Grade 5 Lesson at a Glance: Chapter 14, Lesson 4

Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
America Will Be

Lesson at a Glance
Chapter 14, Lesson 4: The American Indians in Retreat (pp. 360-365)

The Big Idea
Framework Concept: Change and Conflict When settlers moved westward and the United States government failed to honor treaties, American Indians gradually lost their lands.

Remind students that for early pioneers, life on the new frontier, although challenging, offered a chance for a better life. Life for the American Indians, however, would become increasingly difficult as they lost more and more of their lands to the settlers and to the U.S. government. Ask students how they think the American Indians might have felt when settlers kept moving onto their lands with foreign ways of doing things.

Write the phrase Walk in Another Person's Shoes on the board. Ask students what they think it might have been like to be a Native American in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Lesson Outline
Use the Lesson Outline to preview the content of the lesson. You may wish to print it for your students as a guide during reading.

Check for Understanding

Divide the class into two groups. Tell one group that they will be looking at the westward movement of settlers from the point of view of American Indians. Tell the other group that they will be looking at the westward movement from the point of view of settlers. Have each group choose one or two spokespeople. Then have each spokesperson present his or her group's arguments as to why the westward movement is a positive or a negative event.
Ask students to draw an illustration that captures an example of what happened to the Indians between 1756 and 1830.

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