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PALO ALTO COLLEGE
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Arawak original home, St. Lucia

Theme One:
A Collision of Cultures

 Three masks
Robert R. Hines
Assistant Professor of History

clovis points

Assigned Readings:

Note to Out-of-Town Students: Theme 1 requires a visit to San Antonio's Museum of Art.
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Chapter 1
Myers Text, Chapters 1, 2, & 3.

Internet Required: (A), (E) + two other activities.

 

From Professor Rex Field, Palo Alto College: "The native North American people were story-keepers, not story-writers. The modern historian's task of piecing together the history of this continent is thus especially difficult. Considerable work has been accomplished in the study of native cultures, yet we must rely quite heavily upon speculation as we try to tie together millennia of archeological and environmental evidence." (Rex Field, ed. Flyover History So instead of traipsing through a deluge of secondary sources on this topic, I have decided it would be worthwhile for us to take a close look at the real thing: the art from both pre-Columbian civilizations of Mexico and Central America, at the San Antonio Museum of Art, or the artwork of the Indians of the Lower Pecos region of West Texas on-line.

 

(A) San Antonio Museum of Art )
(For folks wanting some extra credit)Take a trip down to the San Antonio Museum of Art, on Jones Street, in downtown San Antonio. Go to the exhibit of the artwork of pre-Columbian Mexican civilizations. Complete this exercise, Amerindian Artwork Web Exercise in typed form. Submit only "clean" papers, please. (By "clean" I mean eliminate spelling errors, grammatical errors, and please have everything in complete sentences/paragraphs. Thanks...)

SAMA has a beautiful collection of Pre-Columbian artwork, mostly from Mexico. The ancient civilizations of the Olmec, Maya, Toltec, Aztecs and others are exhibited there. The rock art of west Texas can be found at various sites on the web. I have directed students to a couple of them below. In addition, your text, Life in the American Past, has two articles worthy of analysis. One concerns the importance of corn as the builder of civilizations in this hemisphere. The other provides an overview of native cultures before contact with Europeans.

 

 

 

(B) Secrets of the Maya: Deciphering Tikal A view of the ancient Maya city of Tikal After decades of intense research, the ancient ruins of Mexico and Central America are yielding new insights into pre-Columbian culture.

Read Secrets of the Maya, Chapter 3 in the Myers Text, and answer the following questions in ONE cohesive essay:

  1. Why should deciphering the Mayan writing system have made such a difference to scholars?
  2. What role did the colonizing Spaniards play in the long process of coming to understand the Maya?
  3. How did the Maya employ time and by what means did they calibrate a calendar?
  4. How could early discoverers of the Maya ruins, such as that at Tikal, have been so mistaken in describing the people who had once lived in them?
  5. What is the one mystery of the Maya yet to be answered?

 

 

 

Howard Zinn, Historian

 

(C) Howard Zinn, Leftist Historian
I want you to read Historian Howard Zinn's Interpretation of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the "new world." But before you read this, write down everything that you think you know about Columbus.
Then, after reading the information at the web site above I would like you to write a 1-2 page essay, dealing with the following questions:
  • What does Zinn say about Columbus and the Arawaks?
  • What was Columbus looking for? What did he find?
  • What did Columbus take from the islands that could be sold?
  • Who was Bartolome de las Casas? What did he write, and why was this important?
  • What does this selection tell us about the writing of history, according to Dr. Zinn?
  • Finally, what was the ultimate fate of the Arawaks and other Caribbean tribes who met with Columbus and the Spanish?

     

    . . . the tsunami of biological exchange did not begin until 1492.

     

    (D) Plagues and Peoples: The Columbian Exchange

    Read the following essay by Dr. Alfred Crosby, Professor Emeritus from the University of Texas @ Austin: The Columbian Exchange: Plants, Animals, and Disease between the Old and New Worlds .

    • What was the Columbian Exchange?
    • What are Dr. Crosby's important facts and conclusions?

     

     

    (E) Complete the Quiz based on the readings in the Myers text.

     

    This is NOT REQUIRED:
    Check out the film, Black Robe    , about French Jesuits trying to convert the Huron Indians in Canada.
    View a couple of clips on Youtube

    Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries - ball court, Monte Alban

    Other Resources:
    Christopher Columbus: Man and Myth
    Everything you could possibly want to know about the erstwhile explorer
    The Age of Exploration
    Columbus, the Vikings, and Others
    The Splendors of Mexico
    Art and History of Pre-Columbian Mexico.

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