The scavenger hunt through our school’s library was enlightening, as I realized just how many resources we have at our disposal. After hearing from other students in this class, it seems that SUNY Geneseo has a lot for us to work with, and the Native American history in the area seems to plentiful and easier to find than in other areas of the country.

I was really excited to learn how to use microfilm. We have around fifteen rolls of microfilm at our disposal, and lots of periodicals both local and national as well.

The process of finishing the scavenger hunt was a bit difficult, because the historical society in Geneseo has odd hours, and only certain reference librarians were able to show us certain things, so we initially were referred to another person, and then another! However we’ve now met and worked a bit with some of the librarians who will help us through this course, and we’ve also compiled a list of places we could actually visit in the area around Geneseo to explore some of the history further.

The scavenger hunt really got me excited for the work ahead!

The photo above is a hand-drawn map of the Cayuga reservation in the 1700s, and I just found it really interesting. I’m familiar with the present day map of this area, and to see what a large area the Cayuga had 200 years ago, raised a lot of questions, and got me interested in how the land was divided and taken from them.

Below are the results of our scavenger hunt:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rZ6jt9w_xyIyC8IY072qIgpCdtyIBN9Qx9lQxxqmj9o/edit?usp=sharing