Each week in Tracy Penny-Light’s class we had to read a few articles or journals and report our feelings on each reading. Here lies my reading log #1.

For this particular reading we had to read an article that discussed the basic concepts of history, how to write it and what it means for each community and culture. At the beginning of the semester, I had no idea how to write historically, or really understand history properly. This article gave me some tools to do so as well as some insight into how to understand and interpret historical documents, events and photos.

 

Reading Log #1

 

There are many main arguments of this reading. This reading is mainly talking about writing history. It discusses how to determine the validity of sources or people claiming to know about previous historical events or basically anything to do with history. It talks about how every community and generation has their own history and that it doesn’t matter the size of the community or how big of a generation was affected, all history matters. I think this article sheds light on different ways to determine if the history is valid that’s being discussed or if its false. Such as, making sure the main source who is providing us with the historical information is trustworthy, and has a good reputation for providing truthful historical information. I thought the argument was very convincing, especially when it talked about how all history matters, no matter how big of a community is it. Before when I thought about the word history, I thought of the big things that have happened in the past, such as, the holocaust or the confederation of Canada. I didn’t think of all the small events that happened in the past as history, when in reality it all matters and it is all part of Canadas history. The part of the reading that I thought supported the argument of the paper was when Belshaw discusses how in Western tradition, Herodotus was considered the “Father of History” yet he wasn’t alive when the historical writing in China occurred 500 years before he was born. I think this article was good however, as I was reading it I found it to be a bit choppy. For example, at first the author was talking about the writing of history, and how to verify sources that claim to know about history. Then the author went on to talk about the different generation and such. I found myself a bit confused about what I was reading.

 

This is my Reading Log #2. For this reading log I had to read two articles about the relationship between the Europeans and the First Nations People. It discussed how to Europeans forced the Natives into Christianity, and mistreated them. After I read these articles, I became very interested in this topic, and this was the article that inspired me to do my research project on this issue.

 

Reading Journal #2

There was one quite obvious main argument of this reason, and it was that the Europeans were trying to force the Indians to Christianity, and for the most part the Indians were resisting. I believe the main reason the article was written was to shed light on how big of an issue this really was. Many Indians were told that if they didn’t believe in the Europeans belief of Christianity then they would go to hell. As stated in the article, Indians who followed the Europeans beliefs and embraced Christianity were committing cultural suicide, and weren’t liked by many of the Indians who chose to stick with their own beliefs. I believe this article is very convincing of the fact that the Indians were mistreated. Many of the Europeans wouldn’t listen to the Indian leaders’ complaints about what was happening and brushed them off. The Indians were led to believe that because they weren’t following the Europeans beliefs that they were going to die of disease. When in reality the reason the Indians were dying of diseases was to do with the diseases and bacteria that the Europeans were bringing over. The evidence that the author used to make a convincing argument is when like said above, the Indians thought they were dying of diseases because they wouldn’t convert to Christianity. When the author states that by connecting baptism with the spread of smallpox, native Americans mounted a compelling indictment of the mission and its methods.

 

This is my third reading log, by this time I understood what Tracy was looking for in the reading logs more clearly and I can see my writing develop into better understanding of the material. In this particular reading log, the article I read was about the relationship between the Bethothuk and the European settlers, and the difficulties that they had to deal with and eventually overcome.

Reading Log #3

I think the main arguments of these readings were to make the reader understand that there are many opinions or ideas that people can have about a specific historic event. These articles are talking about the Beothuk people, and their relationships with the Europeans. This sheds great light on the Beothuk’s past, including why they relocated to the interior and how they related to the Europeans. The articles talk about how some people’s opinions vary in what actually happened in history. Such as, why the Beothuk people didn’t have a relationship with the Europeans. Some say its to do with their different economic objectives and the failure to set up a trading system. Others argue that its to do with ideology and cultural tradition, that it was the Beothuk’s lack of interest in trading that was the cause of no relationship. The author used these examples as evidence to show the two different perspectives on what may have really happened between the two groups. This also sheds light on what other Aboriginal community’s relationship with Europeans in other time periods may have or may have not been like. I wonder about those relationships, and how the other aboriginal groups reacted and related toward the Europeans. I also wonder if the two groups had of worked together, whether the Beothuk’s would have eventually gone extinct or not. I found it very interesting that the Beothuk’s didn’t want to start trading with the Europeans but became extremely violent, stealing and killing the Europeans and their possessions. I also wonder that if the main reason the Beothuk’s moved to the interior was mainly because of the Europeans, or whether as the article suggested it was due to the fact that the Beothuk’s were not really settled in the inlets and coves, and they weren’t fully utilizing the resources.

 

Reading Log number four, this wasn’t some of my best writing for my reading logs. I found the articles that we read a bit uninteresting, and therefore I struggled quite a bit when trying to understand the articles I read and reflect on them. Although I thought this particular article wasn’t very interesting, I do think the women’s roles in New France are very important to understand.

Reading log #4

The main argument of this reading is for readers to understand the importance and the roles that women played in New France. This article was written in hopes of people understanding how important women were in the era, and how the fur trade relied on them to succeed. Although there is not a lot of information on the women of this time, this article does shed light on the roles that women played, and the number of women entrepreneurs at this time. I found this article convincing in the fact that women were very important in this era, and I think its common for women’s roles to be overlooked or diminished as not very important. The author mentions that it was discovered that at some point in time the women and the girls of this era, started building canoes. I believe the men thought about women as the centre of the home, taking care of their children. When they discovered the women were good for more than just reproducing, this must have made the men at this time, see women in a bit of a different light. This provided evidence in the article of the importance of the women not only for the men, in a reproduction sense, but also for the fur trade. I think its very interesting learning about all the different women entrepreneurs in this time frame, and also how women weren’t defined by the men’s perceptions of what a woman “should be”, but they proved to everyone that they were capable of helping the men during this time.

 

This is my fifth reading log that I have written for my History 1120 class, and this as by far my favorite topic to write about. In this article, I read about the Acadians, and what life was life for them, the devastation they endured and how they overcame the devastation. I loved learning about the Acadians, and because of that I thought my reading log was much more interesting and detailed than some of the previous ones.

Reading Log # 5

The main point that authors are trying to portray in these articles, is that even though the Acadians went through many hardships, their resilience through these times are what resulted in the growth of the population of this group in years to come. I believe this article was written to inform us of all that happened since the Acadians formed. This group endured many hardships throughout the years and for the most part overcame most of them. This article was very well written and really gives us an inside look into what life was like for Acadians. For the most part before deportation, the Acadians were doing well. They had a social structure, the could expect to be able to raise a family and have grandchildren, they had plenty food, resources, etc. Their community really formed well and flourished. This sheds light onto how devastating the deportation of the Acadians must have been. They lost everything, their houses were burned to the ground, everything they had worked hard for was gone, and worst of all families were separated, never to see each other again. Many people died of the diseases they weren’t immune to or they died overseas when they were deported to France. The passage that supports this is when the author talks about how the Acadians were split up and sent to a number of different colonies. Despite the hardship of losing everything, the Acadians did not lose their sense of identity and eventually the group that left flourished. Since we have recently learned about the women of New France, I would be interested in learning about the Acadian women, and what life was like for them in comparison. I also wonder what the Acadian descendants that’s are alive today, what their take on the deportation of the Acadians is, and what stories have been told down to the other generations.