The Task

1.   Students will study digitized picturesfrom the Internet of authentic Native American artifacts.  They will explore a variety of websites to determine how the artifacts were used, how they were made, and what they were made of.  As they search, the students will be challenged to learn more about the artifacts and complete a chart categorizing them.

2.    Students will visit an online museum.  They will tour the digitized collection in the Indian Room, and they will also use primary and secondary sources to learn more about Native American artifacts, and they will complete an online activity.

3.   Students will be able to think like the Native Americans of the 1600s.  Using only natural resources, each team of four students will design a tool or object that would have been useful to Native Americans.  They will then create a PowerPoint presentation, which will depict and describe the tool or the object.

4.  The students will view a picture printed from a museum site.  The picture will depict two Native Americans standing on the shore watching a large boat approach. The caption infers that their lives will never be the same.  The class will brainstorm ideas of what they think this picture means.  Then they will write about what they think that means.  They will then read a brief article entitled “Fair Trade?”  The objective is to have the students realize that as trade flourished between the Colonists and the Native Americans, it also brought change and it created a new way of life for them.  The students will identify some of the things that the Native Americans traded and then why they traded them.

Process