HIST 444/544: Native American History, Women in Indian Reform

             This course is a collaborative project with the Women and Social Movements website funded by the NEH (http://womhist.binghamton.edu).   The goal of the course is to create a website that posts documents telling the story of white women reformers on the Southern Ute reservation in Southwestern Colorado at the turn of the 20th century.  We will explore these documents and, from our readings in secondary sources, we will be able to put them in an historical context.  

For the completed projects for this course see:  Student Projects 
    

Course Requirements

1. Attendance and class participation. We have 25 classes scheduled. 25 @ 5 =125 points
2. Summaries of the readings, both the texts and the web assignments. 15 @ 5 = 75 points
3. Your web documents editorial project.  The editorial project, consists of five parts: 300 points

1. A research question;

    2. A bibliography that informs and frames the research question. Students will create the headers, introductory statements, annotations, and footnotes to accompany the documents from this bibliography.

3. A set of 20 documents that addresses the question (with annotations);

4. Short headnotes (1-2 paragraphs) for each document;

5. An introduction to the whole project (3-5 pages--plus endnotes);

Where appropriate, students will create links to other websites that relate to issues raised by their projects. Grades will be assigned as follows: A, 500-450; B, 449-399; C, 398-348; D, 347-297.

 Reading Assignments:

1.   Margaret Jacobs, Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879-1934. (6 write-ups due.)

2.   Katherine M. B. Osburn, Southern Ute Women: Autonomy and Assimilation on the Reservation, 1887-1934. (7 write-ups due.)

Every class period for which there is an assignment, you must turn in a brief  write-up—1-2 pages--which addresses the following questions:

1. What is the main point of the readings--that is, the authors' thesis or research question?
2.  What question or questions, it any, do the readings raise for you or what research question would you pose for this material?

            These are worth up to 5 points each and may be handwritten or typed.  You may turn in a write-up during the following class if you miss class, but you will only get 2 points for these. If you consistently come to class without your write-ups you will be docked a full letter grade.

            For the first 8 weeks we will combine the readings with perusal of the documents and discussions of what kinds of projects to create with them.  As we get ideas for these projects, you must begin to look for books for your bibliography.  When we have finished the readings, we will begin to create the web pages.  The last 8 weeks will be creating the projects. This will be done in one of the two computer labs here in Henderson Hall.  You will use the documents during class and return them to their folders at the end of class.   If you want to work on your project outside of the class, you must make your own photocopies.

 The Project Documents

This class highlights women volunteers and Indian Service employees at the Southern Ute Agency in southwestern Colorado in the early twentieth century. There are several hundred photocopies of these women’s records from the Records of the Consolidated Ute Agency organized into folders that will be stored in the foyer of my office, where I will set up a library.  The collection includes the papers of Nellie Wiegel (who was chair of the Indian Welfare Division of the Colorado Federation of Women’s Clubs and the General Federation Of Women's Clubs and a member of the Colorado Indian Commission), Field Matron’s Reports (1910-1914), Reports of Field Nurses (1932-1939), and Reports of the Home Economics Division of the Office of Indian Affairs (1910-1934.) Finally, I will include several Office of Indian Affairs circulars outlining official policy for “civilizing” Native Americans by changing gender roles.  Together, these documents reveal the role of gender in the evolution of Indian policy and the interactions of Native Americans with women agents of forced assimilation. For a paper on male gender roles among the Ute see: "I Am Going to Write to You": Nurturing Fathers and the Office of Indian Affairs on the Southern Ute Reservation, 1895-1934.

I have put a version of my book on this site so that you can do searches with Word. This will help you find references and quotations easily. Note: this is the final draft before University Press proofreading so if you find typos, please let me know. See: Southern Ute Women.

Support Personnel
We now have two web wizards to help us with our project:

Patrick Vernon: rpv8373@tntech.edu,
Or Chad Neal: cfn2538@tntech.edu

Email them with any questions you might have. Patrick will meet with us in the computer lab to help us design our web pages on Friday, February 8th in HH room 202.  Click here for Patrick's tips on using Front Page To learn how to upload your files to the gemini account, see: Uploading files.

You MUST sign the permission form before you will get credit for this class. See Permission Form.

Class Assignments

January 10 & 11

Th. Introduction to the Course.

F. We will not meet on Friday.  Instead, you will view the website: (http://womhist.binghamton.edu) and get an idea of what kinds of documents are on it.  On the site read: What is a Social Movement? (http://womhist.binghamton.edu/socm/intro.htm).  Come to class on Monday with a one-page summary of each site. (2 summaries total)

Week 1: January 14-18

M. Discussion of the website and What is a Social Movement?
W. Jacobs, Chapter One.
F. Perusal of Documents.

Week 2: January 21-25 NO CLASS ON MONDAY, JAN 21

W. Jacobs, Chapter Two.
F.  Jacobs, Chapter Three.

Week 3: January 28-Feburary 1

M. Jacobs, Chapter Four
W. Jacobs, Chapter Five.
F. Perusal of documents.

Week 4: February 4-8

M. Jacobs, Chapter Six & Conclusion.
W. Today we will discuss the student web projects at the top of the page. Bring me a write up on the 2 dealing with Indians. Tell me what is the research question asked and what documents are used to answer the question. Read the intros, headers, and footnotes for each document in the project and summarize them.
F.  Web page construction: Henderson Hall 202 computer lab.
By this time we should have some projects in mind and you should start thinking about a bibliography.

Week 5: February 11-15

M. Osburn, Intro and Chapter One.
W. Osburn, Chapter Two.
F.  Osburn, Chapter Three.

Week 6: February 18-22

M. Osburn, Chapter Four.
W. Osburn,  Chapter Five.
F.  Osburn, Conclusion.

Week 7: February 25-March 1

M. Perusal of documents & discussion of projects.
W. Perusal of documents & discussion of projects.
F. Perusal of documents & discussion of projects.

For next week read: Tips for Using Microsoft FrontPage. You need not prepare a summary. (http://www.research.umbc.edu/%7Elindenme/FrontPageTips.htm)

Week 8: March 4-8.  

M. Group discussion of proposed web pages.
W. Group discussion of proposed web pages.
F. Group discussion of proposed web pages.

Week 9: March 11-15 is Spring Break! Have Fun!!

Week 10

M. Preliminary bibliographies due on Monday. We will meet to turn them in and then go work to on our projects.

Weeks 10- 16, Creating the pages.  I don’t care when you do them during this period, but I will be checking on you periodically to make sure you are working. Format for this TBA.
   We will meet together the last two class days—May 1 & 3--to present our projects to the class.  It is my expectation that every student's project will be of high enough quality to be mounted upon the larger website and as such each student should be able to come out of this course with a publication to their credit.    

To see what other students have done with these assignments, see the student web projects for the following courses:

Karen Anderson, University of Arizona:  http://www.fcii.arizona.edu/hist396a/ and Hasia Diner, New York University: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/diner/nywomen/

For a very good example of a student project see: http://www.fcii.arizona.edu/hist396a/kdixon/

Helpful Websites for Native American History

http://www.ethnicstudies.ucr.edu/nas.html

http://jupiter.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/%7Ekrkvls/history.html

http://www.csusm.edu/nadp/nadp.htm in this collection, there is one report of an inspector who visited Southern Ute. Click on Published Reports and then scroll down the side box until you see: Jocknick, G.F. examined the Indian agency in Colorado Territory RC1871:7