Reference no: EM133565227

Assignment:

Lesson Questions: The West

1. Empire of Liberty- Thomas Jefferson applied this title to his vision of the American West. What did he imagine and what did he hope to see the US avoid?

2. Under the Lincoln Administration, the Homestead Act and Pacific Railway Act became passed. The Homestead Act had the goal of providing landless Americans (and immigrants who had committed to citizenship) with 160 aces of free land, that they could work the land, claim the product of their labor, manage themselves and have an opportunity to become truly free according to understandings of the time. What did the Pacific Railway Act do? How did it impact the West and Jeffersonian visions of an Empire of Liberty?

3. Settler Colonialism- What is it and how does it apply to the United States?

4. Manifest Destiny-

• What did this body of thought, attitude, and belief assert?

• How does "cognitive dissonance apply to Manifest Destiny?
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5. In a sense, the Indian Wars of the American West constituted yet another struggle for freedom centered upon the "means of production"-"who controls the means of production?" Question:

• What was the "means of production" for Native people, essential to their sovereignty?

• How did Native use of this "means of production" conflict with the uses intended by the newcomers?

6. Even before the newcomers began to settle in the Midwest, conflicts began to develop between the Plains tribes and migrants, including miners. What was at the heart of these conflicts?

7. The Sand Creek Massacre:

8. Identify and discuss the significance of the US Army's tactic of slaughtering the buffalo. What did this extinction level assault on nature seek to accomplish?

9. Denied control of their "means of production," Native people gradually surrendered and resigned themselves to a state of unfreedom and dependency in virtual concentration camps called reservations. This dependency was about a loss of a means of self-sufficiency in terms of providing for one's own food and other necessities of life. It was also about a loss of self-ownership. The US government then set out to wield even greater authority over Native peoples by fundamentally altering their sense of self and identity.

• The Dawes Allotment Act- What did it constitute and aim to bring about?
• Native American Boarding Schools- What did they constitute and aim to bring about?

10. The objective was to "kill the Indian" to save the man. Did this succeed? Explain.

Lesson: Texas Borderlands
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1. Discuss how ethnic Mexicans experience western expansion across the latter decades of the 1800s and early 1900s. For example, was freedom and well-being enhanced? What about political power and security? Claims upon the land?

2. How did many Anglo newcomers imagine the "place" of ethnic Mexicans in Texas? (What should their "place" be?)

3. In what regards did the following struggle for freedom?

• Juan Cortina

• Catarino Garza

• Jovita Idar

4. Identify and discuss the role of American corporations in propelling Mexican migration northward, including as wartime refugees (how did US corporations contribute to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution?).

5. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW):

6. Economic realities in Texas by 1900:

7. Who did the Texas Socialist Party bring together and upon what basis? What was the objective? (the socialists will be discussed more next week)

8. Identify and discuss the role of the United States government in the Mexican Revolution and the general nature and consequences of its actions.

9. Discuss the racial violence that accelerated in Texas during the early 1900s, including its function (Be sure to include resistance to racial violence and inequality in your response to #4).

10. What was the La Matanza?