ADDITIONAL MODEL · WEEK 8 · CHAPTER 2
Why was farmland more than empty space in the struggle over New England?
This model develops one economic factor in New England. For Week 8, compare it with Virginia and investigate the ideas people used to support their choices.
The model paragraph
New England farmland was a source of community survival already shaped by Native work, which made the best fields valuable to both their owners and arriving colonists. Native agriculture, the organized cultivation of crops, supplied much more than one seasonal harvest. Takaki describes Native farmers: “They grew corn, beans, and pumpkins, and they planted groves of chestnut and hickory trees to supply their communities with nuts” (YPT 35). This says that Native communities grew several foods and planted trees that would also feed them. It shows the planning required to cultivate a landscape over time; the resulting resources did not appear without human work. However, the same region offered limited room for additional farms. New England, a hilly and rocky region, had relatively little productive farmland. Takaki writes, “Less than 20 percent of the area in the English colonies was good for farming—and the Indians already occupied the best areas” (YPT 35). This says that the most useful farming areas were limited and already inhabited. It shows why new settlers’ demand for fields put pressure on places that sustained existing communities. This connects to Key Idea 1: Economic forces drive history. The combination of agricultural value and scarcity helps explain the conflict over specific land. Because those fields supported Native food supplies, colonial expansion involved taking control of someone else’s livelihood, not merely occupying unused space.
1 POINT TO NAME IT · 1 POINT TO EXPLAIN IT
How this model earns its key idea points
Gist
People make choices to get land, money, and the things they need. Those choices can change other people’s lives.
Check your understanding
Academic definition
Economic interests shape historical change when people use power to control resources, organize labor, and distribute wealth. Explain the decisions connecting an economic goal to its consequences.
Check your understanding
Elaboration
- Name the idea
- Key Idea 1: Economic forces drive history
- Point to the evidence
- Native communities grow crops and plant trees. Only a small part of the region is suitable for farming, and Native people already occupy its best areas (YPT 35).
- Explain how it works
- Native work made particular places productive. A limited supply of good farmland meant that colonial demand focused on resources already sustaining Native communities.
- Make the connection explicit
- Show why a specific resource mattered to each group. Economic pressure helps explain the conflict; it does not justify taking the resource from its existing owners.
Check your understanding: explain how this model’s evidence shows its key idea without looking at the explanation above.
Compare your explanation
Native work made particular places productive. A limited supply of good farmland meant that colonial demand focused on resources already sustaining Native communities.
How the argument builds
Follow what each move adds to the answer. Then map your own paragraph in your notebook.
- Answer the practice question
Farmland represents earlier work and an existing source of survival.
- First evidence
Native communities grow crops and plant food-producing trees.
- Explain the investment
Planning and work make the land valuable over time.
- Second evidence
Good farmland is scarce and its best areas are already occupied.
- Connect the key idea
The value and scarcity of farmland focus colonial pressure on Native resources.
- Develop the consequence
Taking fields transfers control of a community’s livelihood.
How this practice model meets the 10-point rubric
| Requirement | What the model does | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Four practice words | All four practice words appear in complete sentences. These stand in for the four assigned Words of the Day for this exercise. | 2/2 |
| Two appositives | Two noun phrases between commas rename the nouns immediately before them. | 2/2 |
| Two quotations, explained and analyzed | Two exact YPT quotations have page citations; each is followed by what it says and what it shows. | 2/2 |
| Key idea named and explained | The paragraph names one course idea and explains the specific process connecting its evidence to that idea. | 2/2 |
| Development | The argument moves from an answer through two pieces of evidence to an explained consequence; each move develops the practice question. | 2/2 |
The four practice words stand in for assigned Words of the Day in this example. Development is the quality row: follow how each sentence moves this argument forward.
Read the full rubric →Build your own sentences · Chapter 2
Choose the relationship your argument needs. These are sentence models to study; your paragraph should use your own reasoning and your assigned four words of the day.
Appositives · rename a noun precisely
A noun phrase between commas renames the noun before it. It adds useful information, not another sentence. You need two.
Check: remove the phrase between the commas. The main sentence should still work.
Queen Elizabeth I, the English monarch who encouraged the colonization of Ireland, sent soldiers into a Catholic country her advisers viewed as a potential threat.
YPT 27–28Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an English soldier involved in the conquest of Ireland, used displays of severed heads to intimidate people approaching his battlefield tent.
YPT 27–29The Powhatan, Native farmers living in the homeland surrounding Jamestown, first helped starving English settlers before demands for food, labor, and land intensified conflict.
YPT 31–33The Pequot, one of New England’s Native farming peoples, suffered mass killing as English settlement and competition for land developed into destructive war.
YPT 35–36Mary Rowlandson, an English woman held captive by the Narragansett, described kindness that complicated the dehumanizing stereotypes she also repeated in her account.
YPT 37–38Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, promised Native peoples security while proposing financial arrangements that would make retaining their land more difficult.
YPT 40–41
The nine connectors · choose a relationship
But
Adds a contrast.
English promoters promised education and Christianity for Native peoples, but colonial demands for land and labor helped turn those promises into campaigns of destruction.
YPT 30–34So
Shows a result.
Tobacco profits encouraged Virginia colonists to expand their farms, so they sought Powhatan fields that Native communities had already cleared and cultivated.
YPT 31 YPT 33Because
Gives a reason.
England’s conquest of Ireland became a model for colonization because it combined unequal laws, land seizure, and a hierarchy that ranked the English above conquered peoples.
YPT 27–30If
Names a condition.
If we compare English actions in Ireland and North America, we can trace how familiar claims of superiority helped justify control over different peoples.
YPT 27–30Unless
Means if not.
We cannot explain the shift toward colonial destruction unless we connect claims about Native inferiority with the settlers’ growing demands for farms, food, and labor.
YPT 30–33 YPT 35–36When
Means if with expectation.
When the English compared Native Americans to the Irish, they transferred an existing judgment of inferiority onto peoples whose societies they barely understood.
YPT 29–30Despite
Takes a noun phrase.
Despite clear evidence of Native farming in New England, English settlers claimed that Native people did not work the land and therefore did not deserve it.
YPT 35–36Although
Takes a subject and a verb.
Although Mary Rowlandson repeated hostile stereotypes of Native people, her descriptions of their kindness also supplied evidence that could challenge English justifications for conquest.
YPT 37–38However
Starts a new sentence.
Jefferson promised to respect Native land rights. However, his plan to expand credit purchases would create debts intended to pressure Native people into surrendering land.
YPT 40–41After despite, use a noun phrase. After although, use a subject and a verb. In your rubric’s pattern, put a period before however and a comma after it. The contrast must make sense in context.