History (Primary Source)

The Primary Source Assignment
Purpose:There are three purposes for the Primary SourceAssignment. First, doing the assignment means the student has analyzed/interrogated a document by not accepting it as simply true, accurate and understand what the source’s limitations and insights can offer. Second, doing the assignment means a student has connected themes, ideas or insights between the source and the textbook chapter and to today’s world. Third, the Primary Source Assignment will be part of the notes to write the exam essay.
There are two Course Learning Outcomes that doing the Primary Source assignments relates to.
1. Students will analyze and interpret primary sources.
2. Students will analyze the effects of historical, social, political, economic, cultural, and global forces on this period of United States history.
The Primary SourceAssignment along with the Matrix will help students begin to learn History’s Habits of Mind. Historians habits of mind seek to understand the complexity of people’s past lives and circumstances they lived under to help provide insight for how we should live today. Learning to think like a historian will help create an ability to understand the complex world we live today through using the same process for understanding the past. Students can learn to use this new way of seeing the world to help make better decisions for their lives, families and communities.
Skills and Knowledge:Doing the Primary Source will help the following:
1. Disciplinary Knowledge: Understand some aspect of United States history.
2. Analytical Writing:Understanding how to question the documents or other sources and simply accepting them at face value.
Task:Write a narrative analysisin paragraph form for one of the source options on a Word Document and submit to Safe Assign link. Each module has a link to source options.At minimum, the response should be seven to ten sentences long. The response can be longer if needed. The grade for the assignment is a 2, 1 or 0. This is a low stakes assignment so that means you cannot fail the class with a 0 on this assignment.
For U.S. History courses a link is provided for the American Yawp Reader in each module.
For Mexican American and Texas History a document file is provided with sources to choose from.
What is a Primary Source versus a Secondary Source?
1. Sources compose the evidence we use in making arguments. There are two general types of sources, primary and secondary. By using a combination of these sourceshistorians argue for understanding why certain events occurred. Remember that history is a discipline of written analysis for understanding the context and reasons for why events occurred or how the world was for a particular society in the past.
2. Primary sources are usually documents produced by the people, government, or other institutions as closely related in time to the events under study.
• Examples:
• Laws that were in force or created.
• Census data
• Poetry, songs or other literature
• Diaries, wills, lawsuits
• Economic data
• Newspapers that can be either primary or secondary sources depending on a historian uses of that source.
3. Secondary sources are works that include primary and other secondary sources to present an interpretationof the past.History textbooks or monographs are a historian’s understanding of the past not how the past necessarily should be understood.Textbooks should meet scholarly standards to be considered seriously even if historians disagree on their interpretation of the past.
• Examples:
• Your history textbook
• Monographs, history works that focus on one topic
• Newspapers, news magazine articles, etc.
• Songs, poetry, literature
• Reports
4. As noted, sources can be used in many different manners depending on the research project. For instance, if you are doing a literary history of English poetry from the 1900s, then the poems are primary sources. However, if you were doing a history of certain events that occurred in English history during the 1900s, then poetry may be a secondary source that provides some insight to events of that time period. So when thinking of primary sources think about its production; who or what produced the source, how closely related is the source to the topic being studied, how close in time to the events was the source produced.

See the following questions below to write your analysis. Some questions can be answered, and some cannot because of the lack of certain information from the source.

The Source:
• Who wrote it?
• When?
• Where?
• For whom?
• What do you know about the author?
Purpose:
• Why was it written?
• What is the document trying to do?
• Are their stated and unstated motives?
Argument:
• This section does not always apply to every primary source.
• What is the argument?
• What is the evidence?
• Is the writing persuasive?
• Is it accurate?
Context:
• What was going on at the time it was written?
SoWhat ?
• How does this document shed light on the broader themes for this week’s chapter or topics?
• Besides addressing the relationship between the source and the chapter’s topics, end your analysis with a last sentence or two on how the source helps shed light on today’s world. There is no right or wrong answer for how a source sheds light on today’s world. Think about how people use the stories in the Christian Bible or other religious texts to help them understand today’s world.
An example of a primary source and an analysis with notes.

The American Yawp Reader
Journal of Christopher Columbus, 1492
Journal of Christopher Columbus, 1492
First encounters between Europeans and Native Americans were dramatic events. In this account we see the assumptions and intentions of Christopher Columbus, as he immediately began assessing the potential of these people to serve European economic interests. He also predicted easy success for missionaries seeking to convert these people to Christianity .

Thursday, October 11
…Presently many inhabitants of the island assembled. What follows is in the actual words of the Admiral in his book of the first navigation and discovery of the Indies. “I,” he says, ” that we might form great friendship, for I knew that they were a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force, gave to some of them red caps, and glass beads to put round their necks, and many other things of little value, which gave them great pleasure, and made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see. They afterwards came to the ship’s boats where we were, swimming and bringing us parrots, cotton threads in skeins, darts, and many other things; and we exchanged them for other things that we gave them, such as glass beads and small bells. In fine, they took all, and gave what they had with good will. It appeared to me to be a race of people very poor in everything. They go as naked as when their mothers bore them, and so do the women, although I did not see more than one young girl. All I saw were youths, none more than thirty years of age. They are very well made, with very handsome bodies, and very good countenances. Their hair is short and coarse, almost like the hairs of a horse’s tail. They wear the hairs brought down to the eyebrows, except a few locks behind, which they wear long and never cut. They paint themselves black, and they are the color of the Canarians, neither black nor white. Some paint themselves white, others red, and others of what color they find. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. They neither carry nor know anything of arms, for I showed them swords, and they took them by the blade and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their darts being wands without iron, some of them having a fish’s tooth at the end, and others being pointed in various ways. They are all of fair stature and size, with good laces, and well made. I saw some with marks of wounds on their bodies, and I made signs to ask what it was, and they gave me to understand that people from other adjacent islands came with the intention of seizing them, and that they defended themselves. I believed, and still believe, that they come here from the mainland to take them prisoners. They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses that they may learn to speak. I saw no beast of any kind except parrots, on this island.” The above is in the words of the admiral….
..As soon as dawn broke many of these people came to the beach, al! youths, as I have said, and all of good stature, a very handsome people. Their hair is not curly, but loose and coarse, like horse hair. In all the forehead is broad, more so than in any other people I have hitherto seen. Their eyes are very beautiful and not small, and themselves far from black, but the color of the Canarians. Nor should anything; else be expected, as this island is in a line east and west from the island of Hierro in the Canaries. Their legs are very straight, all in one line,’ and no belly, but very well formed. They came to the ship in small canoes, made out of the trunk of a tree like a long boat, and all of one piece, and wonderfully worked, considering the country. They are large, some of them holding 40 to 45 men, others smaller, and some only large enough to hold one man. They are propelled with a paddle like a baker’s shovel, and go at a marvelous rate. If the canoe capsizes they all promptly begin to swim, and to bale it out with calabashes that they take with them. They brought skeins of cotton thread, parrots, darts, and other small things, which it would be tedious to recount, and they give all in exchange for anything that may be given to them. I was attentive, and took trouble to ascertain if there was gold. I saw that some of them had a small piece fastened in a hole they have in the nose, and by signs I was able to make out that to the south, or going from the island to the south, there was a king who had great cups full, and who possessed a great quantity. I tried to get them to go there, but afterwards I saw that they had no inclination. I resolved to wait until to-morrow in the afternoon and then to depart, shaping a course to the S.W.
Sunday, October 14
…These people are very simple as regards the u.se of arms, as your Highnesses will .sec from the seven that I caused to be taken, to bring home and learn our language and return; unless your Highnesses should order them all to be brought to Castile, or to be kept as captives on the same island; for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them…
Sunday, November 4
…At sunrise the Admiral again went away- in the boat, and landed to hunt the birds he had seen the day before. After a time, Martin Alonso Pinzon came to him with two pieces of cinnamon, and said that a Portuguese, who was one of his crew, had seen an Indian carrying two very large bundles of it; but he had not bartered for it, because of the penalty imposed by the Admiral on anyone who bartered. He further said that this Indian carried some brown things like nutmegs. The master of the Pinta said that he had found the cinnamon trees. The Admiral went to the place, and found that they were not cinnamon trees. The Admiral showed the Indians some specimens of cinnamon and pepper he had brought from Castillo, and they knew it, and said, by signs, that there was plenty in the vicinity, pointing to the S.E. He also showed them gold and pearls, on which certain old men said that there an infinite quantity in a place called Holito} and that the people wore it on their necks, ears, arms, and legs, as well as pearls. He further understood them to say that there were great ships and much merchandise, all to the S.K. He also understood that, far away, there were men with one eye, and others with dogs’ noses who were cannibals, and that when they captured an enemy they beheaded him and drank his blood…

The Journal of Christopher Columbus (During His First Voyage), and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real, Clements R. Markham, ed. and trans. (London: 1893), 37-68 .
Available through the Internet Archive

Example of Primary Source Analysis submission.

Christopher Columbus wrote a journal of his first voyage during 1492 from Spain to what he thought was the Indies . The journal was the for the Queen of Castile as evidence of his travels . Columbus was an Italian explorer . He argues that the Native Americans are simple people that can be easily converted to Catholicism or conquered. It is hard based only on Columbus’s statements to know if he is accurate about his descriptions of the people, so it is difficult to know if his argument is correct .At the time of Columbus’s contact with Native Americans Europeans held what would become known as racist views of other people which probably distorted his understanding of other people. This source relates to the textbook chapter through showing how Native Americans contrary to Columbus’s description were not simple people butlived complex and varied lives like the Europeans prior to contact. Columbus’s bias in this source should sheds light on how issues of racism continue to affect our society today and hopefully we can move beyond such views.