Week 5 / 7.15.23
Nahom Ayalew, Jesse Koblin, Kalea Ramsey, Bernard Wongibe
Background
Our project focuses on ‘The Jasper Parrish Papers’ from the Vassar College Digital Collections. Jasper Parrish was a United States Agent and Interpreter for the Iroquois in the late 18th to early 19th centuries – a hostile time filled with conflicts and negotiations. He was involved in many interactions between the Native American tribes and the United States government. He left behind an extensive collection of historical documents from his life and travels, which reveals not only his journey and experiences but also the broader historical landscape of that time. They are the hidden narratives from both sides of a hostile power struggle that has long-lasting impacts, and by analyzing them, we can contribute to a more comprehensive historical perspective of this critical period.
Research Question
What was Jasper Parrish’s role in the power struggle between the Native American Tribes and the United States government? Which tribes did he interact with, and who were the tribes’ representatives? Was Parrish a mediator? Was he an impartial interpreter or was he inclined to a side? Parrish was kidnapped and raised by the Munsee for seven years, and by the time he returned to his own family, he had lost his knowledge of English – did his upbringing affect his perspective and decision-making as an adult?
Sources
The Jasper Parrish Papers contains letters, addresses, legal papers, agreements, deeds, receipts, invoices, notes, and accounts. There are also military and government records related to the War of 1812 and related payment agreements to the Indians. Additionally, there are two biographical narratives of Jasper Parrish.
Methods
Many of the sources mentioned above are digitized images of handwritten texts, so it is our goal to figure out how to transcribe them to perform textual analysis and mapping. We plan to utilize Voyant as an exploratory data analysis tool to find initial trends, clean the collected textual data in OpenRefine, and utilize explanatory data analysis sites such as Recogito to identify what geographic sites Parrish visited on his travels. We acknowledge that Parrish interacted with Native American peoples that have a history on this land predating American influence; we as a team will study the cultures of these tribes to gain a historical sensitivity and reflexivity regarding this subject matter.
Presentation
We plan to plot the timeline and locations of Parrish’s travel on an online, interactive map, which will be an example of thick mapping that reflects experiences, perspectives, and changes by time on top of geography. Using Parrish’s travel points as a structure, we plan to embed original handwritten documents, data visualizations, and relevant descriptions to points on the map.
Timeline
To efficiently and effectively complete this project while doing justice to the incredible experience of Jasper Parrish and the Native peoples he contacted, our team plans to follow the schedule in the weekly project outline. Week 6 will consist of a thorough reading and citation of the texts we plan to use. Week 7 will focus on cleaning and refining the data we’ve collected, and subsequently performing exploratory and explanatory visualizations of our preliminary data using the tools we’ve experimented with throughout the course. During Week 8 we will gather our findings thus far, including text analysis, clean data, and insights from data visualizations, and summarize it into a formal report answering our research question. This schedule will allow our team ample time to fully explore the specific facets of the texts and data while also keeping pace and completing the project in a timely manner.
Teamwork
Each of us will adopt roles specific to our interests and skillsets, although these will be loose roles; we plan to coordinate and share responsibilities to gain a well-rounded understanding of our subject matter. Strictly staying within one capacity of the project or another will limit our creative potentials and disencourage exploration; a holistic approach is necessary to empathetically practice social justice methodology, and we plan to apply these practices in our work.
Our team will work asynchronously in their preferred working environments and communicate textually, sharing datasets and research components over our Slack channel. The bulk of the project will be coordinated in this manner; we plan to delegate specific tasks for us to pursue individually (dividing attention among letters, legal documents, business transactions, military and government records), and reconvening with our findings at scheduled meetings. These would be synchronous and take place over Zoom, allowing for immediate communication and a collaborative team spirit. Zoom meetings will be essential Week 8 to synthesize our findings into a cohesive final product, as well as in Week 6 to get to know one another better coordinate major tasks.
Help
In terms of skills, we need to figure out a good way to accurately transcribe handwritten documents, so we could get access to the texts we need to perform textual analysis and discover all the locations mentioned in the Parrish papers.
