TRADE GOODS AND CURRENCY
TRANSPORTATION

Grade Level:
4^th-8^th

Standards Integration:
Minnesota:
Grades 4-5: Read, Listen, and View-Interpretation and Evaluation
4. Compare and contrast settings, ideas, or actions.
Social Studies-Historical Events
Describe how technology has changed the lives of people in the home, at work, in transportation, and communication.
Grade 6-8: Read, Listen, and View-Nonfiction
1. Demonstrate the ability to comprehend, interpret, and evaluate information from a variety of nonfiction formats in reading, listening, and viewing.
Inquiry and Research-Accessing Information
3. Determining how to record and organize information.

North Dakota:
Grades K-4: Social Studies-Nature and Scope of History
4.1.3 Understand the role of and use chronological order, sequences, and relationships to describe historical events and periods of history.
Language Arts-Students gather and organize information
1.4.2 Use simple organizational strategies
Grades 5-8: Social Studies-Nature and Scope of History
8.1.1 Understand the role of chronology and perspective in describing historical events and periods of history.
Language Arts-Students gather and organize information
1.8.5 Use new vocabulary from reading and listening.

Materials:
Piece of banner paper for each group of students, marker for each group.

Objectives:

Students will produce compare-and-contrast charts to draw conclusions about travel in the Red River Valley between 1700-1900.

Background:
The settlement of the Valley occurred rapidly as technological advancements in transportation methods created easier access to the region. Native peoples, who were hunters, gatherers, and subsistence farmers, lived in and traded from small mobile colonies. The introduction of the horse onto the Great Plains shifted their patterns of movement. The first European settlers in the region arrived on foot or by canoe.  Dog sled and large trader canoes moved goods and supplies. With the invention of the Red River cart, goods and people traversed the Valley and more permanent settlements were established. York boats, flatboats, and steamboats followed, allowing for different patterns of moving goods and people through the Valley. The railroad interrupted all these methods and patterns of trade by the 1880s. For more information, consult Rhonda R. Gilman, Carolyn Gilman, and Deborah M. Stultz, The Red River Trails (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1982).

Pre-Visit Activity:
Provide the students with a brief history of types of transportation used in the Red River Valley, including dogsled, canoe, oxcart, horse travois, York boat, flatboat, steamboat, and railroad. Ask the students to consider which method of travel they find preferable and ask them to explain how and why they came to their conclusions.

Post-Visit Activity:
Place the students into groups to compare and contrast methods of transportation. Ask one group to compare dogsled and canoe, another dogsled and oxcart, another oxcart and flatboat, another flatboat and steamboat, and another steamboat and railroad. Create other comparisons if necessary depending on the number of students. Use banner paper and markers to have the students list advantages and disadvantages for each type of transportation, explain similarities and differences, and so forth. Display the charts to the entire class and engage in a discussion about the different means of transportation.