In addition to providing some really wonderful primary source material to examine, they also do a great job explaining three different ways that historians can use images in their work.
” [One approach]is to look at an image as art. The art historian asks, what are the physical characteristics of the object—its medium—and what are the facts of its production? Who made the image, and how was it done?”
“A second way of looking at an image is for its value as a historical document…The quality of an image as a historical document is not directly dependent upon its quality as art. For this type of historian, the central distinction is between truth and fiction. [For example], how accurately does this image report information about Indian appearance or way of life? Has the intention or method of the artist introduced inaccuracy?”
“A third way to think about an image is for its influence at the time it was produced…If a print had great influence it is important for that effect, aside from whether it was accurate or not. In this frame of reference, truth and fiction are not the crux—the perception of the period is what’s important.”
Try looking at this image gallery from a a few different perspectives. Can you draw different conclusions based on what lens you are looking through?
1. To perpetuate to a remote posterity the memory of our Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers. To maintain and defend the principle of civil and religious liberty as set forth in the Mayflower Compact.
2. To cherish and maintain the ideals and institutions of American freedom, and to oppose any theories or actions that threaten their continuity. To transmit the spirit, the purity of purpose, and steadfastness of will of the Pilgrims to those who shall come after us, an undiminished heritage of liberty and law.
3. To promote the interests that are common to all the State Societies of Mayflower Descendants which can only be served by a state body.
4. To promote the interest that are common to all of the State Societies, and thus the General Society.
I am particularly interested in the first two points, which focus on the legacy of the Mayflower Compact and the Pilgrims themselves.
Read over the Mayflower Compact, do you see examples of the “the principle of civil and religious liberty” that the Society is committed to defending? How do you think this principle might translate into our day to day lives? What do you think the society means by “the ideals and institutions of American freedom”? Have these ideals and institutions changes since the Pilgrim’s time?
Also as food for thought, do you know how far back you can trace your own family’s ancestry? Do you think about the experiences, values or ideals of your own ancestors? Why or why not?
Here, on Current TV, two illustrators draw and narrate hundreds of years of American History.
What do you think? Why have they chosen to use “the vine” as their central metaphor? How well does this paint a “big picture” of U.S. History? What’s missing?
Here from Jack Page’s book In the Hands of the Great Spirit
“Indians perceptions of Europeans varied widely. When Francis Drake reached the coast of California in 1579 on his globe-circling voyage, he was recieved by the local population with a good deal of festivity. Drake assumed he was taken to be a deity. Probably not, but there is evidence (in the form of early European accounts, of course) that some Indians took the white man to be a fairly powerful shaman type, since he was immune to the diseases that had suddenly struck so many Indians. In the earliest contacts, the locals tended to welcome the white man with at least a show of curiosity, and as often as not with generous displays of gift giving (though there were plenty of exceptions). In the East, it was fairly common for Indian people to greet visitors with elaborate pattng and rubbing. From the early reports of the Europeans, the Indians typically patted them where they were especially hairy — arms, chests, and chins. It seems the Indians were less surprised by the whiteness of European skin than its hairiness, but many Indians evidently looked upon the hirstute newcomers as not quite human…
The Swedes recounted that on their first visit among the Delawares, they handed out a number of tools such as axes. Returning a year later, they found the Indians wearing such things as axe blades around their necks like gorgets. When they demonstrated the intended use of ace blades, the Indians apparently laughed themselves silly.
The question of what to take on from the white man — and what to try to avoid — would become a burning question for virtually every group of Indians and is one that is still asked to this day….Meanwhile, afteer a period in North America, some Europeans would fin that they were indeed a new kind of people themselves, not merely because they had reached a place of vast distances and unprecedented riches but because they perforce would absorb important features from Indian life — if only in an unconscious process of osmosis.”
I like Page’s history here for a few reasons. I am really interested in how he presents the meetings of Europeans and Indians from a new perspective. Often, we think of Indians as sort of passive conquered players — even if we are trying to think about them sympathetically. Page paints a picture of two peoples meeting on somewhat equal ground and trying to figure out how to understand one another. This feels authentic to me. I am also intrigued by his conclusion that seems to suggest both parties learned from each other in ways that they were not entirely aware of.
