Week 1 — Readings & Resources · Doing History & Worlds Before 1607

Course: U.S. History to 1877 (HIST 1301) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Hartwell
Objectives covered: Objective 1 (historical thinking & source analysis) · Objective 2 (Indigenous America, contact & the Columbian Exchange).

How to use this page

Everything here is a link to an external resource — open it in your browser, the same way you'd open a YouTube link. Nothing needs to be downloaded, and there is nothing to buy.

This week's load is deliberately light: 2 short videos + 2 short readings + the primary source you'll use in the workshop, grouped by the ideas from the lecture, plus a couple of optional references. Watch or read one item per group and you're ready for the quiz; do all of them and you'll be very comfortable. Total time is roughly 40–50 minutes if you do everything, far less if you pick one per group.

Order that matches the lecture: ① how historians read sources → ② Indigenous North America before 1607 → ③ contact & the Columbian Exchange → ④ the week's primary source (for the workshop).

A habit to start now: before you trust any historical claim — in these resources or anywhere — ask the questions from class: Who made this source, when, and why? What did they leave out? Does another source back it up?

① How Historians Read Sources

Maps to Lecture Segments 1–2. The craft at the center of the course: a primary source is evidence made at the time; the four moves are sourcing, contextualization, close reading, and corroboration.

Reading — "Historical Thinking" reading strategies (Reading Like a Historian, Digital Inquiry Group / Stanford History Education Group)
🔗 https://inquirygroup.org/history-lessons
Why it's assigned: the clearest plain-language statement of the four moves — sourcing, contextualization, close reading, corroboration — the method we use every single week. (Browse the "Historical Thinking" materials; no account needed to read the overview.)
⏱ ~10 min

Tool — National Archives, document-analysis worksheets
🔗 https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets
Why it earns the click: the same questions historians ask of any document, on one page — who made it, when, for whom, and what it tells you. Print one and use it on this week's source.
⏱ ~5 min

② Indigenous North America Before 1607

Maps to Lecture Segment 3. Before any colony, North America was home to millions of people in hundreds of societies — Mississippian city-builders at Cahokia, the Ancestral Puebloans of the Southwest, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, and many more.

Reading — "The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492" (OpenStax, U.S. History, Ch. 1)
🔗 https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/1-introduction
Why it's assigned: a free, readable survey of the major Indigenous societies and the worlds that met in 1492 — the diversity of Native North America, not a blank map. (Read §1.1–1.2.)
⏱ ~12 min

Video — "The Native Americans" (CrashCourse US History #1, Pre-Columbian)"
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E9WU9TGrec
Why it earns the click: a brisk overview of pre-contact North America that makes the same point we do in class — these were complex, varied societies, and "wilderness" is a myth.
⏱ ~12 min

③ Contact & the Columbian Exchange

Maps to Lecture Segments 4–5. 1492 began a two-way transfer of crops, animals, people, and — most lethally — diseases. Maize and potatoes went east; wheat, horses, and smallpox came west.

Reading — "The Columbian Exchange" (Khan Academy, US History → Precontact and early colonial era → Old and new worlds collide)
🔗 https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history
Why it's assigned: in the "Old and new worlds collide" lesson, the Columbian Exchange article lays out exactly what crossed the Atlantic in each direction and why the exchange of diseases was so catastrophic for Native peoples — the key idea for the quiz. (Open the Precontact and early colonial era unit and find it there.)
⏱ ~10 min

④ The Week's Primary Source (for the Workshop)

You'll analyze this in Primary Source Workshop 1. Read it once before the workshop so you arrive ready to source and close-read it.

Primary source — Christopher Columbus, Letter on his First Voyage (written February 1493, to Luis de Santángel)
🔗 https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/columbus-reports-his-first-voyage-1493 (Gilder Lehrman Institute)
🔗 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/contact/text1/columbusletter.pdf (National Humanities Center — full transcription)
Why it's assigned: the first European account of the Americas to reach a wide audience — and a perfect document to practice sourcing (who wrote it, to whom, and why) and to notice what it leaves out. Bring your questions about it to the workshop.
⏱ ~10 min

Optional one-stop references (free online)

• National Archives — DocsTeach. Thousands of primary-source documents with analysis tools; a place we'll return to all term.
  🔗 https://www.docsteach.org/
• Library of Congress — "Christopher Columbus letter." The library's catalog record and digitized early printing of the 1493 letter.
  🔗 https://www.loc.gov/item/2018657915/

Pick-one quick path (≈22 min total)

In a hurry? Do exactly these and you'll be ready for the quiz:
1. Skim the Reading Like a Historian four-moves overview (group ①).
2. Read the Columbian Exchange article (group ③) and skim OpenStax §1.1–1.2 on Indigenous societies (group ②).
3. Read Columbus's 1493 letter once (group ④) for the workshop.

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell Prof. Hartwell and use the OpenStax, Khan Academy, or National Archives references above in the meantime.