Historical Inquiry & Indigenous Nations — Chapter review · U.S. & New York History: Indigenous Nations to Reconstruction, Grade 7
Five focused units, a three-session source workshop, chapter review, and chapter quiz.
Review the key ideas
Historical Inquiry: Questions, Sources & Evidence
Every claim about the past rests on a source, and sources were made by people with reasons. The famous story that Manhattan was bought for $24 comes from one short letter written in 1626 by a man who was not there, and the dollar figure was invented by a historian 220 years later.
Reading Maps, Timelines & Historical Change
A timeline and a map both look like neutral pictures of fact, and neither is. Historians still disagree by four centuries about when the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was founded, and the map that fixed the United States' borders in 1783 was drawn in 1755 by a man who got parts of the continent wrong.
Indigenous Nations of North America
Before 1492 North America held hundreds of nations speaking more than three hundred languages, with cities, road networks, irrigation and long-distance trade. Cahokia, near modern St Louis, held perhaps 15,000 people around 1100 — about the size of London at the same date.
Haudenosaunee & Neighboring Nations in New York
Five nations that had been at war bound themselves under the Great Law of Peace into a confederacy governed by a council of fifty chiefs at Onondaga. The chiefs were nominated, instructed and could be removed by clan mothers, and for two centuries the Confederacy was the strongest political power in the northeast.
Early Encounters, Columbian Exchange & Consequences
After 1492 plants, animals, people and diseases crossed the Atlantic in both directions and remade both sides. The potato and maize helped European populations grow; smallpox and measles killed a majority of the people in many American regions, often arriving years before any colonist did.
Problem 1
Answer and explanation
The register lists 12 learners, while 9 were present on one recorded day. Three were not marked present that day, assuming the same roster and complete marking. That does not show why they were absent or their attendance throughout the term. More dates and information about the recording method would test a broader claim.
Identify the different measures: enrollment and daily presence.
Compare the same period without treating the measures as identical.
Seek additional dated attendance records for a term-wide claim.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 2
Answer and explanation
The receipt concerns a particular shipment and cost. It cannot establish every person’s earnings, safety, displacement, or other experience; specify a narrower claim and seek additional records.
Problem 3
Answer and explanation
The stipulated route is 6×20=120 km. A winding route can be longer than 90 km of straight-line separation. This assumes the path measurement and scale are correct; neither value alone establishes travel time or historical access.
Multiply the supplied path measurement by its scale.
Keep the result in kilometers.
Distinguish route length from straight-line separation.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 4
Answer and explanation
The route network and boundaries may differ. Use a dated map or evidence of the roads, paths, waterways, and political conditions relevant to the journey.
Problem 5
Answer and explanation
The traces support fishing-related activity at the coastal site and maize cultivation at the inland site. They do not establish exclusive diets, every household’s work, or the absence of exchange. Preservation and excavation affect what is found. A comparison should identify those limits rather than rank communities by one technology.
Identify the different traces preserved.
Separate detected activities from complete inventories.
Seek other remains and context before generalizing.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 6
Answer and explanation
Its borders belong to a later political system. It can help locate a place but cannot establish earlier community boundaries or authority.
Problem 7
Answer and explanation
Confederacy membership describes a political relationship, while a language-family list does not by itself establish shared government. The six nations also retain distinct identities. A comparison of decisions needs dated evidence about the relevant councils, responsibilities, and participants, not an assumption that a category speaks with one voice.
Distinguish membership from language classification.
Locate decisions in a particular nation or shared institution.
Seek dated council or diplomatic records.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 8
Answer and explanation
It describes a language family with multiple peoples and political communities. A claim about authority requires evidence about the particular nation and period.
Problem 9
Answer and explanation
More sale output establishes an increase in that measured activity under the stipulated conditions. It does not establish the welfare of coerced workers or every community. The labor requirement shows why economic totals and freedom are distinct. A fuller account needs labor conditions, distribution of returns, food access, and community evidence.
Identify what output measures.
Identify the separate evidence about coercion.
Compare effects on particular people and investigate access and burdens.
Response criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence with an explained claim or calculation.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an assumption, evidentiary limit, or distinction that qualifies the conclusion.
Problem 10
Answer and explanation
The Caribbean and other American regions had inhabitants and histories. European arrival created encounters; it did not create the people or land that were already there.