Teachers' Guide

Funded by a grant from The John H. and H. Naomi Tomfohrde Foundation

Introduction

These lessons are designed to serve as examples of different ways you can use the 1704 website with students. The lessons cover a range of topics, with the goal of helping students to personalize their study of the people involved in the Raid. Students are asked to study the raid from a variety of perspectives, using both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources were written during the time being studied. Secondary sources were written after the fact, but the author may have studied a primary source to produce the secondary source. Because the text of the site is written at an adult level, most of the lessons are best used with upper elementary through high school students. One lesson, We Both Want to Use this Land, is specifically designed for younger elementary children. Although most of the lessons cover the topics of colonial and Native American U.S. history, two lessons, Making Tracks to Canada and A Map and Math Lesson with Jonathan Hoyt, involve geography, mapping, and math skills. At the end of each lesson is a list of resources for further information. We encourage teachers to incorporate their own resources as well.

The Teachers' Guide is divided into three sections: Getting Started, which briefly describes the content and special features of the 1704 site, Thematic Lessons, (below) which suggest themes and activities for the classroom, and Lessons from "Living on the Edge of Empire" an N.E.H. Landmarks workshop.

Thematic Lessons

1. We Both Want to Use This Land

By closely examining artwork that depicts homes, communities, and surrounding landscapes, students learn about differences between ideas of land use in both the Native and European cultures.
Level: Lower elementary

2. Making Tracks to Canada: Map Skills

Using mapping skills, students gain familiarity with New England geography by locating the route the captives took from Deerfield to Canada.
Level: Upper elementary

3. Through the Eyes of the Survivors

In this lesson, students imagine they are survivors of the 1704 raid on Deerfield and describe what happened to them before, during, and after the raid.
Level: Upper elementary & middle school

4. A Map & Math Lesson With Jonathan Hoyt

In this lesson, students take an interdisciplinary look at the life of Jonathan Hoyt by using their map and math skills to answer a number of questions about his life and captivity experience.
Level: Upper elementary & middle school

5. When Is a Fight a Massacre? The Bloody Brook Massacre and Falls Fight

Students study historical reports about these two attacks to look for evidence of bias in the reports.
Level: Upper elementary & middle school

6. Numbers that Don't Add Up

Students learn that historical references are not always accurate in their presentation of historical information.
Level: Upper elementary through high school

7. Should We Keep Him?

In this lesson, students examine Stephen Williams's captive experience both from his perspective and that of his captors.
Level: Middle & high school

8. Share and Share Alike?

Students explore differences between the modes of land use employed by the Native American and English colonial cultures.
Level: Middle & high school

9. Comparing Lives: The Assault on Peskeompskut from Two Different Perspectives

In this lesson, students compare two women's lives across cultures in times of unrest in Massachusetts in the late 17th century.
Level: Middle & high school

10. Kanenstenhawi And Stephen

In this lesson, students compare two different captive experiences within the same family.
Level: Middle & high school

11. Life on the Frontier

Using primary sources, students learn how to describe what life may have been like for Native Americans and English colonists on the “frontier” of New England.
Level: High school

Lessons from "Living on the Edge of Empire" Workshops

"Living on the Edge of Empire: Alliance, Conflict and Captivity in Colonial New England" were two National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks Workshops held in Deerfield, Massachusetts the summers of 2013 and 2016. Presented by the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, the workshops placed the 1704 Raid on Deerfield in the broader context of the history of colonial New England. The educators who participated in the workshop each produced a lesson, some of which are presented here. The workshop website is at: http://edge-empire.deerfield-ma.org/

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