and the Cherokee National Council declared it a fraud, but the U.S. Senate ratified it in 1836 by a single vote. Under terms of the treaty, Cherokee had two years to move west voluntarily, before the U.S. Army would begin a “forced removal.” Relatively few Cherokee, virtually all of them supporters of the Treaty Party, relocated willingly.
In 1838, Jackson’s successor, President Martin Van Buren, ordered General Winfield Scott to begin forcibly removing the Cherokee. But the initial removal operation, involving about 3,000 Natives, resulted in hundreds of deaths and desertions; Scott suspended the operation and placed the remaining Cherokee in 11 internment camps. Eventually, Principal Chief John Ross—bowing to the inevitable, but also hoping to safeguard his position as leader once the Cherokee arrived in Indian Country—signed a contract with the government to oversee the relocation plan. (Prucha, 1984)
Ross arranged for 12 wagon trains, each with roughly 1,000 Cherokee, to make the thousandmile trip west. (Ross and other National Party leaders traveled in greater comfort aboard the steamboat Victoria.) Starting out in October and November, the wagon trains endured harsh winter conditions during the three to fourmonth journey, and hundreds more perished. This is the phase of the Cherokee Removal commonly known as the Trail of Tears.
Estimates for the total number of deaths during the Cherokee Removal vary widely, from a low of 2,000 to a high of 6,000. The most commonly cited figure is 4,000; this number takes into account those who died during the initial Army removal operation; in the internment camps; and on the wagon trains. (Prucha, 1984; Anderson, 1991)
The move west did nothing to heal the divisions within the Cherokee leadership. Followers of the Treaty Party, many of whom had relocated voluntarily, aligned themselves with the Old Settlers who had arrived before 1830. Ross and his National Party followers arrived in early 1839, and he promptly asserted his position as Principal Chief; the following June, three of the leaders of the Treaty Party—Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot—were assassinated by supporters of the National Party.
The killings set off a wave of intertribal violence that lasted for a decade, and fierce rivalries within the tribal leadership lasted throughout the American Civil War. (Wilkins, 1970) When John Ross died in 1866, the Cherokee Nation was still bitterly divided.
References
Anderson, W., ed. (1991) Cherokee Removal: Before and After. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Perdue, T. and Green, M. (2005) The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: St. Martin’s Press.
Prucha, F. (1984). The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
Wilkins, T. (1970) Cherokee Tragedy. New York: Macmillan Company.
Exercise: Further Readings
The following passage is excerpted from “To Overawe the Indians and Give Confidence to the Whites: Preparations for the Removal of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia”. Read the passage and then answer the question following it, keeping in mind the concept of historical complexity.
Click on the title of the article to read, download, and print a copy of the text. These readings are provided by the Shapiro Library. This reading is required. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials to access this article.
“To Overawe the Indians and Give Confidence to the Whites:” Preparations for the Removal of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia”
Familiar accounts of Cherokee Nation removal narrate a story of the spring of 1838 when the Cherokees were surprised in their fields or at their dinner tables, rounded up like animals, and forced into stockades. Confined and guarded, they suffered for months without adequate supplies, food, or sanitation; they died by the hundreds from exposure or disease. These narratives, which understandably focus on the terror of removal, obscure important developments that occurred between treaty ratification and removal enforcement. Georgians interpreted Cherokee resistance as the prelude to a violent uprising. Their irrational fears combined with suspicion of the federal government to make removal preparations in Georgia a haphazard and brutal affair….
Military preparations for Indian removal in Georgia began in the spring of 1836 and ended in the spring of 1838. In those two years federal and state officials set up and unsteadily expanded military operations. They did so in a state deeply hostile toward Indians and resentful of federal authority. Georgians received little comfort from the Cherokee expulsion treaty or from the government’s substantial removal procedures. Convinced of Cherokee treachery and their own vulnerability, citizens pressed the governor to build forts, hand out weapons, activate troops, and disarm or arrest Cherokees. They considered and repeatedly described the Cherokees as hostile, regardless of contrary evidence. Concerned about the volatility of Georgians and unable to fathom the Cherokees’ response to the treaty, governmental authorities prepared for war inside the Cherokee Nation….
Conditions in the state remained volatile as former governor George Gilmer returned to office in 1837. Worried that intemperate whites were more likely than resolute Cherokees to spark violence, he appointed new agents in the Cherokee counties. Their charge was to monitor Cherokee attitudes and behavior, and, just as importantly, to report any abuse of Cherokees by white Georgians. In early December 1837 Gilmer demanded that Joseph Henry in Walker County, Lacy Witcher in Paulding County, Benjamin Chastain in Gilmer County, and George Kellogg in Forsyth County “report immediately whether Indians in your agency have been disturbed in their occupancy and
The following readings offer additional insights about the Cherokee Removal and the Trail of Tears:
The Price of Cherokee Removal: A brief article that looks at the Cherokee Removal from an economic perspective, measuring the total cost of the removal. You can read it at this link. This reading is required. “Removal, Reunion, and Diaspora”: An analysis of the complex political dynamics that characterized the relationship between different groups of Cherokee who migrated West before 1838, and those who endured the Trail of Tears. This essay is Chapter Three of The Cherokee Diaspora, by Gregory D. Smithers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). You can read it at this link. This reading is optional.
what steps have been taken to protect them.” Peaceful and timely removal, he emphasized, depended on their protection of Indian rights until May 23, 1838. If Georgians failed in their responsibilities, the governor considered a bloody conflict inevitable.
Meanwhile, the federal government moved swiftly to implement the terms of the New Echota treaty. Within days of treaty ratification, the government called war hero John Ellis Wool from Troy, New York, to take command of the new Army of the Cherokee Nation. By June, Wool was on his way to the Cherokee Agency in Athens, Tennessee, to establish a military base. Fort Cass became headquarters for the removal of the Cherokee Nation.
The organization of federal removal proved erratic, which complicated procedures and produced an army of uncertain abilities. General Wool was one of three career military officers who led the Army of the Cherokee Nation in a twoyear period. One year after arriving in Tennessee, Wool departed for his court martial on charges of mistreating Alabama citizens and property.13 The army then summoned Colonel William Lindsay of Limestone, Alabama, to replace him. Lindsay commanded during the second year, but one month before the treaty deadline he ceded command to General Winfield Scott. All three commanders faced suspicious state authorities, an assortment of illprepared troops, hostile Georgians, and a Cherokee Nation wholly resistant to dispossession. Under the circumstances, removal preparations could hardly have proceeded smoothly.
Since they had a signed and ratified treaty, authorities assumed the Cherokees would emigrate voluntarily to Indian Territory. Government agents who met with Cherokees concluded that emigration was eminent and conveyed their assurances to others. Wool wrote that the daily reports he received induced him to believe “that a large portion of the nation was prepared to submit to the treaty and to remove west at the proper time.” As he met with the headmen of Cherokee towns, however, Wool soon learned the extent of their opposition to the treaty. After only three weeks as commander, he began warning the federal government that the majority of Cherokees considered the treaty fraudulent.14 He recognized that their opposition signaled widespread rejection of voluntary departure, and that some degree of military action would be necessary.
Iñupiat with a Native skinboat, or umiak, 1935. (Click icon for citation)
Prudhoe Bay in 1968, the year oil was discovered there. (Click icon for citation)
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 8-1: Alaska Native Corporations
Land and Oil
In March 1867, Tsar Alexander II of Russia agreed to sell “Russian America” (quickly renamed the “Department of Alaska”) to the United States. Under the Treaty of Cession, the U.S. government paid the Tsar $7.2 million for a territory that comprised 586,412 square miles—roughly two cents an acre.
But who really owned all that land? At the time of the Alaska Purchase, Secretary of State William H. Seward estimated that the Native population of Alaska was slightly less than 60,000. (Seward, 1891) These Alaska Natives— including the Inuit, Tlingit, Yupik, Haida, Aleut, and Iñupiat, among many others—claimed that the land had always been their home. Their aboriginal land claims dated back well before American or even Russian ownership of the land.
Those land claims went unresolved for more than a century; the United States government claimed ownership of the vast majority of Alaskan land until the 1960s. In 1971, only about 1 million of
the state’s 375 million acres were in private hands. (Turner, 1982). But, with Alaska so sparsely populated (especially in the vast Interior), and with little agriculture or commercial use for most Alaskan land, there were few conflicts over the Natives’ continued use of it. Most of Alaska was not suitable for settlement, in the same way that land in the Lower 48 was; for that reason, relatively few nonNatives were interested in the land. Congress in 1884 passed the Alaska Organic Act, which protected the Natives’ right to the “use and occupancy” of ancestral land, without addressing the question of whether the Natives actually owned it. (Jones, 1981)
All that changed in 1968, when the AtlanticRichfield Company discovered oil at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s Arctic Coast. It quickly became apparent that the most effective way to get crude oil from Prudhoe Bay to markets in the Lower 48 would be to build a pipeline to carry the oil to the port of Valdez in southern Alaska. (Banet 1991) But to build the pipeline, the oil companies would need clear title to the land—land that was still subject to Native land claims.
It was a scenario that had played out so many times before in American history: land that for centuries had been used by Natives was, suddenly, extremely valuable to non Natives. So many times before, that scenario had ended up with Natives being forced or cheated out of their land. But the outcome this time would be very different.
This learning block uses the history of the Alaska land claim issue as another way to use historical evidence to draw conclusions about historical events—as well as to reinforce your understanding of historical contingency and complexity.
Former Alaska Governor Walter Hickel. (Click icon
for citation)
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Use historical evidence to draw conclusions about a historical event Assess the contingency and complexity of historical events
References
Banet, A. (1991). “Oil and Gas Development on Alaska’s North Slope: Past Results and Future Prospects” Anchorage, AK: Bureau of Land Management Alaska State Office. Retrieved from www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/ak/aktest/ofr.Par.49987.File.dat/OFR_34.pdf.
Jones, R. (1981). “Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (Public Law 92203): History and Analysis Together With Subsequent Amendments (Report No. 81127 GOV).” Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.
Seward, F. W. (1891) Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State. New York: Derby and Miller.
Turner, W. (1982). “Areas as Vast as Whole States Now Change Hands in Alaska.” The New York Times, October 8, 1982.
ANCSA and Native Corporations
Alaska was admitted to the Union as the 49th state on January 3, 1959. Under the terms of the Alaska Statehood Act, the federal government would transfer ownership of up to 104.5 million acres of land to the new state, but none of this would be land that was subject to Native claims. (Alaska Statehood Act, 1958. )
The law gave the state 25 years to select which tracts of land it wanted. In the 1960s, the state began to make its selections—but much of the land it wanted was subject to Native claims. Several Native groups filed lawsuits to stop the land selections, and the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) was founded to advocate for a fair and comprehensive settlement to the land claim issue. In response, the federal government shut down the selection process and told the state to negotiate an agreement with the Natives. (Jones, 1981)
The discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968 added urgency to those negotiations. Without a resolution of the Native claims, it would not be possible to build the massive TransAlaska Pipeline that the oil industry said was needed to carry Alaskan oil to markets in the Lower 48. (Naske, 1994)
The pressure to come to a quick settlement in the interest of economic development was in fact reminiscent of the pressure to seize Native lands following the Georgia Gold Rush in the 1830s. In each case, the opportunity to extract a highly valuable natural resource suddenly made Native land even more valuable than before. But several factors helped to produce a very different outcome for the Alaska Natives:
The Natives had effective political representation, through the AFN and other organizations; U.S. courts were more sympathetic to the Alaska Natives’ claims, ruling in their favor in several instances; The state government was willing to seek a negotiated settlement with the Natives;
The federal government—including Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel, a former governor of Alaska—also favored a negotiated settlement; and Greater public awareness of the injustices done to Natives in the past increased the social and political pressure to find an equitable settlement. (Jones, 1981)
After protracted negotiations, Alaskan officials and the AFN reached an agreement in principle: Natives would receive land that they had historically used and drop their claims to any other land in the state in return for a cash settlement. The exact terms of that agreement would be for the federal government to decide and—after initially offering the Natives far less than they wanted, in terms of land and cash— Congress and President Richard Nixon eventually agreed to a historic deal.
On December 18, 1971, President Nixon signed into law the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), which at the time was the largest land claim settlement in American history.
In return for letting the federal government “extinguish” their claims to most Alaskan land, Natives received 44 million acres and a cash payment of $962.5 million. The 44 million acres was oneninth of the total area of the state of Alaska; the monetary settlement represented a direct payment of $462.5 million from the federal government and another $500 million to be paid over time from state oil revenues. (ANCSA, 1971)
Even more historic than the size of the ANCSA settlement was the way it was structured—a radical departure from the traditional model of Native reservations in the Lower 48, in which the federal government holds Native lands in trust. Instead of establishing reservations ANCSA set up a system of Native corporations to administer the land and invest the monetary settlement for the benefit of Natives. (Thomas, 1986)
The law set up 12 regional corporations, each associated with a particular part of the state and the Natives who traditionally lived there. All Natives who were alive in 1971 could enroll in one of the corporations, and each received 100 shares of stock in the corporation in which they enrolled. (A 13th corporation was established later, for Natives who were not living in Alaska in 1971). The law also
A map of the original 12 Alaska Native regional corporations. A 13th regional corporation was established later. (click map to enlarge) (Click icon for citation)
A Tlingit totem pole in Sitka, Alaska. (Click icon for citation)
established more than 200 local or “village” corporations, in which Natives could also enroll and receive shares of stock. The corporations were given free rein to use the land and any mineral or other natural resources it might hold to develop forprofit businesses and to pay Native shareholders a yearly dividend based on those profits.
The corporation structure was the brainchild of the AFN, which saw this proposal as an opportunity to extend “the transformational power of capitalism…to Alaska Natives,” while also preserving the land and cash settlement so that it could benefit future generations. (Linxwiler, 2007)
ANCSA was generally wellreceived in Alaska by both Natives and nonNatives. After years of legal wrangling over exactly who was entitled to Native corporation shares, many of those corporations have grown into successful businesses that generate substantial dividends and provide thousands of jobs for Native shareholders. And, by removing one critical barrier to construction of the TransAlaska Pipeline, ANCSA paved the way for the emergence of the state’s “oil economy,” which has generated substantial economic benefits for both Natives and nonNatives. (Alaska Humanities Forum, 2016)
One unique aspect of Alaska’s “oil economy” is the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state fund that collects 25 percent of all oil land royalties and invests those funds for the benefit of all Alaskans. The Fund, which in 2015 amounted to more than $51 billion, pays a yearly dividend to every qualified Alaskan; in 2015, that meant a dividend check of $2,072 for virtually every man, woman, and child in the state. (Klint and Doogan, 2015) By enabling construction of the TransAlaska Pipeline, ANCSA in a very real sense made the Permanent Fund, and its yearly dividend checks, possible.
Still, the law remains controversial, especially among Natives who believe it weakens ties to Native heritage. (Thomas, 1985) Almost a halfcentury after its passage, the jury is still out on whether ANCSA was a “good deal” or a “raw deal” for Natives. But it is, in almost every respect, a very different sort of deal than that received by any other group of Natives in American history.
References
Alaska Humanities Forum (2016). Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Retrieved from www.akhistorycourse.org/modernalaska/alaskanativeclaimssettlementact, June 10, 2016.
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), (1971). Public Law 92203, 43 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.
Alaska Statehood Act (1958). Public Law 85508, 72 Stat. 339.
Klint, C. and Doogan, S. (2015). “$2,072: 2015 Alaska Permanent Fund dividend amount announced.” Alaska Dispatch News, September 21, 2015. Retrieved from www.adn.com/economy/article/2015pfd announcementjusthoursawayanchorage/2015/09/21/
Jones, R. (1981). “Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (Public Law 92203): History and Analysis Together With Subsequent Amendments (Report No. 81127 GOV).” Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.
Linxwiler, J. (2007) The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act at 35: Delivering on the Promise. Retrieved from www.lbblawyers.com/ancsa/ANCSA%20at%2035%20Delivering%20on%20the%20Promise%20Proof%2010 2507.pdf
Naske, CM. (1994). Alaska: A History of the 49th State. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Thomas, M. (1986). “The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Conflict and Controversy.” Polar Record, Vol. 23, No. 142, 27 36.
Native Corporations: Further Readings
So, what’s the bottom line—has ANCSA been a success or a failure? Have the Native corporations benefited the Native community, or not?
If you look only at the bottom line—that is, just at the economic performance of the Native corporations themselves—it’s fair to say that, after a rocky start, many of the regional corporations have done fairly well. In 2004, seven of the top ten Alaskaowned business were Native regional corporations, which distributed $117.5 million in shareholder dividends, employed 3,116 Native shareholders, and paid $5.4 million in scholarships for Native students, (Linxwiler, 2007)
Like much of the oildependent Alaska economy, the regional corporations are highly sensitive to fluctuations in the price of oil, and their performance in any given year will reflect whether the oil business is doing well or poorly. Nonetheless, many of these corporations have matured as businesses and are providing significant economic benefits for their Native shareholders.
The economic performance of the village corporations has been spottier. Many of the village corporations were located in remote rural areas with extremely limited opportunities for economic development. While some village corporations—particularly those in more densely populated areas with easy access to outside markets—have fared well, others have been force to merge or have gone out of business. (Thomas, 1985)
But is economic performance all that really matters? While ANCSA was designed only to provide Alaska Natives with opportunities for economic development, many Natives saw the corporation system as a substitute for—or a rival to—the traditional structures of tribal government. Among Alaska Natives, tribes are generally associated with individual villages (American Indian Resource Directory, 2016); many of the successful village corporations have established nonprofit agencies to provide health care and other social services to Native shareholders. At the same time, the pressure to turn a profit led many corporations, both regional and village, to bring in outside executives to run the businesses—bypassing tribal leaders and Elders, who have traditionally had a revered place in Alaska Native society.
In recent years, many Natives have questioned the extent to which the corporation system might be supplanting some tribal structures and weakening ties to Native heritage. In some areas, tribal government has seen a resurgence in importance.
The readings in this learning block look at two sides of the ANCSA question: the economic performance of the Native corporations and their relationship to the Native heritage and tribal structures. Both articles are taken from the same academic journal: Journal of Land, Resources, and Environmental Law, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Winter, 2005).
ANCSA Unrealized: Our Lives Are Not Measured in Dollars
The following excerpt is from an article by James Allaway, a professor and expert on sustainable economic development, and Byron Mallett, former president of the Alaska Federation of Natives and former CEO of Sealaska, one of the larger Native regional corporations. You can read it at this link, which will take you to the Journal of Land, Resources, and Environmental Law; you can find this specific article in the Table of Contents on the left side of the page. Click on the title of the article to read, download, and print a copy of the text. These readings are provided by the Shapiro Library. This reading is required. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials.
One of the legacies of ANCSA’s short history is the confusion it has caused, including confusion over governing structures. Certainly in Southeast Alaska we have known that clans, family, and family relationships were critical in the conduct of our affairs. I think this was the case all across the state.
Existing traditional governing groups, with their relationships and structures, did not go away with ANCSA. In fact, especially in the last decade, there has been a resurgence of those institutions. The resurgence has been felt and seen all across the state, particularly because there was a universal sense that ANCSA, and other efforts that deal with our circumstances, were not getting at the core of what we needed.
It is crucial that there is a place for traditional tribal governmental structures. I think the emergence of tribes in recent years is not so much about governmental structures, but is a reassertion that we will take hold of our own lives. We will be responsible for our destinies, which is a powerful ideal. It also places a profound obligation on Native people.
There is a vital place for Elders here. We cannot know the past and have a sense of values, we cannot have a sense of place or purpose, without Elders. Elders are an important part of the spiritual path. They carry the fire. We do not need to institutionalize the role of Elders, other than to sustain them materially. If we do, they will sustain us spiritually.
Alaska Natives and the New Harpoon: Economic Performance of the ANCSA Regional Corporations
The following excerpt is from an article by Stephen Colt, an economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage and an expert on Alaska Native corporations. You can read it at this link, which will take you to the Journal of Land, Resources, and Environmental Law; you can find this specific article in the Table of Contents on the left side of the page. Click on the title of the article to read, download, and print a copy of the text. These readings are provided by the Shapiro Library. This reading is required. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials.
An Iñupiat leader, Charlie Edwardsen, called the [Native regional] corporations the “new harpoon”—a reference to his people’s historic reliance on whaling.
…For at least the first twenty years of operation—from 1973 to 1993—the economic performance of the regional corporations was surprisingly poor. Through 1993, these corporations as a group lost about $380 million, or more than eighty percent of their original cash endowment, in direct business operations. Only the onetime sale of oldgrowth timber and other natural assets and a onetime tax windfall allowed them to report positive accounting income.
Behind the poor average performance, however, is a surprising amount of variation that includes some real success stories. Cumulative per capita dividends from 1974 through 1999 varied from $50 to more than $34,000. The average annual return (including income from resource sales and tax windfalls) for the corporations was about five percent of book equity—but this return varied among corporations from minus fifty percent to plus twentyseven percent. And beyond financial returns, several corporations provided hundreds of highwage jobs for their Native shareholders, while others provided none.
…Through their first twenty years, Alaska Native regional corporations could not parlay control of land, natural resources, and capital into sustained profits—and in fact sustained large losses in the attempt….Limited analysis of more recent data shows that the corporations dramatically improved their financial performance during the 1990s. Using a measure of adjusted net income that excluded tax windfalls and onetime sales of natural resource assets, they lost $250 million between 1974 and 1991. But in 1992 this measure of adjusted net income switched from being generally negative to generally positive and growing. Between 1992 and 1998 they earned $710 million….
…[T]he corporations have learned from some early mistakes during these startup years….Their recent success suggests that the challenge of economic development in a remote region can be met, at least in part, by participating in the larger national and global economy.
References
American Indian Resource Directory (2016). Alaska Native Villages. Retrieved from web.archive.org/web/20051125001107/http://www.indians.org/Resource/FedTribes99/Region1/region1.html, June10, 2016.
Linxwiler, J. (2007) The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act at 35: Delivering on the Promise. Retrieved from www.lbblawyers.com/ancsa/ANCSA%20at%2035%20Delivering%20on%20the%20Promise%20Proof%2010 2507.pdf
Thomas, M. (1986). “The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Conflict and Controversy.” Polar Record, Vol. 23, No. 142, 27 36.
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 8-2: Why Study History?
At the root of this course is a fundamental question: Why study history? As we’ve said before, the purpose of studying history is not to catalogue a long list of names and dates. Rather, the purpose of studying history is to learn more about the world around us, about human society and, in the end, about ourselves.
History is also a tool that can help us in whatever academic discipline or professional career we choose to pursue. As we saw in Theme: Approaches to History, historical thinking is a skill that can be applied to a wide range of problems and issues, both in the classroom and in everyday life.
The following passage is excerpted from an essay by the prominent historian Peter N. Stearns, which is featured on the website of the American Historical Association. It provides a clear summary of how studying history can benefit those who don’t choose to make history their life’s work—which is to say, the vast majority of today’s history students:
Why Study History?
In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don’t use what we know about experiences in the past?…
The argument I make pivots on a tension that underlies every encounter with the past: the tension between the familiar and the strange, between feelings of proximity to and feelings of distance from the people we seek to understand. Neither of these poles does full justice to history’s complexity, and veering to one side or the other only dulls history’s jagged edges and leaves us with cliché and caricature. Furthermore, I claim that the essence of achieving mature historical thought rests precisely on our ability to navigate the jagged landscape of history, to traverse the terrain that lies between the poles of familiarity with and distance from the past.
Professor Stearns’ full essay can be found at this link. This reading is required.
As a student of history, you have the opportunity to apply historical thinking to your own life. In a broad, philosophical sense, studying history will help you to understand how the decisions you make today can cause different options to open up tomorrow; to see the importance of judging events in context; and to be able to deal with the complexity of circumstances that confront you. And in a highly practical sense, the critical thinking skills you develop in this course can apply directly to your other academic work at SNHU.
This learning block looks at the practical application of historical thinking skills to other academic disciplines.
A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points….
What does a welltrained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several overlapping categories.
The Ability to Assess Evidence. The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can. Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders —one kind of evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self serving among statements made by presentday political leaders. Learning how to combine different kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also be applied to information encountered in everyday life.
The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations. Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential citizenship skill for which history, as an oftencontested laboratory of human experience, provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment, but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in debate and achieve perspective.
Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change. Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it’s an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our “everchanging world.” Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to generate the actual change that occurs.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Assess the usefulness of historical thinking in nonhistorical contexts Apply historical thinking to specific academic assignments
“The Familiar and the Strange”
Sam Wineburg, a professor of education who has written extensively about historical thinking, offers a more lyrical—but no less compelling—description of the value of history in our daily lives. He describes historical thinking as the process of navigating “the tension between the familiar and the strange,” both of which are essential to our understanding of the past. The passage below is excerpted from “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts”, page 489. These readings are provided by the Shapiro Library. This reading is required. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials to access this article.
From “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts”
What is history good for? Why even teach it in schools? In a nutshell my claim is that history holds the potential, only partially realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas in the school curriculum. I make no claim of originality in arguing this point of view. But each generation, I believe, must answer for itself anew why the study of the past is important…
The argument I make pivots on a tension that underlies every encounter with the past: the tension between the familiar and the strange, between feelings of proximity to and feelings of distance from the people we seek to understand. Neither of these poles does full justice to history’s complexity, and veering to one side or the other only dulls history’s jagged edges and leaves us with cliché and caricature. Furthermore, I claim that the essence of achieving mature historical thought rests precisely on our ability to navigate the jagged landscape of history, to traverse the terrain that lies between the poles of familiarity with and distance from the past.
The pole of familiarity pulls most strongly. The familiar past entices us with the promise that we can locate our own place in the stream of time and solidify our identity in the present. By hitching our own stories to the stories of those who went before us, the past becomes a useful resource in our everyday lives, an endless storehouse of raw materials to be shaped for our present needs. Situating ourselves in time is a basic human need. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of life on the planet without doing so. But in viewing the past as usable, as something that speaks to us without intermediary or translation, we end up turning it into yet another commodity for our instant consumption. We discard or just ignore vast regions of the past that either contradict our current needs or fail to align easily with them….
The other pole in this tension, the strangeness of the past, offers the possibility of surprise and amazement, of encountering people, places, and times that spur us to reconsider how we see ourselves as human beings. An encounter with this past can be mindexpanding in the best sense of the term. Yet, taken to extremes, this approach carries its own set of problems. Regarding the past “on its own terms”—detached from the circumstances, concerns, and needs of the present—too often results in a kind of esoteric exoticism, precisely the conclusion one comes to after a tour through the monographic literature that defines contemporary historical practice. Most of this specialized literature may engage the attention of a small coterie of professionals, but it fails to engage the interest of anyone else.
Communicating Historical Ideas
There’s another side to historical thinking as well: being able to develop and communicate your ideas about history. Framing the right research question, doing research to develop a thesis, using historical evidence to develop arguments that support your thesis—these are all skills that will serve you well in your other academic pursuits.
Think back about the essay you’ve been preparing for this course. Over the last several weeks you’ve had to research primary and secondary sources; assess the reliability of those sources; incorporate the evidence you’ve found into the body of your essay; and properly cite all the information you’ve gathered. When will you ever use those skills again? Most likely, it will be in the next course you take during your college career.
In Conclusion: Historical Perspective
The draft you’ve already submitted to your instructor for feedback contains almost all the essential elements of a thorough historical analysis: a clear and specific thesis statement; background information and context; analytical arguments to support your thesis; and historical evidence to buttress your arguments.
What’s missing? Your own historical perspective.
As we’ve said before, thinking about history requires more than assembling and evaluating information. It also requires you to think about the impact that studying history can have on you personally—by changing the way you think about specific historical events, and broadening your understanding of how historians pursue historical truth.
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 8-3: Wrapping It Up
Earlier in this theme, you learned how to incorporate sources into your history paper. You also learned how to use the APA Citation Wizard to accomplish this goal. In this learning block, you should expect to take some time to review your work and to make sure ALL sources included as paraphrase, summary, or quotations from a source are clearly and accurately cited.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Review your existing citations to ensure you have properly cited historical evidence to support your analysis Apply the perspectives gained from historical thinking to the remainder of your course of study at SNHU
There is no easy way around the tension between the familiar past, which seems so relevant to our present needs, and the past whose applicability is not immediately manifest. The tension exists because both aspects of history are essential and irreducible.
Detecting plagiarism is now a science—and it’s very hard to get away with cribbing in today’s online world. (Click icon for citation)
A Note on Plagiarism
In Theme: Thinking About History, Learning Block 73, you learned how to use and cite outside sources. The use of outside sources makes your argument stronger by showing the reader that you have done research and have facts and evidence to back up your claims. In addition to using this additional evidence throughout the essay, it is essential that you use proper citations to ensure that all content is credited to the original author(s). Citations help protect the intellectual property of others.
As we noted earlier, proper citation is the best way to avoid any accusation of plagiarism. You plagiarize if you use someone’s exact words without using quotation marks around them and citing them with an intext reference to the source and full documentation for the source in the reference list. You plagiarize if you use someone else’s ideas, even if you paraphrase, without citing them with an intext reference to the source and full documentation for the source in the reference list. You plagiarize if you use the ideas or structure of ideas from another piece of writing with no acknowledgement or only minimal acknowledgement of your use.
As a student, you may receive failing grades on assignments or be expelled from school if you plagiarize. In the business world, companies are often sued for infringement on intellectual property rights—using material that someone else wrote or designed.
You can avoid plagiarism by practicing good research habits—taking care to use quotation marks around any quotation or borrowed phrase and carefully documenting the page number and citation information for each source, even in your notes. Practicing good habits while taking notes will prevent accidental slipups in the writing that you turn in.
Theme: Thinking About History | Learning Block 8-4: Revisions and Submission
Throughout this course, you have been learning about writing and research along with historical events and issues that illustrate how to think like an historian. All of this has culminated in your historical event analysis essay, which you will finish and submit in this learning block. The skills you have learned in this course—such as historical thinking, research, critical thinking, and analytical writing—will be useful in your studies at SNHU and your personal and professional life. We hope you feel proud about your essay—and we also hope the process of researching and writing it has helped you to learn more about history, about the world, and about yourself.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Learn strategies for editing and revising your essay Submit your completed historical analysis essay to your instructor
Newspaper reporters have editors to review their work, but you’ll have to handle the
revisions yourself. (Click icon for citation)
Revision Strategies
In every form, style, genre, and medium, no matter what your skill level, revision is essential to good writing. It’s the difference between showing talent and getting the job done. By revising your work, you transform it from a record of your own understanding to writing that connects with readers and is able to shape their understanding.
Writers often think that if they didn’t see a problem the first time, they won’t see it the second time either. But this isn’t the case with many problems you can identify and fix in the first few stages of revision. Revision allows you to come back to your paper with fresh eyes and read it as a reader rather than as the writer who already knows what he or she is saying. If there is a gap in evidence or paragraphs inserted where they don’t logically flow, you’re most likely to notice these problems after you’ve set your paper aside for a while. If you’re lacking topic sentences for your paragraphs, you are going to have just as difficult a time figuring out what you were saying as your reader would. So come back to your paper “as a reader” and see what you can find during these revision stages.
The other critical task in the revision process is implementing the feedback you have already received from your instructor. Make sure that you have reread any and all instructor feedback you received during this course, and be certain that you have made all suggested changes.
As you prepare to submit your historical analysis essay, you’ll want to reread your selected readings, and take additional notes. And don’t be shy about emailing your instructor with any remaining questions. Finally, remember that the Writing Center is also available if you need additional help with your assignments in this course.
General Tips for Revision
Before you begin revising your essay, it is helpful to consider the following general tips for revision. These tips can apply to any writing assignment.
1. Get some distance from your paper. Set your draft aside for a while, preferably overnight or longer. When you read it again, try to assume your audience’s perspective and read your work with fresh eyes.
2. Give yourself plenty of time to revise. Don’t wait until the night before a paper is due to attempt revisions. Instead, try to finish writing your draft at least a few days before the deadline so you have time to reread and to make the largescale and smallscale changes that are necessary.
3. Print out a hard copy of your draft. It is often difficult to catch grammar and spelling errors when you read your paper on a computer screen. It is also hard to get a good sense of the entirety of your paper, to see where and how your draft needs reorganizing. Revising a hard copy allows you to spot these problems and to make notations directly on your draft as you read it.
4. Read your paper out loud. It is often easier to hear the parts of your draft that need clarification or correction than it is to see them. Reading your paper aloud with a pen or pencil in hand will help you locate the sentencelevel changes that need to be made and the places where your writing is confusing or unclear.
Large-scale revisions
After you’re sure that your argument is addressing the right content to meet your purpose, it’s time to undertake largescale revisions—those revisions that concern the organization of your ideas and filling in evidence and details to support your points.
Some sections and paragraphs may require rewriting at this stage, but you don’t need to look for proofreading errors yet. Since you’ll be adding, removing, moving, and changing sentences to better emphasize your overall meaning, you don’t need to get bogged down into the details of sentence structure or punctuation just yet.
When you return to your draft, begin by assessing the paper as a whole.
Is your thesis statement clearly stated? Do your major points support your thesis statement? Have you summarized opposing viewpoints when appropriate?
Open up your essay draft in a word processing program and highlight the parts of the essay that respond to these requirements. You may even use your word processor’s commenting feature to add a comment to state the role of the section in your essay.
If you can’t identify a section that serves one of these functions, you should create one and support that section with more details and evidence.
Small-scale revisions
After your paragraphs are in order, it’s time to focus on sentencelevel changes. This part of the revision process is made up of editing—deciding on the clearest way to present an idea—and proofreading— correcting errors in spelling, grammar, word usage, and sentence structure. Grammatical errors can distract your reader and make your ideas seem hastily thrown together, even if you put significant time into your draft so far.
Use the questions below to help identify and correct common errors.
Are your sentences grammatically complete with a subject and a verb? Do you vary your sentences in style and length? Have you used punctuation correctly? Is your language specific enough or too vague? Is your tone appropriate? Do you understand the meaning of the words you have used? Are there any homonym errors (like its versus it’s, or their versus there)?
Self-evaluation
The checklist below will help you consider your progress and determine where you might improve the paper.
How are you indicating the changes you’ve made during the revision process? Are you saving different versions of your paper? Is the paper properly formatted? Do you have a clear, arguable, and easily identifiable thesis? Do you have a clear focus throughout your essay that connects back to the thesis? Do you develop your main points in enough detail? Do you include enough support? Have you added new details or evidence to strengthen weaker supporting points? Have you deleted unnecessary or redundant material? Do you provide enough context in the opening paragraph(s) of your paper to orient the reader? Do you define key terms? Does your conclusion restate your main claim in fresh language and review the major supporting points? Is your paper written from an appropriate and consistent point of view? Have you considered your audience? Does your paper flow logically from one point to the next? Are there any areas that might confuse your readers? Have you edited for errors in spelling, grammar, or word usage? Have you set your paper aside for a day or two and reread it to check for clarity?
Reflection and Revision
Think back to the historical case studies that have been covered in this course:
Irish immigrant experience Québécois immigrant experience Women’s suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment Equal Rights Amendment School desegregation in Boston Voting Rights Act of 1965 Cherokee “Trail of Tears” Alaska Native Corporations
The End
With the submission of your historical event analysis essay, you have completed all the coursework for History 200. Before you go, though, please take just a couple of moments to take stock of what we’ve accomplished in this course.
We’ve covered a lot of material about a lot of different groups of people—immigrants, women, African Americans, and Native Americans—and how each of those groups has struggled, with varying degrees of success, to attain the full promise of equal rights in American society. Unlike many history courses, though, this course hasn’t focused on the names and dates that make up the historical record; rather, it has tried to show you how history works, and how you can use it in your life.
We’ve explored the way that historians approach history, through the process of historical thinking, the application of different historical lenses, and the assessment of historical significance. We’ve looked at the Five C’s of historical thinking—change, context, causality, contingency, and complexity—and seen how they all work together to create the richly woven fabric of historical understanding.
This course has shown you how to communicate historical ideas—using primary and secondary sources to develop a thesis statement, and then tailoring your statement to a specific audience. It’s helped you craft a writing plan to guide your research and writing about a specific historical event. And it’s exposed you to the process of historical analysis: the use of historical evidence to draw conclusions about a historical event, and then formulate arguments to support those conclusions.
Writing your historical event analysis essay required you to utilize historical thinking, communications, and analytic skills. And it introduced you to the specialized composition skills needed to produce an original, fully sourced research paper.
Finally, it’s our hope that this course has changed the way you think about history. We hope it’s given you a better appreciation of how the past informs the present, and how an understanding of history can benefit you throughout your academic career—and throughout your life.
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