Indians in a School Textbook Research

Textbook Archive

In this activity, we looked up the definitions of savage and savagery and we looked at a textbook archive. In this archive we read pages 18-19 about Indians and then we searched "savages" in the whole textbook. After those results came up we read the excerpts from which they were from. The definitions I found according to google for savagery is, "the quality of being fierce or cruel" and "the condition of being primitive or uncivilized." Savage is defined as, "fierce, violent, and uncontrolled" and "a member of a people regarded as primitive and uncivilized."

"If you were an American student reading this text as part of your schoolwork, how would that shape the way you viewed Native Americans?"

If I was an American student reading this I would think that Indians basically lived in the wilderness and that they could hold themselves up. The author in the textbook says, "For their food they depended, for the most part, upon the wild beasts they killed and the fish they caught." In other words Indians were good at finding resources for themselves and sharing them with their tribe members. I would also think that Indians, according to this, are not necessarily "bad," they are just not up to date with the white civilization. Indians are also defined as looking a specific way. The author says, "They had long, black, coarse hair, a scant beard, and high cheek-bones." This shows how white people saw Indians only in one way and how it was difficult to tell the difference between them. Overall, I would think that Indians are basically described as savages.

News about Indians

I found a newspaper in California that was written on September 14, 1887. It was called the Los Angeles Herald. There was a section about Indians written by John Ward, a United States Indian Agent. In this section John said, "Clothe the Indian with the insignia of citizenship, and invest him with title to land, in fee simple, and still it does not make him a man, without he has been taught the arts of industry and has solved the problems of self-support." In other words, he is fighting for Indians to become citizens and for them to farm to have more money. He also paraphrased that in the past year Indians farms have failed because of the dryness from the winter and because there is no irrigation system. Therefore it was hard for the plants to stay alive. On the other hand, he believes that the government has helped Indians become more educated with the building of some schools throughout reservations. But the problem with these schools is that the teachers are not professionally trained and disease spreads easily throughout the schools. Sanitation was a big problem for Indians during this time period (1887). Whooping cough and measles was spreading in the reservation and there was no way to stop it because of the lack of hospitals. Many indians died because there was no where for them to go to receive treatment. So John Ward is urging for the government to build hospitals on the reservations for them now. In conclusion, John Ward is trying to raise awareness about all of the problems that Indians are suffering through.

I am a white man living in Los Angeles and it is September 14, 1887. I have just finished reading the Los Angeles Herald that was published for today.  Todays newspaper was very interesting, lots of things were brought to my attention. In particular, 7 seven things caught my eye.

1. I did not know that Indians did not have hospitals on the reservations. This is horrible! How do they receive treatment when they are sick? How do they have surgeries if they need them?

2. Disease is spreading through the reservation schools so the school population is dropping. This means less Indians are getting educated.

3. There is no irrigation systems on the Indian farms. How can they grow food if there is not enough water for the plants? It is crazy because sometimes the us white people buy their products. But, if there is no water, how do we purchase the products?

4. There is a new medicine out called Hamburg Tea. This medicine apparently prevents and cures lots of sicknesses including, kidney disease, headaches, skin disease, nausea, and constipation. It also cleans the blood and purifies the whole body.

5. Recently, a lot of land has been put on the market. One ad in particular caught my eye. It said, "A Beautiful $10,000 Home Free!" This is interesting because who is selling their home for free. But then I read at the bottom and it said that you pay a lot less than 10,000 so it is considered free but it's really not.

6. There is going to be an auction sale on Friday! This is the first auction sale of the fall season! I will take my family there if I can remember.

7. Lastly, I found that a new railroad will be working for just a few days this week. It is called "The Electric Railroad." Sometime this week I will go look at the railroad to see how technology has advanced.

Overall, this newspaper taught me more than any other newspaper has before. I am looking forward to all the events coming up! And I am going to try to help out the Indians so that they can receive, somewhat, the kind of resources that we receive.

Below is a picture of Hamburg Tea, a cure for many diseases:

Deep Thinking

"Our use of social media for news is selective and intentional so that we may tend to remain interested only in things we are already interested in. On the other hand professional news outlets, like newspapers, expose readers to information on a broad range of topics. This helps me to see what other people are interested in."

Newspaper Homework

3. A newspaper, according to Merriam-Webster, is "a set of large sheets of paper that have news stories, information about local events, advertisements, etc."

4. The first newspaper to come into existence, according to Historic Pages, was found in Boston in 1690. It was called Publick Occurrences.

5. The Hartford Courant was one of the oldest newspaper in the United States. This newspaper was older than the nation. It was published semi-weekly starting in 1764. The New York Post was also considered one of the oldest newspapers in the United States. This newspaper was published daily starting in 1801.

6. I looked at the online version of the New York Times newspaper. In this newspaper there were a lot of leading stories including "Hillary Clinton Turns Up Heat on Bernie Sanders in a Sharp Debate" and "Putin says U.S. Fails to Cooperate in Syria." Other major headlines include, "In Courts, Running Out the Clock on Obama Immigration Plan" and "Afghan ISIS Branch Makes Inroads in Battle Against Taliban."

7. To be a "newspaper of record" the newspaper must be major throughout a society and be professional looking. The first designated newspaper of record was The New York Times in 1913. Other newspapers that can be considered "newspapers of record" are The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

8. When I look at a newspaper I immediately look at the big font. The big font correlates with the most important stuff in the whole newspaper. I also like to look at the various pictures throughout the newspaper. This is different from social media because on social media most everything is one font. It is hard to tell what is important on social media. Also, newspapers provide a lot more information about world-wide events than social media does. I think social media is better for communicating with friends. For me, it is hard to get "news" from social media sources. However, it is interesting to look at how news travels faster through social media than through newspapers. I think the problem with newspapers is no one has a lot of time to sit and read the newspaper whereas with social media it is easier to pull out your phone anywhere and look at it. Overall, I think social media is easier to access but newspapers convey more news.

9. I think this picture shows the correlation between big font and being important. This is from the San Francisco Newspaper.

Quarter 1 Reflections