Kristine Parsons, William “Pete” Knight High School, Palmdale, California
This set of high school level lessons, suitable for either an American history or
world history class, compares frontier experiences in the United States and
southern Africa. It employs an array of documents, images, and video clips
to guide students to compare and contrast the interactions between
Europeans and Native Americans in the post-Civil War era with
contemporary developments between the Europeans and Zulus in Africa.
The lessons underscore the prevalent imperial mentality of the nineteenth
century. Evaluation methods include diagraming, essays, group discussion,
and exit slips.
Common Core Standards
1. Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as
the date and origin of the information.
2. Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how
key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political,
social, or economic aspects of history/social studies.
6. Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which
details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.
9. Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.
Objective:
Define what a frontier is and how it relates to the expansion of European Empires in South Africa through the use of
primary sources, discussion.
Examine the different groups vying for control over the same area over a long period time.
Identify causes of migration and immigration.
Rationale
Assessment
Draw comparisons between native groups students may be familiar with to Graphic organizer to sort information and
a native groups they are not familiar with.
draw a visual comparison
Completion of matrix of the big ideas
Comparative Essay of one of the
following topics:
Sitting Bull and Shaka Zulu
The Reservations of the United States
What is the frontier process?
Questions
Africa is a “frontier” to which group of people?
What is the land to the people or group already claiming it?
How typical was the success of Shaka Zulu?
How many groups are struggling to claim the same land during this period?
How is the treatment of the Zulus by the Boer’s the same or different than the treatment of the Boers by the English in
1901?
Reflection
IMPERIALISM AND
WESTWARD EXPANSION
KRISTINE PARSONS
JULY 12, 2012
PEDAGOGICAL GOALS
1. Increase student directed learning
2. Analysis of primary sources
3. Comparative study of groups
4. Teach through media/ visual
examples
5. Increase student cognition
through writing
“thinking at the tip of your pen”
CALIFORNIA STATE
STANDARDS AND COMMON
CORE STANDARDS
•
•
•
•
Stretching the standards
Depth vs. Breadth
Common Core Standards
guinea pigs
DAY 1 FRONTIER
Independent:
Daily Opener: What is a frontier? who is there?
When it is over?
Collaboration:
Students write a def, collect, pass out
Students write def of a peer on board
Create a class definition of frontier.
Teacher lead:
lecture on Manifest Destiny and the West
Thinking at the tip of their pen:
Exit Slip: What do you want to know about Cowboys and Indians? What do
you want to learn?
Prior Learning/ visual
Homework: Create their own drawing of what they imagine cowboys and
Indians to be
DAY 1 FRONTIER
Independent:
Daily Opener: What is a frontier? who is there?
When it is over?
Collaboration:
Students write a def, collect, pass out
Students write def of a peer on board
Create a class definition of frontier.
Teacher lead:
lecture on Manifest Destiny and the West
Thinking at the tip of their pen:
Exit Slip: What do you want to know about Cowboys and Indians? What do
you want to learn?
Prior Learning/ visual
Homework: Create their own drawing of what they imagine cowboys and
Indians to be
DAY 1 FRONTIER
Independent:
Daily Opener: What is a frontier? who is there?
When it is over?
Collaboration:
Students write a def, collect, pass out
Students write def of a peer on board
Create a class definition of frontier.
Teacher lead:
lecture on Manifest Destiny and the West
Thinking at the tip of their pen:
Exit Slip: What do you want to know about Cowboys and Indians? What do
you want to learn?
Prior Learning/ visual
Homework: Create their own drawing of what they imagine cowboys and
Indians to be
DAY 2 IMAGERY
Using Visual Media
• use clips from popular movies
• discussion on how Hollywood shapes our ideas
Teacher:
• Lecture of cowboys and Indians of the U.S.
• limit to 10 slides with a visual per slide
Student Analysis of Media
• Video clip of Custer bio and Sitting Bull
• analysis of view of Indians and Cowboys
Thinking at the Tip of their pen
• Exit Slip: Explain how your beliefs about the cowboys and
Indians have changed today.
DAY 2 IMAGERY
Using Visual Media
• use clips from popular movies
• discussion on how Hollywood shapes our ideas
Teacher:
• Lecture of cowboys and Indians of the U.S.
• limit to 10 slides with a visual per slide
Student Analysis of Media
• Video clip of Custer bio and Sitting Bull
• analysis of view of Indians and Cowboys
Thinking at the Tip of their pen
• Exit Slip: Explain how your beliefs about the cowboys and
Indians have changed today.
DAY 3 AND 4: LITTLE BIG HORN AND
WOUNDED KNEE
Media Clip/ Student analysis, discussion of media
• Video clip of Little Big Horn Battle
• analysis of the dress, mannerisms and material culture of the Sioux
• Video clips from a movie about Wounded Knee with Lakota
leaders speaking
Analysis of Primary Sources/ Student Collaboration
• Primary Sources
•
•
•
•
Benteen Letters
Wooden Leg
James McLaughlin account of the Death of Sitting Bull
Lakota accounts of the Battle of Wounded Knee
•
•
•
•
author
purpose
how far removed from event
tone
• Analysis of documents through use of graphic organizer
DAY 3 AND 4: LITTLE BIG HORN AND
WOUNDED KNEE
Media Clip/ Student analysis, discussion of media
• Video clip of Little Big Horn Battle
• analysis of the dress, mannerisms and material culture of the Sioux
• Video clips from a movie about Wounded Knee with Lakota
leaders speaking
Analysis of Primary Sources/ Student Collaboration
• Primary Sources
•
•
•
•
Benteen Letters
Wooden Leg
James McLaughlin account of the Death of Sitting Bull
Lakota accounts of the Battle of Wounded Knee
•
•
•
•
author
purpose
how far removed from event
tone
• Analysis of documents through use of graphic organizer
DAY 5 END OF THE FRONTIER AND
COWBOY MYTH
Use of Media and Art as a Primary Source
• Video clips of Buffalo Bill Cody
• Remington images of Cowboys and Indians
• Buffalo Bill Cody promotion material of the Wild West
Student collaboration and analysis of the different
media/images
Teacher/ Student Collaboration
• Discussion/ Lecture
• Depiction vs. treatment of Indian tribes
• What ended the frontier in the U.S?
• Why were the motives of Americans/Immigrants to out “west
young man?”
• Who made it in the West and who did not?
Creation of comparitive graphic organizer
DAY 5 END OF THE FRONTIER AND
COWBOY MYTH
Use of Media and Art as a Primary Source
• Video clips of Buffalo Bill Cody
• Remington images of Cowboys and Indians
• Buffalo Bill Cody promotion material of the Wild West
Student collaboration and analysis of the different
media/images
Teacher/ Student Collaboration
• Discussion/ Lecture
• Depiction vs. treatment of Indian tribes
• What ended the frontier in the U.S?
• Why were the motives of Americans/Immigrants to out “west
young man?”
• Who made it in the West and who did not?
Creation of comparitive graphic organizer
DAY 6-7 IMPERIALISM IN SOUTH
AFRICA
Teacher Lead
Lecture: overview of the Zulus, South Africa maps, Boers and British
Student Lead
• Photo analysis of Boers and Zulus
• Video clips of Shaka Zulu training his men
Student Analysis in groups
• How do film makers know what the Zulus looked like? trained? Sources?
• Primary Source vs. Secondary Sources
As a group read a secondary source about the background of Shaka Zulu
and the First Boer War and the article “Dramatic Zulu Reversal at Khambala”
by John Young.
Students Thinking at the Tip of their Pen
Exit Slip: Why is it difficult to find letters, retold stories, personal accounts of
the Zulus?
Student analysis of sources/ texts
Primary Source: Parliament letters about removal of Boers
Secondary contemporary source by Josephine Butler
DAY 6-7 IMPERIALISM IN SOUTH
AFRICA
Teacher Lead
Lecture: overview of the Zulus, South Africa maps, Boers and British
Student Lead
• Photo analysis of Boers and Zulus
• Video clips of Shaka Zulu training his men
Student Analysis in groups
• How do film makers know what the Zulus looked like? trained? Sources?
• Primary Source vs. Secondary Sources
As a group read a secondary source about the background of Shaka Zulu
and the First Boer War and the article “Dramatic Zulu Reversal at Khambala”
by John Young.
Students Thinking at the Tip of their Pen
Exit Slip: Why is it difficult to find letters, retold stories, personal accounts of
the Zulus?
Student analysis of sources/ texts
Primary Source: Parliament letters about removal of Boers
Secondary contemporary source by Josephine Butler
SYNTHESIS
• Create a Venn Diagram in your group that demonstrates your
groups conclusions.
• In groups:
• What is bringing the “new invader group” into the frontier zone?
• Why is the group that was already there in the way?
• What is the fate of the Zulus? Boers? Sioux? Why are the end results of
the displaced people the same/different?
• When/how does the frontier end in the United States? South Africa?
• Compare/Contrast the terms “Western Expansion” and “Imperialism”
• Exit Slip How are Sitting Bull and Shaka Zulu similar? How are
their experiences different?
• Essay topics with emphasis on the use of primary sources used
to support argument
SYNTHESIS
• Create a Venn Diagram in your group that demonstrates your
groups conclusions.
• In groups:
• What is bringing the “new invader group” into the frontier zone?
• Why is the group that was already there in the way?
• What is the fate of the Zulus? Boers? Sioux? Why are the end results of
the displaced people the same/different?
• When/how does the frontier end in the United States? South Africa?
• Compare/Contrast the terms “Western Expansion” and “Imperialism”
• Exit Slip How are Sitting Bull and Shaka Zulu similar? How are
their experiences different?
• Essay topics with emphasis on the use of primary sources used
to support argument
SOURCES
1. James McLaughlin, Account of the Death of Sitting Bull and of the Circumstances
Attending It (Philadelphia, 1891)
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/eight/sbarrest.htm
2. Lakota Accounts of the Battle of Wounded Knee
James Mooney, The Ghost-dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, 14th Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part 2 (1896)]
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/eight/wklakota.htm
3. JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. Native Races and the War, (LONDON: GAY & BIRD.
NEWCASTLE‐ON‐TYNE: MAWSON, SWAN, & MORGAN. 1900.)
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/vwwp/view?docId=VAB7116&doc.view=print
4. J.A.Viall, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Annual Report, 1871.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/lctext&CISOPTR=485&
REC=3
5.
Frederick William Benteen Letters to Col. Goldin, January 16, 1882. (Sarah Erwin Library:
Gilcrease Museum; Tulsa, Oklahoma.)
6 . Marquis, Thomas, Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer ( London: University of
Nebraska Press, 1931.)
7. Letters by Dr. David Livingstone about the Boers.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1039/1039-h/1039-h.htm#2HCH0002
8. 1901 letter to Parliament regarding the removal of the Boers.
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/parlpap3.html
FOR THE TEACHER, THINGS TO READ
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Ireland, Alleyen,“Briton and Boer in South Africa,” Atlantic
Monthly, Vol. 89 Issue 506, December 1899.
http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pagevieweridx?c=atla&cc=atla&xc=1&idno=atla00846&g=moagrp&q1=boer+war&node=atla00846%3A1&view=image&seq=727&size=150
Silver, Narisa, “Crushing South Africa: The Collective Impact
of European Conquest,” Prospect Journal of International
Affairs at UCSD, May 2010.
http://prospectjournal.ucsd.edu/index.php/2010/05/crushing
-south-africa-the-collective-impact-of-european-conquest
Hardoff, Richard. Indian Views of the Custer Fight. ( University
of Oklahoma Press, 2005)
ONLINE RESOURCES FOR PRIMARY
SOURCES
Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks
Project
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/
PBS New Perspectives on the West
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives
/index.htm
Project Gutenberg Free eBooks
www.gutenberg.org