English · Lycée général (C1 to C2), Bac pro (B1 to B2)

Session 1: Whose land? Before the colonies

Recap check
  1. What do you already know about Thanksgiving?
  2. Name one English-speaking country in the Americas.
  3. What does the word colony make you think of?
Answer key
  1. A national holiday in the United States, on the fourth Thursday of November.
  2. For example the United States, Canada, Jamaica.
  3. Settlers, a distant king, land taken from other people: all answers are discussed.
Question: Were the Thirteen Colonies built on empty land?

Objectives

Documents

Key document

The word colony comes from the Latin colonia, a settlement of farmers on conquered land. The English colonies of North America were founded on the homelands of many Native nations: the Powhatan in Virginia, the Wampanoag and the Narragansett in New England, the Lenape around the Delaware River, and many others. The National Museum of the American Indian reminds teachers that the Wampanoag had been in contact with European explorers, traders and enslavers for nearly one hundred years before the English settled at Patuxet in 1620.

Read the source: NMAI, Rethinking Thanksgiving · NMAI, Harvest Ceremony study guide

"The “First Thanksgiving” as a national story is incomplete and inaccurate."
National Museum of the American Indian, Native Knowledge 360
The First Thanksgiving 1621, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (around 1912). Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons.
The First Thanksgiving 1621, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (around 1912). Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons.

Activities

  1. Describe the painting: who is in the foreground, who is in the background, who stands, who sits?
  2. What relationship between settlers and Native people does it suggest? It was painted almost three centuries after the event: can we trust it?
  3. Read the key document and list the Native nations it names.
  4. Summary: the history of the English colonies starts on land that already had its peoples, its names and its rules.

Exercise

Match each Native nation with the region where the English settled: Powhatan; Wampanoag; Lenape. Regions: Pennsylvania and the Delaware River; Virginia; Plymouth and Cape Cod.
Answer keyPowhatan: Virginia. Wampanoag: Plymouth and Cape Cod. Lenape: Pennsylvania and the Delaware River.

Gap-fill worksheet

Word bank: colony, homelands, Wampanoag, painting, settlers

  1. A ______ is a settlement ruled by a distant country.
  2. The colonies were founded on the ______ of Native nations.
  3. The English settled at Patuxet, on the land of the ______.
  4. Ferris's ______ was made almost three centuries after 1621.
  5. The ______ came from England.
Answer key
  1. colony
  2. homelands
  3. Wampanoag
  4. painting
  5. settlers

Homework

Write six lines describing the Ferris painting, then two lines explaining what it leaves out.
Answer keyModel answer: In the foreground, settlers serve food at a long table while Native men sit on the ground. The scene looks calm and friendly. It was painted around 1912. It leaves out the epidemics, the land question and the point of view of the Wampanoag.

Levels

LevelAdjustment
PremièreGuided description with five prompts.
TerminaleAdd modals of deduction: it may have been painted to...
C1/C2 extensionAnalyse the painting as a construction of national memory (Art et pouvoir).
Bac proDescribe the picture orally in pairs.