Title: Week 6 Overview and Inquiry
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 6 · September 28–October 2, 2026: Overland Migration, Death, and Environment

WEEK 6 · INQUIRY MODULE

Week 6: Overland Migration, Death, and Environment

How did migrants’ routes depend on Indigenous landscapes, family labor, and unequal exposure to risk?

Dates: September 28–October 2, 2026

Focus

- Overland trails and guidebooks
- Gender, family, and material life
- Disease, burial, and environmental limits

Before class

1. Read: American Yawp, chapter 12 selected sections.
2. Open and inspect the linked primary-source collection(s). Record one source, one context question, and one limitation.
3. Scholarship lens: Sarah Keyes, American Burial Ground (2023), selected excerpt.

Primary-source portals

- Library of Congress westward-expansion collections
- Oregon-California Trails Association educational resources

Tuesday/Thursday meeting plan

Date | Status | Plan
Tuesday, September 29 | Class | Route and risk mapping from trail diaries, material traces, and quantitative evidence.
Thursday, October 1 | Class | Family labor, gender, Indigenous homelands, disease, mortality, and Source Lab 2 transfer.

Source Reasoning Lab 2 due Friday, October 2.

After class

Deliverable: Source Reasoning Lab 2 and Reading & Reasoning Check 4.

- I can answer the weekly inquiry with a contestable claim.
- I can name at least two pieces of evidence and explain their limits.
- I can identify an interpretation that my evidence supports, complicates, or challenges.