Contact: mkohl@mt.gov

Resources and Suggestions

Of special interest to: High School Teachers

Re: Ideas for a stand-alone Montana history class

In January, I asked veteran high school Montana history teachers to share their suggestions for teaching a semester Montana history course. I got some great responses. 

Cynthia Wilondek (Big Fork) recommended using readings from The Last Best Place by William Kittridge to supplement a textbook. She's also taught the novels Winter in the Blood and Fool's Crow by James Welch, which she says are always a hit and work well for cross-curricular lesson plans. In addition, she's used Ellen Baumler's Beyond Spirit Tailings for a variety of themes, including geography, human settlement, and cultural norms, as well as an introduction to story-telling for another cross-curricular opportunity.

Bruce Wendt (retired from Billings) said he built his course "around a core idea—Montana as a place for migrants or 'the last best place.' I organized (and it was a semester) the class as a series of arrivals in the state from Native Americans to the beginnings of the 21^st century (mining, ranching and so on)." Among other texts, he used primary sources gathered in Not in Precious Metals Alone: A Manuscript History of Montana. He says he also tried to do as many hands-on projects as possible: "We built stuff—a full-sized dugout canoe, railroad tracks (literally in class), created a Butte bar in the room.  When a student did not believe stories about burning buffalo chips, a kid brought some in and we lit them on fire (outside). We had (real) horses in class. So, lots of projects..." He also used Montana Mosaic: Twentieth-Century People and Events, a twelve episode exploration of Montana in the twentieth century. 

Deb McLaughlin (Belgrade) generously offered to share her Google Drive folder of lesson plans and resources she uses when teaching the class. (I'm sure she'd share with other teachers as well.) 

I also put some thought into resources I might use to teach a high school Montana history class. Part of me thinks a high school class should focus on twentieth and twenty-first century Montana, since students since most Montana history classes in elementary and middle school focus on the nineteenth. But, if you are going to start at the very beginning, here are some resources I'd recommend in vaguely chronological order:

• Project Archaeology: Investigating the First Peoples, the Clovis Child Burial examines new findings about the Anzick site near Wilsall, the oldest documented archaeological site in North America.
• Excerpts from Plenty Coups: Chief of the Crows and Pretty Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows, "as-told-to" autobiographies that describe life for the Crows in the 1850s. 
• Montana Fur Trade: Four Square Primary Source Lesson Plan created by Jana Mora of Great Falls (I might use her model of "jigsawing" sections of Montana: Stories of the Land while having students focus on read primary source material for other units as well.) 
• Girl from the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan (Part 1, about the gold rush, is digitized); see this handy study guide with lesson plan suggestions, written by Ruth Ferris and Cheryl Hughes. (Or maybe I'd skip the gold rush so I had time for more twentieth century material, especially if students already took Montana history in middle school.)
•  Letter from Chief Victor to Territorial Gov. Sidney Edgerton, 1865, Asking Edgerton to Enforce the 1855 Treaty  (one of my favorite primary sources)* and "Northern Plains Treaties: Is a Treaty Intended to Be Forever?" a lesson created by Julie Cajune and Tammy Elser for the National Museum of the American Indian. While talking about treaties, I'd probably bring it up to date with some articles on Herrara v Wyoming (which ruled that Crow hunting rights remain guaranteed on federal land in their traditional homelands)* or another recent Supreme Court case.
• I'd spend some time on the 1870 Marias Massacre, including debating whether Yellowstone National Park's Mount Doane, named for Lieutenant Augustus Doane, who served under Baker and boasted about his role in the massacre, should be renamed.
• I might use the Stanford History Education Group's lesson plan on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
• I'd absolutely spend time studying allotment, including using letters exchanged between Salish leader Sam Resurrection and Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs R. G. Valentine.*
• Like Bruce, I'd use the Montana Mosaic videos. I'd probably do a take on an assignment introduced to me by Phil Leonardi (Corvallis): have students look for falsehoods in one of the homesteading promotional brochures. (Email me if you want more on this.)
• I'd absolutely teach "Montana's Landless Indians and the Assimilation Era of Federal Indian Policy: A Case of Contradiction,"  created by Laura Ferguson. (Read more about it here.)*
• I would have my students conduct a county history project focused on World War I (or another topic).*
• We'd read Part 1 of Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana, 1936-1942, the best thing written about Montana and the Great Depression.*
• We'd spend some time on the 1972 Constitution (including watching the Montana Mosaic video)*
• We'd read Ed Dobb, “Pennies from Hell,” about the history of Butte and the legacy of open pit mining. This is a truly moving essay that I think absolutely every Montanan should read.*
• We'd end with Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things! Connecting Biography to Larger Social Themes Lesson Plan, which asks students to interview change makers in their own communities."*
• If time allowed, I'd also do another local history project of some kind--with students conducting a then and now rephotography project or a museum-school partnership of some kind--a project for which there is an authentic audience outside the classroom. 

*I know, I know, this list is TOO long. I've starred my favorite resources/lessons, the ones I'd have the hardest time giving up. 

P.S. The deadline to nominate a middle or high school Montana history teacher for the 33rd Montana Statehood Centennial Bell Award is March 31, 2022. The winner will receive a plaque and a $4,500 cash prize toward classroom materials, field trips, speakers and anything else that will enhance learning in their classroom.  Learn more here.  

Teaching Montana History is edited (and mostly written) by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Program Manager at the Montana Historical Society.