Classwork for Thursday 2/5/2009

DO WHATCHA KNOW!
Have you ever seen a movie about the “Wild” West? What characters do you usually see in these films? What kind of interaction do they usually have? Who are the good guys?

INTRO TO NEW MATERIAL
Frontier is seen as “free land” but was really a place where cultures often clashed
o Manifest Destiny - an idea popular during the 1840s stating it was the right and duty of the United States to expand its boundaries

In 1862, two things prompt people to move West
o Homestead Act - a law passed in 1862 that removed native Americans from their lands and gave 160 acres of free land in the West to anyone who would go there and live on the land for five years
o Union-Pacific railroad connects Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and makes cross-country travel easier

U.S. Army clashes with native Americans in West
o Dawes Act - the act passed by Congress in 1887 that tried to "Americanize" the Indians by breaking up the tribal system
o Massacre at Wounded Knee – the 1890 massacre of more than 200 unarmed Lakota Sioux by the U.S. Army at Wounded Knee Creek, SD

Other groups have clashes as well
o African Americans head West to flee Jim Crow laws in South
o Chinese Americans continue to experience discrimination

GUIDED PRACTICE
As a class, we will complete SOAPS on the primary source Frederick Jackson Turner Articulates the Frontier Thesis.
Next, you will work with your table to complete SOAPS on Southern Freedmen Resolve to Move West.

INDEPENDENT PRACTICE
You many choose to examine one of three primary sources: “The End of the Dream,”
Big Foot's camp after Battle of Wounded Knee; U.S. soldiers amid scattered debris of camp, or the song “Big Foot,” by Johnny Cash. Complete SOAPS if you choose Black Elk or Johnny Cash; complete the Analyzing Photographs question if you choose the photograph.

LEARNING LOG
Pretend that it’s 1884, and you’ve just moved your family from New Orleans to Wyoming. Write a letter home to your mother in New Orleans, telling her about why you moved and how you get along with other settlers in Wyoming.