Sample: TILT Assignment Example

Document Duel

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Welcome to your first Document Duel assignment! 

The purpose of this assignment is to 

  • Analyze two primary sources. 
  • Create an original piece of work analyzing these sources to construct your own perspective of the event. 

The skills you will develop in this assignment are 

  1. How to read and interact with primary historical sources.
  2. How to critically analyze competing accounts of the same event. 
  3. How to strengthen your critical-thinking skills. 

These skills are not only helpful in the field of history but in all parts of life. To navigate today’s information-heavy landscape, individuals need to consume media through a critical lens, and the skills that are needed to properly interrogate primary source documents are the same skills that will help you consume and analyze contemporary media. 

Knowledge  

Now that you know what you will gain from this assignment, why should it matter to you? Working with and analyzing historical primary sources will teach you to recognize how a point of view and a bias affect evidence, what contradictions and other limitations exist within a given source, and to what extent sources are reliable. As you do these projects, you will develop stronger analytical and critical thinking skills, approach primary sources with greater confidence, and understand how historians use such sources to construct their interpretations of the past.

Task

For each Document Duel project, I will provide you with two primary source documents. Both represent actual evidence from the past, but they usually take opposing views of an issue or an event. This is useful because historians often need to weigh conflicting pieces of evidence, and you get to see that in action. Follow the steps below to complete your assignment.

  1. Read the selected textbook excerpt to help you gain the historical context of the primary source documents.
  2. Read both primary source documents. 
  3. In an essay of more than 2 pages but less than 4 pages you will discuss:
    1. how these two primary sources support each other and/or contradict each other. 
    2. Where they agree/disagree.
    3. Finally you will provide one paragraph at the end of the essay that details whether or not you think which document was a more honest account or whether you think they were equally honest in their assessment of the historical event. 

Note! This essay is not an opinion piece, but rather a brief work of historical analysis. You must examine both documents with an open mind and analyze the account in their historical context before drawing the conclusion for your final paragraph. 

Paper Guidelines:

Criteria for Success

Refer to the rubric for this assignment to understand what a quality submission will look like. You can also reference this example from a previous student to get some inspiration. 


The following is the excerpt from your course textbook. Do not quote the entire excerpt in your paper, you may only quote up to 4 single sentences, not in a row, from this excerpt: 

OpenStax U.S. History 3.1

"Farther west, the Spanish in Mexico, intent on expanding their empire, looked north to the land of the Pueblo Indians. Under orders from King Philip II, Juan de Oñate explored the American southwest for Spain in the late 1590s. The Spanish hoped that what we know as New Mexico would yield gold and silver, but the land produced little of value to them. In 1610, Spanish settlers established themselves at Santa Fe—originally named La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís, or “Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi”—where many Pueblo villages were located. Santa Fe became the capital of the Kingdom of New Mexico, an outpost of the larger Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain, which had its headquarters in Mexico City.

As they had in other Spanish colonies, Franciscan missionaries labored to bring about a spiritual conquest by converting the Pueblo to Catholicism. At first, the Pueblo adopted the parts of Catholicism that dovetailed with their own long-standing view of the world. However, Spanish priests insisted that natives discard their old ways entirely and angered the Pueblo by focusing on the young, drawing them away from their parents. This deep insult, combined with an extended period of drought and increased attacks by local Apache and Navajo in the 1670s—troubles that the Pueblo came to believe were linked to the Spanish presence—moved the Pueblo to push the Spanish and their religion from the area. Pueblo leader Popé demanded a return to native ways so the hardships his people faced would end. To him and to thousands of others, it seemed obvious that “when Jesus came, the Corn Mothers went away.” The expulsion of the Spanish would bring a return to prosperity and a pure, native way of life.

In 1680, the Pueblo launched a coordinated rebellion against the Spanish. The Pueblo Revolt killed over four hundred Spaniards and drove the rest of the settlers, perhaps as many as two thousand, south toward Mexico. However, as droughts and attacks by rival tribes continued, the Spanish sensed an opportunity to regain their foothold. In 1692, they returned and reasserted their control of the area. Some of the Spanish explained the Pueblo success in 1680 as the work of the Devil. Satan, they believed, had stirred up the Pueblo to take arms against God’s chosen people—the Spanish—but the Spanish, and their God, had prevailed in the end."

The primary cause of the Pueblo Revolt was probably the attempt by the Spanish to destroy the religion of the Puebloans, banning traditional dances and religious icons such as these kachina dolls.