We’ve been busy adding new primary sources and features to DocsTeach, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives. Here are some recent highlights:
Maps from the Moll Atlas – Cartographer Herman Moll worked on “The World Described or, A New and Correct Sett of Maps” from 1707 to 1717. His series took into account all of the known parts of the globe; several maps from the atlas are available.
Personal Experiences of World War I – Servicemen wrote these eyewitness accounts after their return from the Western Front. The men were personnel of the Lone Star Division, the 36th Division of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). Learn more about these narratives in our recent blog post.
Tinker v. Des Moines – Documents and exhibits from this case, about free speech and a student protest against the Vietnam War, include protest plans, school policy documents, and testimony. You can find other Vietnam War-related primary sources and teaching activities on our special Vietnam War page.
Voting Rights – Documents from the LBJ Presidential Library include correspondence and conversations from civil rights leaders, Governor George Wallace, and the White House. Find more primary sources and teaching activities to explore the ways Americans have fought for their rightson our Rights in America page.
DocsTeach now integrates with Google Classroom!
If you use Google Classroom with your students, look for the “Share to Google Classroom” button on DocsTeach pages. You can add activities, documents, and folders straight to Google Classroom for your students. And your students can turn in their work via the Google Classroom button! Learn more.
If you don’t use Google Classroom, there are multiple ways to assign and manage activities – via DocsTeach, email, or your LMS.
What treaties should we add?
Recently, the National Archives embarked on an ongoing project to digitize all 377 “Ratified Indian Treaties” in our holdings. We’ve added several treaties to DocsTeach already. Below is a link to our main online catalog with many more treaties — if you find one that you think your students (and others around the world) would benefit from, comment below, or send us the URL or the “National Archives Identifier” number and we’ll add it.
After the Revolutionary War, the United States negotiated treaties with the Native Peoples similarly to how they negotiated with foreign governments. This changed over time. In 1831, the Supreme Court case Cherokee Nation v. Georgia changed the status of Native tribes from “independent, sovereign nations” to “domestic dependent nations.” Treaties, however, still followed the pattern of requiring negotiations between the U.S. Government and tribal governments and ratification by Congress. In 1871, Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act, which suspended all further treaties.
Given the discriminatory climate that existed during the era of Native American Treaties and then when the Indian Appropriations Act was ratified, I think it would be important to digitize all of the available treaty documents. They will become useful sources of information for those studying Discrimination in the U.S. generally – racial discrimination in this country did not begin with the introduction of black slaves, it began with white settlement.
Thank you for your input, John. This National Archives project aims to digitize the entire set of Ratified Indian Treaties from our vault holdings (377 treaties in all). We will perform any necessary conservation work on these materials, and digitize the entire contents of the file for each treaty. This will include scanning the treaties themselves along with accompanying papers: Presidential Proclamations and Resolutions of Ratification by Senate. We will ultimately be able to provide public access electronically to all of these materials in our National Archives Catalog.