Overview
In this lesson, students analyze a primary source using scaffolded questioning. The frontispiece from a 1777 map depicts a group of Europeans and Native Americans exchanging furs through trade and provides students with many details for analysis.
Focusing Questions
How did the Europeans and the Abenaki interact?
Topical Understandings
One way that Europeans and Abenakis interacted was through trade.
Background Information
Who first lived in the area we now call New Hampshire and Vermont?
Materials
Frontispiece from the Map of the Inhabited Part of Canada, 1777
Procedures
1. Print photo-quality copies of the frontispiece for your students or have them look at it online so they can zoom in.
2. Put students into three groups and hand out questions.
Group 1 should answer descriptive questions:
When was this picture engraved?
List the people, objects, and activities in the picture.
Group 2 should answer the interpretive questions:
Compare the two groups of people:
What do you think is going on in this picture? What details make you say that?
Group 3 should answer the analytical questions:
What can you say about how Native Americans and Colonists interacted? What details give you
clues?
What questions does this picture raise in your mind?
3. Have the groups report back in order building the discussion from the descriptive to the analytical.
4. Refer back to the 1761 map. Find a location on the map where trade between colonists and Native Americans might have taken place. (Forts such as #4 at Charlestown).