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You\u2019re going to annotate two of the most important treaties signed by the British colonial governments: the Treaty of Boston (1725) and the Treaty of Halifax (1752). Your task here is to understand what the treaties actually say. A treaty is an agreement between two or more people\/groups. Do these treaties reflect a conversation? A negotiation? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n

At first glance, the treaties seem fairly clear, pointing to \u201csubmission\u201d and other terms that might suggest Mi\u2019kmaw surrender. But what do the treaties actually require of the two sides? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n

Today, these treaties lie at the centre of court cases involving Indigenous land and rights. Many of the recent court cases have hinged on whether the treaties were restrictive (limiting what people could do) or positive (enabling activities).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n

Where do you see restrictive language? Positive language?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
What do the treaties enact? Do they end wars? And if so, can we see who won those wars? What does that mean for the treaties\u2019 terms?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
Does one side surrender land? Sovereignty?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
Do these treaties commit to an alliance? Engagement in trade practices?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
Using hypothes.is, describe, annotate, and discuss what you see in the treaties and what they appear to mean for the signatories.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n"},"library":"H5P.AdvancedText 1.1","metadata":{"contentType":"Text","license":"U","title":"Untitled Text"},"subContentId":"24229adb-60eb-4333-bd81-45d2cc4c3ac2"},"useSeparator":"auto"}]},"library":"H5P.Column 1.15","subContentId":"c46c4eba-506b-4248-8273-0ee4efe32f87","metadata":{"contentType":"Column","license":"U","title":"Activity 1"}},{"params":{"content":[{"content":{"params":{"text":"
The treaties reflect the history and nature of the parties\u2019 relationship to that point. Can see what led up to the treaties? Can you describe the actual process of negotiating the treaties? What were the difficulties faced negotiating across different languages (indeed, quite different cultures)? How did they solve the simple but critical problem of getting representative peoples together? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
With an eye to answering these questions, read the reports describing the 1725 treaty negotiations (Document 3). <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
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NOTE: As you read the documents, take notes on where the discussion was occurring, which nations\/people were participating, where they were from, and any other indications of place you might see.<\/span> You'll be using that data to map the negotiation process in Activity 4.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
Now that you\u2019ve seen something of the context and the process by which the treaties were negotiated, think again about the treaties themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
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What do these contextual documents tell us about each treaty?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
Do these change our understanding of the treaty?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
Do we see evidence of language\/translation and cultural challenges?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
Using hypothes.is, annotate these documents, and describe and discuss the evidence you see that seems important to our understanding of the treaties themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Remember: <\/span>The Wabanaki were a confederacy of nations, not a single nation, whose territories ranged across the northeast from Massachusetts to northern Nova Scotia. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n"},"library":"H5P.AdvancedText 1.1","metadata":{"contentType":"Text","license":"U","title":"Untitled Text"},"subContentId":"d747ab47-9b97-4b3d-a596-a1f6d5db218b"},"useSeparator":"auto"}]},"library":"H5P.Column 1.15","subContentId":"6888b594-16db-4416-a797-90e49d78261f","metadata":{"contentType":"Column","license":"U","title":"Activity 2"}},{"params":{"content":[{"content":{"params":{"text":"
Much of the primary source material we use in this course, and everything that we use in this lesson, comes not directly from the original 18th-century documents but from transcriptions made by archives and historical societies in Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, Maine, and Qu\u00e9bec. These are fantastic resources, and we're extremely happy to have them available to us; they make materials accessible that would otherwise be very inaccessible.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
They provide us with an opportunity to evaluate a substantial body of evidence, rather than just excerpts. They also present a potential trap. These documents represent selections of the original material, based on decisions made by some 19th-century guy - and it was almost invariably a guy - who decided what would be edited and preserved for us to read. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
To be clear, we're not suggesting a conspiracy, just a selection bias. And if we can identify the biases here, and critically evaluate them, we can work within the limits they provide. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
We can see three fairly obvious potential issues in these materials:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
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That the British officials who produced these documents no doubt crafted materials that best described their own positions, not the positions of their opponents. This is not at all surprising, but it is important always to remember that such documents present points of view, not necessarily facts.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
That the archive from which the printed collection was drawn may reflect the biases of the archivists (what to keep? what to discard? what's important?).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
That the documents in this printed collection were then selected by an editor. That is, they were curated selections from a larger archive of materials, chosen for a purpose.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
These issues are limitations on our research, but they are not insurmountable problems. If we're aware of those limits, we can think through the wealth of information still present as well as the absences - and the sometimes-misleading details we may encounter.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Therefore, in this activity, we ask you to perform a quick exercise that might allow you to reflect on our sources \u2013 the sources we're using in this course and those available in the wider world. All good historical writing is limited by the quantity and quality of the sources that are available. Here, using Voyant, we'd like you to examine a wider set of documents. These are not just the documents we\u2019ve chosen for you to read, or even the ones closely related to our topic, but all the 18th-century documents included in a set of sixteen volumes (about 12,000 pages!).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
The documents you're going to be using are from New England, and were collected and published in the late 19th century by the Maine Historical Society. You will use Voyant to read the entire collection of documents. <\/span>This link gives you a page with sixteen URLs<\/span><\/a><\/span>, one to each of the sixteen volumes of the Maine collection. Copy and paste all those URLs (at the same time) into Voyant<\/span><\/a>. You'll get an output of the entire corpus of the Maine Historical Society collections. Look through them to get a sense of the materials included. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
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Are the patterns we saw earlier still evident here?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
Are new themes emerging?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n\t
What does this exercise suggest about the places of settler colonialism and of Indigenous peoples in the writing of history in the North American northeast over the past century?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n"},"library":"H5P.AdvancedText 1.1","metadata":{"contentType":"Text","license":"U","title":"Untitled Text"},"subContentId":"f6561842-2f29-4be5-a17f-218d33182f81"},"useSeparator":"auto"}]},"library":"H5P.Column 1.15","subContentId":"8ec3d05e-bcb3-4e2d-bd61-91e67f3a67f9","metadata":{"contentType":"Column","license":"U","title":"Activity 3"}},{"params":{"content":[{"content":{"params":{"text":"
The negotiations leading up to the treaty of 1725 were conducted northeast of Boston, and representatives of the different Wabanaki nations were present. But as we saw in Activity 2, the geography covered by the negotiations was much broader. <\/span>Mapping the treaty processes can help us see how the Wabanaki organised their confederacy, and how their confederacy worked. Who was engaged in the negotiations? Did all the nations send representatives? How were the other members of the confederacy participating?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Using your \u201cplace notes\u201d from Activity 2, create a new \u201cSketch layer\u201d on your GIS page to map the geographic information found in each document. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Once your map has opened, click the file folder in the column on the far left. Name and save your map.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Next, click on the plus sign beside the word \"Layer\" in the top left of your screen. From the menu that appears, click \"Create sketch layer.\" <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Now that you have created this map and new layer, draw on your close and distant readings of these texts to add whatever geographic information you think is useful to display, by making points, lines, or areas. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Using this mapping tool, examine how communication occurred, who travelled and where they went, and how consensus was reached. Does the map allow us to better see how the confederacy organised its diplomatic affairs?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n"},"library":"H5P.AdvancedText 1.1","metadata":{"contentType":"Text","license":"U","title":"Untitled Text"},"subContentId":"846dfd04-3d63-486c-ad70-77b896d64687"},"useSeparator":"auto"}]},"library":"H5P.Column 1.15","subContentId":"680be8da-6bc0-4222-ac47-bc89491151b9","metadata":{"contentType":"Column","license":"U","title":"Activity 4"}}],"behaviour":{"tabPlacement":"dynamic","tabSpread":70,"colorBackground":"rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)"},"l10n":{"tab":"tab","noContent":"There is no content to be displayed."},"a11y":{"tabLsist":"Choose a tab."}}

brocku settler colonialism 4.2

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Kyle Mackie

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