Monthly Archives: January 2016

Google on Sacagawea

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One of your classmates writes the following by email:

I was curious and decided to see what Google thought about Sacagawea’s death date. As the attached screenshot shows, they must also prefer written documentation above Native American storytelling.

Interesting find! Maybe this also just confirms that most websites agree on the 1812 death, since Google’s algorithm likely depends on something like “majority rule.”

Google and Sacagawea

Daaaaavy, Daaaaavy Crockett! Questions

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Today in class we watched clips from Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier. This week’s readings will touch on the 1955 Crockett craze that the movie inspired.

As you do the readings, here are some questions to think about. You should also choose ONE of the questions and write a response of 300-500 words in your Google Doc.

  1. The first part of the Roberts and Olson article focuses on what the author’s call Walt Disney’s “worldview” (p. 233) in the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing on evidence and examples in the text, describe Disney’s worldview and the events that shaped it. Then, think about the clips from the movie we watched last week, and make a case for or against the view that the film was an expression of Disney’s personal political ideas.
  2. In this week’s readings, a variety of reasons are given for the incredible popularity of the Crockett movie in 1955, which amounted to a merchandising “craze.” Among the possible reasons for the “craze” include: (a) a simple fad for which there is no good explanation, (b) a desire among audiences for escapist entertainment, (c) the power of television and marketing to manipulate consumer taste, and (d) the rich historical symbolism of the Crockett “frontier” character, which provided both Disney and his audiences with a “usable past” (Roberts and Olson, p. 237) that had political implications in the present. Which of these factors (if any) best explains the Crockett craze? What evidence from these readings or others we have done support your explanation?
  3. As the readings show, the Crockett craze eventually sparked controversies about the historical accuracy of Disney’s movie. Based on the evidence in the readings, do you think the defenders and critics of Davy Crockett, the man, in 1955 really disagreed more fundamentally about who should be authorized to write or represent history? If so, what were some of the major positions on that question, and which of them do you agree with?
  4. Was Walt Disney essentially a twentieth-century version of Parson Weems? Why or why not?
  5. Using internal evidence in the entries, as well as the articles by King, Roberts and Olson, assess the reliability of the American National Biography and Wikipedia entries on Crockett. Do you consider one of the two sources better than the other, and if so, why?

Image credit: Davy Crockett movie poster, from IMPawards.com

Citations in Weekly Writing Assignments

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Several of you have asked me about how to cite others’ work in your Google Docs. This is a great question and a very important one. The Rice Honor Code states very clearly that “any time a student draws particularly or generally from another’s work, the source should be properly credited.” And it’s important to learn this principle here at Rice, because presenting another person’s work or ideas as your own–even unintentionally or because of a sloppy mistake–can have severe repercussions on your life and career. Besides, not giving a person credit when credit is due is just wrong. So to find out how to avoid this mistake in this class, read the rest of this post.

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Washington Reading Questions

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For next Thursday, you’ll be reading most (but not all) of the Francois Furstenberg book. (See the schedule for full details.)

Below are the questions you should use to prepare for our discussion. You should also choose ONE prompt as the basis for your reading response, which you will write on a new page in your Google Doc.

  1. For Furstenberg, what was the fundamental “problem of U.S. nationalism” in the early decades of the United States? Did widespread veneration of George Washington solve that problem?
  2. One reason some Americans become “legendary” is because they represent or symbolize popular values or ideals. But Furstenberg also suggests that looking at the legends surrounding Washington can tell us a great deal about what Americans most feared during the nation’s early decades. What did Americans most fear in these years, and how did those fears influence portrayals of Washington? Do you think “fears” continue to play a role today in the way Americans remember the past?
  3. One of the concepts that Furstenberg frequently uses in his book is that of “civic texts.” Based on his definition of that concept in the book and in Appendix 1, are there any “canonical” texts (like speeches, books, or famous documents) that continue to function as nationalist “civic texts” today? Since Furstenberg also uses early American schoolbooks as one example of “popularizing” civic texts, do you think your own past textbooks or books you were asked to read in high school (for summer reading, for example, or in preparation for an AP test) can be described as “civic texts”?
  4. Is there good historical evidence for the story, told by Weems, Thayer, and others, that Washington chopped down a cherry tree and later confessed to it? If not, what accounts for the origins and continuing popularity of that story?
  5. After reading Furstenberg’s book, do you think that George Washington should be remembered as a “proto-abolitionist”?
  6. One of Furstenberg’s arguments is that “nationalism” has a lot in common with “religion.” In what ways was that true in the early national period, based on the evidence in the book? Where do the similarities end, in your mind?

After reading the assigned text for this week, you might enjoy this brief op-ed piece that Furstenberg wrote for the New York Times several years ago on the Fourth of July. In it, he makes the case that men like Mason Locke Weems were as much the “founding fathers” of the nation as men like Washington, since they popularized and glorified the legacies of the nation’s first leaders. After reading about Weems in detail in the book, would you agree with that assessment?

Image credit: This painting of Washington, depicting him as almost godlike, appears on the dome in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building. The photograph of the painting displayed here was posted on Flickr by “H4NUM4N.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Usable Pasts

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I hope you have all had a good Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! On Thursday, we briefly talked about the ways that stories about King are often used to make political points in the present. On the one hand, commentators like Wolf Blitzer and Armond Budish have cited King’s example of nonviolence to criticize or warn black protestors. On the other hand, others have used different words of King’s to explain that he was more radical than mainstream memories of him allow, and that he would have understood or even joined protests like the ones in Baltimore and Ferguson.

Arguably, both of these arguments exemplify the tendency of Americans across the political spectrum to turn to larger-than-life historical figures in search of a “usable past.” That’s a term and a concept that we’ll be returning to over the course of the semester. And the search for a “usable past” in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., was also on full display again today.

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Sacagawea Reading Questions

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[Please note that the reading assignments for next Thursday, which you will need to do in order to answer the questions below, are listed on the schedule. The schedule is where you will always be able to find the complete list of what you are required to read each week.]

To whet your appetite for this week’s reading assignments, you might want to check out the U.S Mint’s page on its Sacagawea dollar gold coin. It includes a brief description of Sacagawea’s role in history that you might want to compare with some of the information you find in the assigned readings.

As you read the assigned texts, here are some questions that will help you focus on the important parts of the readings and prepare for our discussion next Thursday. It is important to think about all of the questions, but you must also select one of these prompts and write a brief response of around 300-500 words (or one single-spaced page) in your Google Doc by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday.

  1. Using evidence provided in the assigned articles, construct a persuasive answer to the following question: Given the relatively small number of times that Sacagawea is mentioned in the journals of Lewis and Clark, why did she become so famous?

  2. If Donna Barbie is right that “Sacagawea’s proponents fashioned an idealized woman, according to their own definition” (Barbie, p. 60), then historians might be able to use stories about Sacagawea to understand how different Americans in the past defined the “ideal woman.” Drawing on your readings for this week, select one or two stories or legends about Sacagawea and analyze what they reveal about definitions of the “idealized woman” at the time when these stories or legends were popularized.

  3. Based on the historical record discussed in these articles, what word or phrase would you use to best describe Sacagawea’s role in the Lewis and Clark expedition? Was she primarily a guide, an interpreter, an intermediary, the wife of a hired member of the expedition, a useful symbol of peaceful intentions, some combination of these roles, or some other role entirely?

  4. There are two different theories about when Sacagawea died, both of which are discussed most fully in the Thomas P. Slaughter article. Which of these theories do you find most convincing, and why?

  5. After reading Scott Casper’s article on the American National Biography, do you agree with the editors of the ANB, quoted on pp. 452 and 453, that it is important for a nation to have a “national biography”–a compendium of the nation’s important figures?

  6. Do the differences between the Dictionary of American Biography and the American National Biography, as summarized by Casper, reveal larger changes in the way that American historians think about the nation and the past? What are some of these changes?

Some optional resources you might find interesting:

Many of this week’s readings make reference to the Journals of Lewis and Clark, which happen to be available online. If you are interested, you can even use the names index to the online edition to browse quickly through all of the pages that mention Sacagawea, either in the original text or in the editors’ footnotes.

The assigned readings also mention an historical novel by Eva Emery Dye, called The Conquest (1902), that contributed to the rise of Sacagawea’s fame in the twentieth century. That novel is also available online through Google Books, and if you are interested, you can easily click through to some of the sections that talk about Sacagawea.

Image credit: “Sacagawea,” sculpted by Alice Cooper, in Portland, Oregon; available on the Wikipedia entry on Sacagawea, which contains a list of other statues of Sacagawea around the country.