The Ghosts of Wampum
Although wampum has often been portrayed as a form of Native American decoration, it played an integral role in colonial diplomacy. Wampum signified "the importance or the authority of the message associated with it. As such, treaties and other such agreements would have a large amount of wampum that had been loomed into a ‘belt' for them" (Ganondagan).
The 1763 Paxton massacres occurred in the context of rising tensions between those who sought accommodation, associated with the exchange of wampum belts, and those who sought ethnic cleansing, articulated in printed materials that conflated wampum with disregard for settler colonists in the borderlands.
Lesson Objectives:
- Students will evaluate visual primary and secondary sources, including a contemporary graphic novel and an eighteenth-century political cartoon.
- Students will learn how contemporary historians are working to integrate previously underrepresented voices and stories.
- Students will use their background knowledge to evaluate sources and create an argument about the symbolism of wampum.
- Students will compare and contrast arguments using a structured academic controversy.
- Students will revise arguments and select appropriate evidence.
- Students will reinterpret the Paxton massacre and learn about settler colonialism.
Essential Questions:
- What role does reciprocity play in relationships between different peoples?
- How and why do relationships between groups of people change over time?
- How do symbols embody change or continuity in relationships?
- What did Native peoples in colonial Pennsylvania expect from their relationships with the settler colonists? How do we know?
- What did the settler colonists expect from their relationships with the Native peoples? How do we know?
Grade Level: Grade 11
Standards:
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WH.6-8.1: Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.8: Evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.9: Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.
Historical Background:
- Historians use a wide range of artifacts, including wampum belts, to explore Native American history (which has limited, extant written primary source records).
- Native peoples' understanding of reciprocity was enacted through the exchange of wampum.
- Wampum belts are connected and represent a relationship, whereas individual wampum beads are a form of currency. For example, the Treaty of Shackamaxon wampum belt given to William Penn in 1682 (featured in Ghost River), which is on exhibit at the Philadelphia History Museum, "was said to be given to William Penn by the Lenape tribe at the time of the 1682 treaty. The belt, donated in 1857 to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by a great-grandson of Penn, is made of white wampum with darker accent beads and depicts two figures holding hands, often interpreted as a sign of friendship and peace."
- The tension between the settler colonists (and their increasing desire to move away from accommodation to thorough occupation of the land) and London's continued desire for reciprocity and accommodation was reflected in the pamphlet war, both during and after the Paxton massacre.
Materials:
Reading packet:
- Excerpts from Daniel Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 203. pp. 201-206.
- Excerpts from Lee Francis, Weshoyot Alvitre, and Will Fenton, Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga. Albuquerque: Red Planet Books and Comics, 2019.
- James Claypoole, An Indian Squaw King Wampum Spies.
- Penn Wampum Belt (1682 Shackamaxon treaty).
- Guiding questions (printed or projected on smartboard)
Background readings:
Optional readings:
- Lee Francis, Weshoyot Alvitre, and Will Fenton, Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga. Albuquerque: Red Planet Books and Comics, 2019.
- Digital Paxton
- Author, Artist, and Editor bios
Procedure:
Pre-work: Have students read the homework packet on wampum and the Paxton massacres.
Classroom Activities (75 minutes)
1. Play this excerpt from the musical Chicago as students come in:
Ask any of the chickies in my pen
They'll tell you I'm the biggest mother hen
I love them all and all of them love me -
Because the system works;
the system called reciprocity!
Got a little motto
Always sees me through
When you're good to Mama
Mama's good to you!
2. Ask students to free write on "reciprocate." Students may write a list, letter, scene, poem, or draw a sketch that they associate with the word.
3. Students talk in pairs: what did you write or draw, and why?
4. As a class, generate a working definition for "reciprocate" and write it on the board.
5. Class or small-group discussion: why is it important to reciprocate in relationships? Segue to thinking about ways of symbolizing reciprocity in relationships. How do I communicate my relationships with people or organizations? (e.g. a wedding ring shows marital status).
6. Homework recap/ mini lecture on reciprocity, accommodation and wampum in the 1600s and 1700s. Ask students to retrieve/recall how wampum represented based on what they read for homework (ex. to Native people wampum belts represented reciprocity in treaties with the British. Wampum was not money or decoration).
7. Split students into two groups to examine the Reading Packet:
- Group One examines Ghost River excerpts with Penn Wampum Belt.
- Group Two examines Ghost River excerpts with Indian Squaw King.
8. Both groups address their respective guiding questions and draft a thesis statement about what wampum meant to the settler colonists and Conestoga people.
9. As a class, compare both groups' thesis statements.
10. Finish by examining the full cartoon (Indian Squaw King) and explaining the role of pamphlets in the aftermath of the Conestoga Massacres. Stress to the students that Native people were still engaging in centuries-old ideals of reciprocity, whereas the settler colonists were increasingly intent on acquiring more land. Settler colonists were also frustrated that the metropolis (Parliament in London) did not unconditionally support them.
(Judith Ridner, Passion, Politics, and Portrayal in the Paxton Debates)The Paxton crisis, as Thomas Penn predicted, was a war of words and images fought by Paxton critics and defenders who debated Pennsylvania's future by inflaming the passions and misleading the judgement of many in the colony. Yet, in a war sparked by violence against Indians, it is surprising how absent or misrepresented the Conestogas were in these discussions. Few texts acknowledged the Paxton murders. Instead, most works, including political cartoons, either denied the Conestogas' agency by portraying them as helpless dependents of the colony and its Quaker merchants, or by stereotyping them as either cunning, half-naked savages or hatchet-wielding warriors, images popularized during the Seven Years' War. With no native voices to argue on behalf of the Conestogas, the Paxton debates document the colonial narrative of the crisis. They also capture a turning point in the history of the Pennsylvanian colony, away from acknowledgement and negotiation and towards the whole scale displacement and dispossession of indigenous peoples
Assessment and Extensions:
Assessment: Write a thesis statement that addresses one or more of these questions. State what two pieces of evidence best support your thesis.
- What did Native peoples in colonial Pennsylvania expect from their relationships with the settler colonists? How do we know?
- What did the settler colonists expect from their relationships with the Native peoples? How do we know?
Extension: What additional resources would you need to better understand the significance of wampum to different groups of people? What else do you know, need to know, or want to learn?
Homework: Read and annotate Ghost River. Select one page you want to close-read and discuss in class.
This lesson was created during the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Teacher Seminar, "Native Peoples, Settlers, and European Empires in North America, 1600-1840" (July 28-August 3, 2019). You may also download a printable version of this lesson.
