Introduction

Before the arrival of Europeans in North America, the cultures of indigenous peoples of the continent, to whom we refer as Native Americans, relied mostly on the oral transfer of knowledge. Native Americans did not use written languages but depended on verbal languages to share their stories, skills, beliefs, and traditions. That also applied to history. For centuries, Native Americans recorded their history only verbally. The tradition of the oral transfer of knowledge has made it challenging for historians to study Native American past, especially that so few people speak or understand indigenous languages today.  This activity will illustrate the difficulty of studying Native American history based on existing records. You will examine two photos from Arkansas taken most likely in the 1880s. At the time, Arkansas shared a border with Indian Territory, which was a land area that the US government reserved for Native Americans. Legally, Indian Territory was a sovereign state and Native Americans held rights to its land. However, throughout the 19th century, the US government continued to change the borders of the area, which made Indian Territory smaller and smaller. In 1907, the Oklahoma Enabling Act created the state of Oklahoma by combining Oklahoma Territory (est. 1890) and Indian Territory. That ended the existence of independent Indian Territory.  A lot of what we know about Native American past comes not from Native Americans but from people who observed or met with them. Those individuals usually had limited understanding of the cultures and traditions of Native Americans so what they thought they saw was often incorrect. Their interpretation of Native American cultures was also rooted in racial prejudice because European settlers and white Americans considered indigenous cultures to be inferior. Keep that in mind while examining the two photos in this exercise.