Visualizing Expansion Lesson 3: Art and Indian Removal on the Plains

Visualizing Expansion Lesson 3: Art and Indian Removal on the Plains

In this lesson, students will compare John Gast's 1872 painting American Progress to Kiowa Indian Etahdleuh's sketches from Ft. Marion, Florida, where he was held with 71 other Native Americans as a prisoner from 1875 to 1878 after their forced removal from the Southern Plains, where they were perceived as a threat to white settlers. These pieces of art offer complex and conflicting perspectives on the "civilizing" of the Plains region.
Essential Questions: What can maps and art teach us about the past? What does a visual depiction of land reveal about the people who made it? How did Native Americans and white settlers engage with expansion into the Plains differently?

Ellen Schneider

1872/1877

50 minutes

• White settlers viewed westward expansion as an exciting opportunity and a civilizing mission, but Native Americans were violently removed from their homes and placed in military camps.
• Two authors can create very different visual records of one event based on their personal biases
Evaluate visual sources for biases
• Situate works of art within a familiar
historical narrative
• Compare and contrast visual sources'
messages and biases

Projector or copies of the powerpoint for each student
Blank paper for each student

As a class or in small groups, discuss students' existing understandings of Manifest Destiny, Indian Removal, and assimilation. These understandings may come from previous lessons or general knowledge. Build a concept map or list. (Powerpoint slide 2)
o Prompt students to consider regions, time period, reasons, people involved, what else was going on at that time in history, and competing sides in related conflicts
o If students don't have much familiarity with the concept, review a short section of the course textbook together.
o Ask students where their understandings come from and what kind of sources they learned this from (ex: museums, textbooks, movies, hearing people talk). Note the source next to each example of prior knowledge.
o Discuss who created these sources (textbook companies? Disney movies or other pop culure sources? White American historians? Native scholars?) Consider whose perspectives students are familiar with and whose are missing. Generally, people's understandings of these historical moments do not include Native American perspectives.
• Introduce students to Ft. Marion: (Powerpoint slide 3)
o In 1875, white settlers on the Southern Plains felt like a group of Native Americans were making it difficult for them to live there. The US War Department arrested 72 Native Americans from the Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheynne tribes and took them far from their homes to a military base in Florida called Ft. Marion.
o The leader of the prison at Ft. Marion, a man named Richard Henry Pratt tried to civilize them, or make them act more like white people and assimilate to white culture and values, before they were released three years later.
o (Powerpoint slide 4)While they were there, a Kiowa man named Etahdleuh, who Pratt was trying to civilize, made a series of drawings documenting his experience, which Pratt typed captions on to and made into a book.
o Etahdleuh is pronounced Eh-TAH-dlee-uh • Introduce American Progress
o In 1872, a painter from New York named John Gast created American Progress for a travel guide for Americans going west into the Plains region.
o It is a very famous painting used in many history books, museums, and documentaries to depict Manifest Destiny.
Looking at Images: 20 minutes
• Before discussion, give students a full 60 seconds to view the image silently and jot
down initial thoughts or questions. Then, use the following questions to spark conversation about each piece. Draw students' attention to specific details and challenge them to support their statements with observations of the pieces. If students get stuck, have them turn to a partner and list as many things a they can see in the image, then come back to discussion.
2
• Project or pass out copies of American Progress and discuss these questions with students as a group or in a jigsaw format. (Powerpoint slide 5)
o If this image is in your textbook, first consider what the book has to say about it. o What is going on in this image?
o What do you see that makes you say that?
o What other details do you notice?
o Who are each of the people? How can we tell?
▪  Identify the woman as Columbia, a popular symbol for patriotism and
the goodness of American civilization that was used similarly to Uncle Sam. She is named after Christopher Columbus, who the artist's community praised for his past role in expanding European settlement on Native American's land.
o How does the artist feel about the different groups of people? How can we tell? o What are Gast's biases? What information that we can trust can we gather from
this image?
o What does "progress" mean to Gast and his community? (as a formative
assessment, each student could write a short statement responding to this
question)
•  Project or pass out copies of Etahdleuh's drawing from A Kiowa's Odyssey with Pratt's
caption and discuss these questions with students as a group or in a jigsaw format.
Emphasize that the text comes from a white settler and the image from a Native artist. (Powerpoint slide 6)
o What is going on in this drawing?
o What do you see that makes you say that?
o What details do you notice?
o Who are each of the people? How can we tell?
o How does the artist feel about the different groups of people? How can we tell?
▪ Look at how they're dressed, who is in color, the imposing nature of the fort in the background, which characters are in motion and who is a static, generic figure.
o What are Etahdlehu's biases? What information that we can trust can we gather from this image?
o  (Powerpoint slide 7): Pratt's caption text
o What are Pratt's (the caption writer's) biases? What information that we trust can
we gather from his added text?
▪ Ask students if they believe that the Native Americans were actually Pratt's "friends" and why or why not? He also calls them "prisoners." What does that suggest about their "friendship"?
o How has "progress" effected the Native community presented here? (as a formative assessment, each student could write a short statement responding to this question)
Wrap Up: 15 minutes (Select one or several of the following activities for in-class debrief or homework)
• (Powerpoint slide 8) Create a venn diagram responding to the question "What does this image reveal about white settlers moving into the Plains region?" Prompt students to
3
consider Native experiences, technologies, how white settlers perceived their own
actions.
• Revisit the initial brainstorming. In small groups or a journal, ask students to reflect on how these images extend, complicate, or refute their previous understandings of Manifest Destiny
• Alternative assessment/activity: Give each student a copy of each image. Have them cut out (or circle) a detail from each image that they think are connected somehow (ex: a Native American, a structure built by white settlers, a settler, a piece of technology, the background setting). Then the students should paste the two image parts next to each other and write about how they are connected, similar, and different, and why that might be.