Lesson Plan Undergraduate
Grade Level: Upper-level Undergraduate seminar, but can be differentiated to High School and some Middle School classes with appropriate scaffolding.
Time to execute: Extremely flexible. Can be used as an ice-breaking exercise to this material and then extended to a semester-long group project that students report on findings and challenges periodically throughout the term.
Overview: This lesson allows research teams of students to work with primary source material while interrogating the purpose and meaning of photographs taken by US Army photographer William S. Soule at Fort Sill, Oklahoma (then “Indian Territory”) between 1869 and 1876.
Objectives:
Identify: Possible avenues for investigation that could lead to further information on 1) who John Marman was with regards to his apparent expertise on the Soule photographs; 2) whether the information contained in his notes regarding Soule’s Indian subjects and Soule's time at Fort Sill is verifiable by cross checking against other sources; 3) how John Barman was aware of the Soule album and how he knew to write a letter to the archive that provided information on the photographs.
Analyze: Why these pictures were important to the photographer, and why they were significant to others, such as A. B. Stephenson, the one-time owner of the album, and John Barman.
Understand: What cultural work these and images like them performed in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century America. Are they still performing this work? Are photographs reliable sources of historical evidence.
Historical Context: William S. Soule was the US Army photographer at Fort Sill from 1869 to 1876, during which he took photographs of the fort, the area around the the fort, and Native American subjects there. The photographs of Native American subjects fell into a particular genre of western photography and art that sought to catalogue and romanticize peoples indigenous to North America. The photographs, while archived at the Briscoe Center for American History, were reproduced as prints, and sometime after that (1979), the archive received a letter from John Barman, of Berkshire, England, containing notes specifically about William Soule's photographs, which were then copied onto the backs of the pertinent prints by an archivist.
Document Analysis: After presenting the photographs and the Barman notes and describing their historical context to students, have them discuss them in small groups. What do they find interesting about them? What do the find surprising? After allowing enough time for discussion, reconvene a whole-group discussion and have student representatives from the break-out groups debrief the class on their findings.
Group Work: Inform students that they will be forming research teams based upon which aspect of the Barman notes they would like to pursue. One group can research John Barman (who lived in Bershire, England, in 1979) the person to determine his level of expertise on Soule’s Native American subjects. Was he a professional historian, and amateur enthusiast, or something else? A second group can cross-check the information contained in Barman’s notes against other sources to verify or disprove them. Do we trust him as an authority?
Before allowing students to break into teams, explain the missions of each team, the time frame available to them for their research, and that they will report on their findings and challenges periodically throughout the semester. Have them brainstorm whole-group resources/approaches that will be helpful to each team. Discuss the possible pitfalls of each research mission. Then, allow the students to break into teams and have them craft a research plan in which they will chart their initial research avenues. Inform them that they will report whole-group on their initial research plans following their team meeting.