Week 1 · Readings & resources

Week 1 — Readings & Resources

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 1 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 96–117 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–23 min total)

① How historians know: sorting and reading sources

Chapter 1, Section “Define history: primary and secondary sources” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Sorting the evidence” · Remember: a source is primary when it was made during the period you study, and every reading ends in one plain sentence.

Document Analysis Worksheets — U.S. National Archives — the National Archives' own four-step method for any primary source: meet the document, observe its parts, try to make sense of it, and use it as historical evidence; open the written-document worksheet and compare its steps with the course's four moves. Use it while working through the Week-1 module overview. (reading, 5–10 min)
Primary vs. Secondary Sources — Minnesota Historical Society — a four-minute library guide that sorts notes, letters, photographs, an oral history, a newspaper, and later books into primary and secondary sources, then quizzes you; its examples come from a much later century, so use it for the method, not the history. Notice its point that a copy of a primary source is still primary. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)

② The Americas before contact

Chapter 1, Section “Meet the Americas before 1492: Cahokia and Tenochtitlán” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Worlds before 1492” · Remember: the Americas held large, complex societies long before 1492, and many Native nations exist and govern themselves now.

Explore Cahokia Mounds — Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site — the historic site's own guide to the mounds, the plaza, the stockade, and Woodhenge, with Monks Mound named as the largest mound at the site; read it beside Chapter 1's account and notice which dates the site gives and how it describes who lived there later. (reading, 10–15 min)
Why Was Ancient America's Greatest City Abandoned? — PBS Terra — drone footage and archaeologists' new magnetic surveys of Cahokia's neighborhoods, plazas, and Monks Mound, ending with Osage Nation members describing Cahokia as their living heritage. The video gives its own dates and population estimate; the course dates the Mississippian culture in words from UNESCO's page, about 800 to the 1300s, so compare the two. (video, 13 min) (captions: creator)
Tenochtitlan: The Venice of Mesoamerica — Invicta — an animated tour of the Mexica capital: its island setting, causeways, aqueducts, sacred precinct, and the great market, with a note that the city stood until the Spanish and their allies conquered it in 1521, and a closing correction of the old picture of Mesoamericans as scattered tribes; the narrator's population figures are estimates, so treat them as the video's claims, not the course's. (video, 8 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Meetings, claims, and conquest

Chapter 1, Section “Tell contact from conquest: Tenochtitlán and St. Augustine” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Contact and conquest” · Remember: contact is a meeting of peoples, conquest is control taken by force, and St. Augustine is older than Jamestown.

The Rise and Fall of the Aztec Civilization — Smithsonian Magazine — a three-minute history of Tenochtitlán, from the Mexica's own founding story of the eagle on the cactus to the city's floating gardens, its great temple, Cortés's arrival in 1519, and the city's fall in 1521 after months of war; use it to set contact and conquest on one timeline. It states without naming a source that Moctezuma took Cortés for a god, so ask what record that claim rests on, and treat its population figure as the video's estimate, not the course's. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)
Tordesillas: How the Pope Divided the World Between Spain and Portugal — Kings and Generals — an animated account of the rivalry that led to the papal decrees and then the Treaty of Tordesillas, with its line moved to 370 leagues west of Cape Verde; skip the sponsor message in the first two minutes. When it mentions the captives Columbus brought back from the islands, it treats them as a curiosity; remember that they were people taken from their homes. As you watch, ask the course's close-reading question the video never asks: who signed, and who did not? (video, 19 min) (captions: creator)
Timucua — Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, National Park Service — the park service's history of the Timucua chiefdoms of northeast Florida, on whose land St. Augustine was founded: how they farmed, fished, and traded, and how Spanish expeditions, missions, and European diseases devastated them. It is a secondary source, so ask what records it draws on. (reading, 5–8 min)

④ The exchange in both directions

Chapter 1, Section “Trace the Columbian Exchange both ways” · Session 2, Segment 6, “Two directions” · Remember: crops, animals, people, and diseases crossed both ways after 1492, and Old World diseases devastated Indigenous populations.

The Columbian Exchange: Plants, Animals, and Disease between the Old and New Worlds — National Humanities Center — a short essay by Alfred W. Crosby, the historian who named the Columbian Exchange, on how separate the two hemispheres' plants and animals had been and why their mixing after 1492 mattered so much; read it as a secondary source by the concept's own author. (reading, 8–12 min)
The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course History of Science #16 — CrashCourse — a look at the exchange as a movement of knowledge as well as of crops, animals, people, and diseases: the American foods that reached Europe, Africa, and Asia, among them corn, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, tobacco, and chocolate; the smallpox and measles that struck peoples with no immunity to them; and the colonization and slavery that, the host argues, make the gentle word exchange misleading. It never names the historian who coined the term, so add Alfred W. Crosby and his 1972 book yourself, and treat its figure for population loss as the video's estimate, not the course's. (video, 13 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Columbus and the Taíno — Library of Congress — the Library of Congress page that holds the week's workshop document: the English rendering of Columbus's letter on the first voyage, the note on the Latin printing made at Rome, and the Library's account of Guanahani and the Taíno; read the letter's passage and the Library's notes beside it. (reading, 8–12 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com