The Importance Of Primary Sources In American History

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Primary sources are vital to history, without them we would have no basis of what to learn. Primary sources can be anything from records kept by official scribes, to journals, to retellings by eye witnesses. Even though we have these primary sources, we cannot really understand we are being told unless someone breaks it down, whether someone else interprets it, or we examine it ourselves. In American history there were a few that I found to be interesting, and insightful.
One primary source is an old Indian story. It explains why animals do not cooperate with humans and why plants can be used for healing. It begins by stating that animals once spoke to humans, and continues to tell why they stopped. It said that the humans began killing too …show more content…

It gives instructions on how much work each slave will do, and even gives meaning less things to keep them occupied so they will not rise up for a rebellion. They would stay busy all year, planting and harvesting crops like corn, potatoes, rice, beans, peas and cabbage. When they were not working in the fields they would do things like housework. They were also required to work on road, but they had to have some white man guarding them with guns. They were also to be allowed to plant food for themselves, but only one day a week. If they behaved they might also be allowed to sell some of the crops they get for themselves.
This shows many things about slavery. One thing that I find interesting is that they did not even seem to hide that they knew that the Africans hated slavery. One of the biggest points of this was to tell different ways to keep slaves busy. None of us want to be held in captivity, we feel the need to be free. The fact that the slave owners recognized this means, at some level, they knew that the people of African lineage were humans, even if they did not want to accept …show more content…

I think the only way to truly understand people’s motives is to examine their words, with the understanding of what was going on around them. The Indians believed that nature was made of spirits. They felt like the reason that animals did not manifest this to them was because their ancestors had betrayed the animals. Columbus was a man of his time, and I feel that we are too negative about what he did and thought because we compare it to our society. I think that slave holders on some level knew that treating other humans like property was wrong, but like Columbus, they had been taught that it was normal, so most did not question

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