Author: Angelo.A

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings 

• Thomas Jefferson is an essential figure in the decleration of independence and he talked of freedom. Even though the declaration of independence was the groundwork for the new country it did house a contridiction within it. During Thomas Jeffersons personal life with Sally Hemings, he then freed all of her children but he fought for equality for all but at the same time kept many slaves

Philis Wheatly

• The theme of freedom was frequent in her writings but contradictive to her situation. She was a slave and had been one ever since birth or she was born into slavery. She was a very good poet and published a collection of poetry. In her situation she was not free in the least bit like her poems but this brings attention to another contradiction ( kinda like a contradiction within a contradiction), the decleration of independences equality for all claim meanwhile she was a slave since birth a knew no other life.

Abigail Adams 

• Abigail Adams in the wife of John Adams and he was part of writing the Decleration of independance. Abigail sent a letter to Adam about considering women apart of the new world and for women to be equal and for him to not make the same mistakes as his ancestors. This turned out to be a contradiction because the Decleration of independence promised equality for all men but people were slaves and at the same time leaving out women and are denied some rights.

Documentary “The Pilgrims”  

• One thing I found interesting and that stood out to me was that William bradford and his crew didnt quite know how they would get there or when. They described their destination as heaven no matter how terrible the conditions were during the trip they were going to make it. I also found it interesting that they were almost like nomadic people and didnt reside in one place during this journey to heaven and viewed themselves as people from heaven or “citizens”. I found it interesting that they called their destination “Heaven” because they knew when they arrived in the new world they would be free and their religious beliefs would be free also.

Video: “400 years of Wampanoag history”

• One thing I found interesting about this video was The son of the father who was apart of the chiefs circle was with him whenever they had meetings even though most of the time he couldn’t understand what was going on. I found this interesting because the father wanted his son to have a little bit of expirience in the circle and wanted to teach him the ways of their life and show them what they do in their culture. One thing I did find sadening was when the women was talking about how they took away her husband. I find it sad how many kids lost their fathers due to the settlers.

Video: “History of the iroquois(five nations)”

-One thing I found interesting about this video is how all the 5 factions were able to co exist with eachother and not even spark conflict. The five factions being Mohawk, oneida, onondaga, cayuga, and the Seneca. They were able to coexist with each other because they joined together to create the Iroquois confederacy to keep the the peace between them and to solve any problems. Whats also facinating is that all of the tribes were independent of eachother and they were able to really build a civilization for themselves because of all the houses they built (long houses) and were able to share the hunting grounds and not get into conflict with each other. Something I found disturbing about this video is that it all came down when the American revolution came around and it pretty mush diminished any power the confederacy had.

Reading:  “Without Indigenous history, there is no US hostory”

-I find this article to be very truthfull in my opinion because no one is really American. I feel like the only americans are the indeans because they were the first people to live here and everybody is an immagrant. America is built on immigrants but the true founders or people who were living here were the native americans and I just found that point in the article/ title to be very interesting and kinda true. I also found it messed up that the federal government sized all of their land through 300 treaties.