Where does time go!?! It is our last regular blog post of the term! It felt like yesterday that we were doing this for the first time! We have a couple more classes where we will cover some more pretty cool stuff. I am excited to read General Grant’s “Peace Policy” which is listed as a reading for Wednesday but we will save that for another day. This week, we focused mainly on Manifest Destiny, which is another important topic to cover. In my schooling, we never talked about the perspective of Natives when talking about Manifest Destiny. It was always focused on the white people from the East who were looking to restart their lives in the West. There is always something about the Gold Rush as a part of these lessons as well as people moving through Native territory that was established in present-day Oklahoma. One of my favorite people from this era of history is Bass Reaves, an African American US Marshal who resided in Oklahoma. Something that made him super special and different than other lawmen is that he understood multiple native languages and communicated well with them. Although we didn’t talk about Reeves, I always think he is worth mentioning when I talk about this time period in American history. Many historians believe I am one of them, that The Lone Ranger was actually based on the life of Reeves, but Hollywood didn’t want to cast a black man to play the role. Tonto, the sidekick in the show, was a Native American man, who was one of Reeve’s close friends. I always find the story of Reeves to be fascinating and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Getting back on topic, the paintings we looked at for Monday were my favorite talking point for the week. American Progress is one of the more famous paintings of the era, which depicts Columbia going west into new territory. There is detail throughout the painting that depicts a lack of respect for different populations of Native Americans as well as many kinds of animals. Buffalo are fleeing, as well as a bear and a deer, which were the livelihood of native people. The native’s responded to this painting years later, which I thought was really cool. I had never seen the response before and I am glad they feel they can advocate for themselves and how much this part of American history impacted their lives and culture. Next week, we are writing a longer blog post for our final, which I am excited about! See you then!