Florence Cronin, Saint Brendan School, Dorchester, MA

Voices From Montana

This learning activity was created for “The Richest Hills: Mining in the Far West, 1865–1920,” sponsored by the Montana Historical Society and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture: Workshops for Schoolteachers.

Grade Level: Four

Subject(s): History and Social Science; Language Arts

Common Core Standards: (Massachusetts Frameworks) History  2. Interpret timelines of events studies.  5.30 Describe the expedition of Lewis and Clark.  5.34 Explain the reasons that pioneers moved west and describe their lives on the frontier.  8. Define and use words related to government: suffrage, rights, representation.  CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.  CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.2 Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.  CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.3 Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text. Time needed: 50 minutes Description

Students will read primary source documents related to various periods in Montana’s history. They will identify the time period, the author, the type of writing and the reason for the writing. Students will summarize the author’s message and examine an image or related artifact. Students will share their results and observations in chronological order and make a living time line.

Essential questions/understandings:

 How has westward expansion changed the environment and affected the lives of pioneers and Native Americans?

Goals and Objectives:

 To guide students in understanding who is speaking and what his or her message is.  To help students visualize these events in sequential order using a time line.

 To recognize that the challenges faced by these historical figures has given them strong voices.

Materials

 Documents A, B, C, D, E, F

 Postcards, brochures, copper sample, photographs, buffalo, container of gold flakes

 History document detective sheet Name ______

HISTORY DOCUMENT DETECTIVE SHEET

What kind of document is this? a letter a journal an interview a speech a letter to a newspaper

When was it written? ______

To what event in history is this piece referring? ______

______

Tell three things you learned from reading this document.

______

Who is speaking? ______

Describe the person’s character. ______

What would you like to ask this person if you could speak to him or her?

______

Tell how your artifact or picture is connected to your document.

______

Bonus If you have time, draw an illustration for your document. Document A: William Clark’s Diary Entries (ORIGINAL) http://sheg.stanford.edu/lewis-clark

May 11, 1806 we were crouded in the Lodge with Indians who continued all night and this morning Great numbers were around us. The One Eyed Chief arived and we gave him a medal of the small size and spoke to the Indians through a Snake boy Shabono and his wife. we informed them who we were, where we were came from & our intentions towards them, which pleased them very much

August 17, 1806 we also took our leave of T. Charbono, his Snake Indian wife and their child who had accomplanied us on our rout to the pacific ocean in the capacity of interpreter and interpretess...I offered to take his little son a butifull promising child who is 19 months old to which they both himself & wife wer willing provided the child had been weened. they observed that in one year the boy would be sufficiently old to leave his mother & he would then take him to me if I would be so friendly as to raise the child for him in such a manner as I thought proper, to which I agreed &c.

Source: Many people have heard the name of Sacagawea, the Native American woman who (with her husband and newborn baby) accompanied Lewis and Clark on their journey and served as a translator. Above are Clark’s diary entries about Sacagawea. Document B: Girl from the Gulches The Story of Mary Ronan As told to Margaret Ronan, Edited by Ellen Baumler, Montana Historical Society Press, 2003, pages 35-36.

“That first Mass in Virginia City on the Feast of All Saints, November 1, 1863, was a memorable event. It was a simple, reverent congregation that knelt on the dirt floor within the four walls of new-hewn logs on that crisp morning. The majority were bearded miners in worn work clothes. Many received the Holy Eucharist from the consecrated hands of Father Giorda. I was distracted from spiritual to human contemplations by the tinkling sound of large tin cups that passed from one man to another. I saw each pour a trickle of gold dust from his buckskin pouch. Then the gold dust from all the cups was poured into a new yellow buckskin purse and Peter Ronan, whom the miners had chosen to make the presentation to the priest, laid it upon the altar.”

“Almost every evening the miners cleaned their sluice boxes with a tin contrivance called a scraper. Much fine gold was left in the cracks of the boxes and around the edges. Often after the miners had gone into their cabins for supper, Carrie Crane and I would take our little blowers and the hair brushes, which we kept for the purpose, and gather up the fine gold. We took it home, dried it in the oven and blew the black sand from it. I had a little gutta- percha inkwell, which had traveled with us in the covered wagon from Denver. I kept my gold dust in it and carried it when I went to the store to buy rock candy…………. Once I bought my father a present of a shirt, which cost $2.50 in gold dust, the only kind of money that I ever saw in Virginia City.”

Mary Catherine Fitzgibbon Sheehan, the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants, James and Ellen Sheehan, was eleven years old in 1863. Document C: Kate Bighead Interview http://sheg.stanford.edu/battle-little-bighorn

Little Big Horn was not the first meeting between the Cheyennes and Long Hair. Early in the winter of 1868 Long Hair and the Seventh Cavalry attacked our camp on the Washita River killing Chief Black Kettle and his band, burning their tipis and destroying all their food and belongings. In the spring Long Hair promised peace and moved the Cheyenne to a reservation. When gold was discovered white people came and the Indians were moved again. My brothers and I left for the open plains where our band of Cheyenne was again attacked by white soldiers in the winter of 1875. We were forced to seek help from a tribe of Oglala Sioux led by Chief Crazy Horse. After several days we joined Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Sioux and decided to travel and hunt together as one strong group. As conditions on the reservations became worse more and more Indians migrated west joining our group. Six tribes lived peacefully for several months, hunting buffalo, curing the meat for the winter months, and tanning buffalo hides. In the early summer, 1876 we set up camp near Little Big Horn River……. On the first day of camp the peace was shattered when two boys ran into the camp warning of soldiers. Then shooting could be heard. Women and children went to hide in the brush, some women carried away tipis and their belongings, others just ran with their children. Old men helped young men put on their war paint and dress. War ponies were brought into camp from the herds and the warriors mounted them and galloped away.

I found a pony and followed the warriors to watch the fighting as I often did since my nephew, Noisy Walking, expected me to watch and sing songs to give him courage. I rode around the outer fringes of the fighting, staying out of range of the bullets as I searched for Noisy Walking. In this way I could see what was happening. More and more soldiers were getting off their horses, preferring to hide or crawl along the ground……... Hundreds of Indians had begun to crawl toward them along crevices and gullies. Some soldiers mounted an attack off the ridge, galloping on their horses toward a group of Cheyennes and Oglalas. The Indians scattered to safety, and the white men dismounted again to hide along a second ridge. …… When Chief Lame White Man reached the soldiers all of them were already dead. Indians then attacked the first ridge, and again most of the white men were already dead. The only thing remaining for the Indians to do was pick up the abandoned guns and ammunition………

……I rode away searching for my nephew who had been shot and stabbed. I stayed with him, and brought him to his mother, but Noisy Walking died that night. He was one of the few Indians to be killed -- only half a dozen Cheyennes and two dozen Sioux lost their lives. The Indians said this was because of the Everywhere Spirit who had caused the white men to go mad and kill themselves thus saving many lives from the guns of the soldiers. They said this madness was the Everywhere Spirit's way of punishing the white men for attacking a peaceful Indian camp.

Source: Kate Bighead, a Cheyenne Indian, told this story to Dr. Thomas Marquis in 1922. Dr. Marquis was a doctor and historian of the Battle of Little Bighorn in the 1920s. He interviewed and photographed Cheyenne Indians. Document D: Manus Duggan’s letters from the Granite Mountain Speculator Mine, June 8, 1917 http://minememorial.org/history/letters-and-sermon.htm

Document E: Jeannette Rankin

“[B]abies are dying from cold and hunger; soldiers have died for lack of a woolen shirt. Might it not be that the men who have spent their lives thinking in terms of commercial profit find it hard to adjust themselves to thinking in terms of human needs? Might it not be that a great force that has always been thinking in terms of human needs, and that always will think in terms of human needs, has not been mobilized? Is it not possible that the women of the country have something of value to give the Nation at this time? It would be strange indeed if the women of the country through all these years had not developed an intelligence, a feeling, a spiritual force peculiar to themselves, which they hold in readiness to give to the world.” (Jeannette Rankin, “Woman Suffrage,” Congressional Record, 10 January 1918, JRP, MHS.)

“All over the country women are asking for the vote . . .. We are a force in life, a factor which must be considered in all problems. . . . While we Montana women have broader opportunities than the women of any other part of the world, we want the ballot in order to give opportunity to less fortunate women. . . .Census reports show that there are eight million women engaged in manual labor in this country. They are not there because they don’t want to stay at home, but because they must work if they are to live.” (Jeannette Rankin, Woman’s Day speech, Missoula, Montana, quoted in Daily Missoulian, 2 May 1914, quoted in Katrina Rebecca Cheek, “The Rhetoric and Revolt of Jeannette Rankin,” M.A. thesis, University of Georgia, 1969, 150.) Document F: Letter: Annual Earth Day Facts About Berkeley Pit and Butte Mining http://mtstandard.com/news/opinion/letter-annual-earth-day-facts-about-berkeley-pit-and- butte/article_2e0812d6-8c30-11e1-8a99-0019bb2963f4.html

Preparation

Prior to this activity, the students would have read and discussed Chapter 10 - “History and Economy of the Mountain States,” pages 334 – 371 in Our Country’s Regions, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 2003.

Procedure

Divide the class into six groups of history detectives. Explain that each group will read the words of someone who lived in Montana during the past 250 years. Each writer is expressing his or her ideas about a historical event. Listen to what each person has to say. Answer the questions on the history document detective sheet and be prepared to share what you learn. When you are finished you will be given an artifact or a picture that goes along with your selection. When each group has finished, the students will give oral presentations telling what they have learned about their selection and artifact. The students will present in chronological order creating a living time line.

Assessment

Students will be assessed on their ability to give the main idea and to answer questions about their selection.