What Could Have Been: The Whitman Massacre of 1847 and the Nez Perce Retreat of 1877

• Introduction
• Task
• Process
• Evaluation
• Conclusion
• Credits


• Teacher Page

by Karen Schotzko, Mount Si High School

Introduction

Welcome to the Wild Wild West.  Over the next few days you are going to be a time traveling detective.  You will go back in time to investigate what was really going on with the Native Americans, the missionaries and the settlers of the Pacific Northwest.  It will be your job to research one of the major historical events of the time period and figure out what actions or decisions led up to either the Whitman Massacre or the Nez Perce Retreat.  It will be your job to then carefully analyze the causal factors leading up to the incident.  Finally, you will need to make an educated guess as to what might have happened if the major causal factor had never existed.