Objective: Students will be able to experience the life of Native Americans before and after European arrival through primary and secondary sources
Estimated time to complete lesson: 1-2 class periods
Main Idea: Religious beliefs influence culture in very deep and real ways. For the Native Americans who believed in animism, they were open to the ideas the Europeans had. The Europeans on the other hand were not as open and believed they had a mission to spread Christianity.
Do Now: Where does your morality come from? How do you know when you’re doing something wrong? Why?
Connection: Many times religion or philosophy helps us to make decisions for us by giving us a set of guiding principles.
Activity: Teacher will initiate the lesson by illustration the difference between Animism and Christianity’s basic tenets. The teacher will then ask which religious belief seems to affect the land more and which religious belief seems to affect the people more. Pointing to this difference will help in future lessons when students learn about land claim treaties. Students will then look at a series of maps that show geographic differences between Native American tribes. The teacher will then point out the resources available in each region and how the land that certain American Indian tribes occupy determine the lifestyle they will have. They will also be looking at early European land claim maps for comparison. While looking at these maps the teacher will point out resources that were of interest to European traders and investors and how these resources shaped the lifestyle of the newcomers.
Students will then be broken into two groups: one group focusing on the American Indian maps and the second group focusing European explorer and colonization maps. Students will answer questions about their maps and then jigsaw to talk to members of the other groups. One of the major questions they should discuss during the jigsaw activity is how does the pattern of land division between the two cultural groups mimic their religious values? The question is designed for students to describe how the American Indian maps are broken up based on their geographic regions, which are tied to certain animals they hunt, they style of home they live in, and that multiple tribes live within each geographic regions. The lands divided by the Europeans were based more on political and nationalistic claims of resources. Access to water routes, establishments of towns and cities that were near these water routes, and the clearing away of resources to build these towns and cities with little regard for natural habitat.
Closure: After discussing the differences between Animism and Christianity, how does the religious views affect what happened on the maps?
Differentiation: Students that are advanced will look at both sets of maps and have a group of their own to evaluate the maps in pairs. Students that have trouble analyzing the maps will be paired with students in the room to help them with the activity.