American Progress John Gast 1872
English: This painting shows Manifest Destiny, the belief in westward expansion of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It was widely distributed as an engraving called “Spirit of the Frontier”. Settlers are moving west, guided and protected by Columbia, aided by modern technology like railroads, and driving Native Americans and bison into obscurity. Columbia represents America, dressed in a Roman toga to represent classical republicanism, and brings the enlightened east to the darkened west.
1866: WESTWARD EXPANSION | A Cheyenne Odyssey
ESTIMATED TIME: 1.5-2 HOURS
In “A Cheyenne Odyssey,” players become Little Fox, a Northern Cheyenne boy whose life is changed by the encroachment of white settlers, railroads, and U.S. military expeditions. As buffalo diminish and the U.S. expands westward, players experience the Cheyenne’s persistence through conflict and national transformation. To read more, including the teacher’s guide, and to play the game, follow this link…
This Tribal Map of America Shows Whose Land You’re Actually Living On
It’s possible to learn which native tribes once inhabited your neighborhood.
The tool is called Native-Land, and it’s run by Canadian developer Victor G. Temprano. He also runs the company Mapster, which helps create maps for a wide variety of uses.
Native-Land started in early 2015 “during a time of a lot of resource development projects in British Columbia,” Temprano writes in a blog post. “While mapping out pipeline projects and learning more about them for the sake of public awareness, I started to ask myself whose territories all these projects were happening on. Once I started finding the geographic data and mapping … well, it just kind of expanded from there.”
STAND WITH THE STANDING ROCK SIOUX | Protect Protesters’ Rights
Thousands from across the globe have joined in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to stop the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. The protest has brought together 200 or so tribes that have not united for more than 150 years. Read more from the ACLU…
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF WHAT ARE NOW CALLED ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO
By the late sixteenth century CE, Indigenous people in what is currently Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah -including Apaches and Navajos–were living in more than one hundred communities and in ninety-eight interrelated city-states that included Hopi, Zuni, Taos, Picuris, and Nambé.
When the Spanish invaded the area in 1598, they used the word pueblos (towns) to describe these Indigenous city-states, and eventually the word also came to refer to the people themselves. The Pueblo Indians had a thriving irrigation-based system of agriculture and highly developed religions. The Spanish assault on the Pueblo peoples was brutal. Within two decades they had destroyed most of the Pueblo towns and enslaved the peo-ple. With the military’s support, Franciscan missionaries forbade Pueblos’ religious practices and forced them to convert to Christianity. Pueblo resistance to the Spanish was ongoing.
In 1680 the religious leader Po pay led a well-planned revolt. This revolution was supported by the Navajos, Apaches, and Utes and was joined by captive Indigenous and mestizo servants and laborers in the Spanish capital at Santa Fe. (Mestizos are people of mixed racial heritage, usually Indigenous and Spanish.)
Literacy Across the Curriculum 