Primary Source Essay

The Primary Source Essay assignment (20%)

Word count expectation: 1,500 words

Late assignments will be docked (3) three marks for each day they are late

The essay will be 1,500 words in length and will examine how European missionaries operated during the seventeenth century.

For this assignment you will be working a with a set of Primary Sources and a set of Secondary Sources.

For your thesis consider these questions: How did European missionaries and European pathogens (diseases) combine to upset the lives of Indigenous people in the Seventeenth century? How did Indigenous people resist the disruptions they were encountering?

Rationale

Historians write about the past using two types of evidence: primary evidence and secondary evidence.  Primary evidence (or “primary sources”) includes any work that was written, drawn, or produced by an eyewitness to an historical event or episode. The category can embrace a wide variety of different types of works: diaries, letters, financial records, newspaper accounts, literary works, books, legal documents, artwork and even material culture.

Secondary sources are those which have been written as a conscious reflection on a historical event or process. They are generally composed some time after the event they seek to explain or describe. Thus, secondary works encompass anything written by an amateur or professional historian. Secondary works can include: books and scholarly journal articles, monographs, etc.

The goal of this assignment is to allow you to work with a set of primary documents and see how those documents can give you access to both information about the past and the attitudes of people in the past. The secondary sources are intended to help you both understand and challenge the primary sources you are reading.

You will be working with two primary sources and two secondary sources for this assignment.

Primary sources:

“Document 1: The Jesuit Relations: Of Various Obstacles and Difficulties Encountered,” in Open History Seminar: Canadian History, ed. Sean Kheraj and Thomas Peace. PressBooks, 2017.

“Document 2: Marie de l’Incarnation: Letter 32: To one of the Good Brothers,” in Open History Seminar: Canadian History, ed. Sean Kheraj and Thomas Peace. PressBooks, 2017.

The Primary Sources can both be found in Sean Kheraj and Thomas Peace, Open History Seminar: Canadian History, PressBooks, 2017. https://openhistoryseminar.com I have also uploaded them to our Moodle Page as PDFs.

Secondary Sources:

Blackburn, Carole. “Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632-1650.” McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. (Chapter 5: Conversion and Conquest)

Labelle, Kathryn Magee. Dispersed but Not Destroyed a History of the Seventeenth-Century Wendat People. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013. (Chapter 1: Disease and Diplomacy

The Loss of Leadership and Life in Wendake)

The first half of your essay should work with the primary sources directly. I would recommend citing at least two or three direct quotes from the primary sources to illustrate what we can learn from those sources and to demonstrate the attitudes of the authors. The second half of the essay should then work with the secondary sources to put that information into context.

When looking at the Primary Sources consider:

How successful were early efforts to convert Indigenous people to Christianity? How did Christian missionaries change, or attempt to change, the relationship between Indigenous people and their home communities? How did the impact of the European disease outbreaks influence the missionary effort?

When looking at the secondary sources consider:

How successful were Christian Missionaries at converting Indigenous people? What challenges did they face? Why did Indigenous people accept missionaries into their communities when it was apparent that they were bring potentially fatal diseases with them?

Style Guidelines:

1. The essay should be about 1500 words (about 6 double-spaced pages) in length.

• Use 12-point font, double-spacing, with one-inch margins.

• You must use Chicago style citation in this assignment (footnotes or endnotes). I have suggestions below but you can also find information at  Chicago Manual of Style guidelines can also be found online at: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

• In addition to footnotes, your paper should include a title page and bibliography.  The title page should include only the following elements. 1) the title of your paper, 2) your name, 3) the course number and section, 4) the date of submission. The title should be centered and placed about one third of the way down from the top of the page.  The other information should be listed in the bottom right-hand corner of the page.

A bibliography is a list of all the items you used in preparing your essay.  It is placed at the end of your paper. The works should be listed in alphabetical order according to the authors’ last name. In this case you should four different sources listed in your bibliography.

You should number your pages, beginning with the first page of text (i.e., the title page should not be numbered).

NOTE: When handing in your assignment be sure to include your name in the file’s name.

Grading: Your essay will be graded based on the following criteria:

A clear thesis statement in your introduction

Well-structured essay that conveys your argument

Use and interpretation of the primary documents

Clarity of writing throughout

Proper citation and style

(Note: without citation I cannot give you credit for your use and interpretation of the primary documents because I will not have proof that you used them.)

Format

The essay should develop a main argument, and should include an introduction, a clear thesis statement, a “body,” and a conclusion. Students will be evaluated on the quality of their interpretations; on the thoroughness of their analyses; and on the clarity of their writing. Your theses, arguments and conclusions will be based on evidence derived from the sources. 

Citation

In order to prove that your claims stem from the text (and that you haven’t misread them or invented claims that lack a solid evidentiary basis), you must provide citations for your evidence (i.e., footnotes or endnotes). 

On average, your paper should have two to three citations per page of text.

Your footnotes should conform to Chicago Style Citation. 

For the first reference, you should provide a footnote/endnote that contains all the necessary bibliographic information that a reader might need to find the text.  It should be arranged like this:

1. “Document 1: The Jesuit Relations: Of Various Obstacles and Difficulties Encountered,” in Open History Seminar: Canadian History, ed. Sean Kheraj and Thomas Peace. PressBooks, 2017. https://openhistoryseminar.com (If the source has a page number that will go here.)_

The page number where the material being cited appears on.

Subsequent footnotes of the same source:

2. “Document 1: The Jesuit Relations,” Open History Seminar. (If the source has a page number that will go here.)

Bibliographic entry:

Document 1: The Jesuit Relations: Of Various Obstacles and Difficulties Encountered.” In Open History Seminar: Canadian History, ed. Sean Kheraj and Thomas Peace. PressBooks, 2017. https://openhistoryseminar.com

Secondary source example:

1. Carole Blackburn, “Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632-1650,” (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000) 100.<—The page number where the material being cited appears on

Subsequent references:

2. Blackburn, “Harvest of Souls,” 90.<—The page number where the material being cited appears on

Bibliographic entries will look like this:

Blackburn, Carole. “Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632-1650.” McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000.

Additional Information and tips

Your document study will follow the format of an essay and any good essay should have the following ingredients:

An argument:

An excellent research paper is more than just a collection of details and facts. You’re constructing a clear argument that answers a research question. You might be agreeing with the question, disagreeing, or even arguing that answering yes or no is too simplistic, but in all cases, you are constructing an argument supported by evidence and information that is supplied through your sources.

Clear introduction/thesis statement:

A clear and concise thesis statement is your summary of what your essay is going to prove. You should put it in your introduction. That way the reader knows exactly where the essay is headed.

Essay body:

You should build your argument step by step. Use your paragraphs to frame each point of your argument. There should be a logical and clear flow to your essay. There is no set number of paragraphs that you should be using but generally short concise paragraphs are better than paragraphs that stretch on for a page or more.

Conclusion:

You can use your conclusion to summarize what your essay has proven and why you think it’s important. But remember, don’t wait until the end to tell me what you’re going to prove; state that right at the beginning in the introduction.

Working with sources:

Working with primary sources is slow methodical work. You need to read through a primary source carefully to get a feel for what it is saying and to get a sense of its author’s opinion or intention. And remember, you are working with documents that capture people’s opinions, biases, and prejudices.

May I use “I”?

In the olden days students were told never to use “I” in an essay; the rules have loosened and you may in this class. But use the first person judiciously. Save it for when you really are weighing in and making a judgment on the information you’re working with.