OPVL
Origins, Purpose, Values, Limitations
Buffalo Hunt, 1846
Origin:
• Who created it? Francis Parkman
• Who is the author? Francis Parkman
• When was it created? Summer of 1846
• When was it published? 1849
• Where was it published? USA
• Is there anything we know about the author that is pertinent to our evaluation? We know that he is a young well educated man fresh out of Harvard Law School. He thus most likely had little bias against Indians.
Purpose:
• Why does this document exist? It was his personal goal to write a journal about the lives of the Indians as well as the buffalo hunt.
•Why did the author create this piece of work? What is the intent? The author wanted people to know how Indians hunted the buffalo.
• Why did the author choose this particular format? During that time he could only use pencil and paper to write short journal entries. He was more interested in taking brief notes on how the Indians lived rather than writing a book.
• Who is the intended audience? Who was the author thinking would receive this? It doesn’t exactly say but maybe he was writing for Harvard University which he just graduated from or maybe he just wanted the general public to understand the life of the Indians.
• What does the document “say”? This document wants to show people Indian life and how people killed the buffalo.
• Can it tell you more than is on the surface? This is a very simple, factual account of the buffalo hunt.
Value:
• What can we tell about the author from the piece? The author is a city boy who never saw this kind of countryside perspective before this writing. We can see this in his witting style based on how he continually refers to the buffalo hunt as crazy.
• What can we tell about the time period from the piece? We can learn the period is sometime in the 19th century. For example, the use of old style rifles and horse riding.
• Under what circumstances was the piece created and how does the piece reflect those circumstances? I think he was very interested to see this perspective and so everything is very fresh to him since he never lived in the country with Indians before. Also, he may have never seen Indians because he lived in the city his whole life.
• Does the author represent a particular ‘side’ of a controversy or event? No, he just describes without judging the buffalo hunt.
• What can we tell about the author’s perspectives from the piece? He is simply an observer of the buffalo hunt and doesn’t seem to bring any opinions on morality.
Limitation:
• What part of the story can we NOT tell from this document? The author did not recount in depth how the Indians lived.
• How could we verify the content of the piece? We could compare this story to other similar personal accounts such as diaries and journals from the period.
• Does this piece inaccurately reflect anything about the time period? It doesn’t seem to because again the author has a good education and just wanted to write the facts.
