Teacher's Guide for COBBLESTONE ^® Squanto and Samoset

• Research the meaning of symbiosis. Discuss whether the relationship between English and Native Americans in the early part of the seventeenth century was symbiotic. If so, why? If not, why not?
• Historians sometimes play "what if" history to help understand historical events. Discuss the following:
  • What if Squanto and Samoset had been unwilling to assist the Pilgrims?
  • What if disease had not dramatically reduced the Native American population in the years before the Pilgrim's landing?
• In your opinion, is Thanksgiving a day of thanks or a day of mourning? How did two such different views arise? Why was the Native view silent for so long?

1. Write a diary entry that an English youth might have written upon first reaching the New World.
2. Write a diary entry that a Native American youth might have written after first seeing a European ship and a group of Englishmen exploring the land.
3. Write a newspaper article from the perspective of a London newspaper about the Pilgrim's first encounter with the Native Americans.
   • Now, write an account from the Native American perspective.
   • Can each account be different but still accurate?
   • Why or why not?

Read "Settling in at Plymouth" and "Trouble in Wessaguscus." Do a side-by-side comparison between the two events that explains why they turned out so differently.

One myth some Europeans carried with them to the New World was the existence of a City of Gold. Can you think of other myths in American history? All cultures have myths. Why are they created? Why do they last so long?

From the time the Pilgrims landed, the English and Native Americans would live side by side for over 50 years before a large-scale war broke out between the two sides. Write an essay which highlights the factors that would promote peace, and the clues that indicated the peace would not last. Do you think war between the two sides was inevitable?

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Updated: 11/21/09 01:19 am
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