Georgia Ferrell

This week we discussed historically themed video/computer games and their educational potential. One of the games that my peers frequently mentioned was The Oregon Trail. Full disclosure: I never really played video or computer games as a kid. Although I’ve heard pop-cultural references to the game as an adult, I never played or heard of it as a kid. When I told my peers this, they were shocked and told me that it was a 90s kid right of passage to play the game. So naturally, when Dr. Mullen gave us an assigned us to play a historically themed game from the Internet archive and write a blog post about the educational value of the game and how it could be updated for modern game-play, I knew I had to play The Oregon Trail.

The Oregon Trail is a game that tests users ability to survive a trek on the Oregon Trail and arrive safely at the Willamette Valley in the Oregon territory in the 1840s. Depending on the occupation users chose, they are given a limited amount of money with which to purchase supplies such as oxen, wheels, clothing and food. Users also have to choose what month to begin their travels. They are warned that starting out too late or too early can lead to dangerous weather conditions. Users, along with their family of 4 or 5 people are then sent on their way. Throughout the game you learn about several obstacles that pioneers faced such as cholera, snake bites, taking wrong turns and drowning. You also pass several landmarks on your way such as Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, and Mount Hood. If you chose to read the guidebook, you can learn about these different places as well as some of the diseases and elements you may confront such as measles and droughts. You win the game if you survive and make it to the end.

Educationally, I belive that the main purpose of this game is to demonstrate how dangerous the Oregon trail was and how pioneers had to endure a lot of obstacles. Although I’m sure that this game was cutting edge at its time, I feel that historically it leaves much to be desired. Technically, you could get through the entire game without reading the guidebook or learning much about the trail or the era. At times this felt like more of a survival game that tested your common sense skills rather than a game that was supposed to teach you anything about history. The game also presents users with an uncomplicated narrative of westward expansion and its ramifications for Native Americans. The game also does not count for age or gender and how these factors could change a pioneer’s experience.

If this game were to be updated for the modern user I think that several changes could be made to make this game more educational. Why not add a trivia section that would test users knowledge of the history of westward expansion? Instead of just providing users with basic information about Fort Laramie and other landmarks, the game should provide people with a history of who emigrated via the trail and why, the history of Mormons and missionaries on the trail and in the Oregon territory, how the emigration experience was different for men and women, as well as a history of the federal government and settler treatment of the Indigenous population. Users should have to read and answer questions about this material in order to successfully finish the trail. For example when a member of the travel party gets cholera or measles, they should be presented with a reading about some aspect of westward expansion and they should have to answer questions correctly in order to cure the person. Their survival when crossing the rivers could also be dependent on answering these questions correctly.

In the game players are sometimes given the option of paying a local Indian to escort them across the river or help them navigate the trails. How about making players answer questions about settler/Indian relations in order to receive their help?

Over all, I thought the game was fun but I defiantly think there is room to make it even more educational.

This week’s readings and class discussion dealt with the issues historians must contend with when creating datasets for a database. Some of the problems that we mentioned in class is the ability of categories to dehumanize people, geographical creep, multiple names for a single person, and sorting sources with spelling discrepancies. As a historian whose main focus is Indigenous history, many of these issues are relevant to my own research. A lot of Native Americans that I study and write about have multiple names. For example, Red Jacket, the Seneca chief of the Wolf Clan from the 1790s through the 1830s had at least 3 names during his life time. He was know as Red Jacket by Americans, was called Otetiani during his childhood and was referred to as Sagoyewatha during adulthood by his fellow Seneca. In class, we learned that one way to address this problem is to use normalization when creating datasets. This allows us to set up the database so that anytime any of these names are referenced in the primary source, the dataset will recognize that they all refer to the same person. While I think normalization will be a helpful tool for me when creating databases, I don’t think that it addresses all the problems that can arise when studying Indigenous history. In order to normalize the data, you still have to choose one primary name that all the other names will refer back to. This can be problematic because it forces historians to choose which name to use as the main name. This risks privileging Euro-American names over Indigenous ones.

The problem of multiple names extends to other aspects of studying Native American History. Battles, places, and events can also have multiple names and historians must still choose which name to privilege when creating a dataset even if they use normalization. Also, some sources created by non-Natives such as newspapers, personal letters, and government records might refer to groups of specific Native peoples as simply “the Indians”. This can make it hard to determine exactly who “the Indians” are and what band, tribe, nation or clan they belong to. One way to try to overcome this dilemma is to once again, try to normalize the data and look at other primary sources related to the same historical event to if they are more specific.

In class we also discussed the potential for databases to dehumanize people. For example, when looking a statistical data for wars or massacres, historians can be talking about a group of people without ever knowing their names or their personal stories. I think that when using statistical data about actual people, it is important to also try to give a face or voice to these figures by adding primary sources that offer insight into their lives. For Example, if I were to include a list of Arapaho casualties from the Sand Creek massacre, I would also try to include letters or newspaper articles about the massacre its victims to add context.

We also talked about how binary categories such as race or gender can exclude or misrepresent people. For example, for years Virginia’s census records had no category for Native Americans and lumped all Natives regardless of their self-identification as being “colored”. This can make it hard to figure out how many native peoples lived in a location at any given time. While, you can sometimes look at peoples names to try to determine ethnicity or heritage, this is not reliable and can lead to misinformation.

Lumping people into binary gender categories while creating datasets can also prove problematic. When doing research on Native American women war participants, I discovered that some Native Americans self identified as a third gender or as being a “two-spirit” despite primary sources such as newspaper articles, referring to them as either male or female. If I came across this issue while creating a database, I think that I would add a gender, non-binary category.

Overall, this week’s class discussion has led me to think critically about the complexities of creating databases. It made me realize that even well intentioned historians can add to the silences in the historical narrative if they are not careful.