RC Question 15 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: The fishing practice mentioned in the second…
DISCUSSION: Fishing is mentioned in lines 28-33. Whenever a question alludes to a specific part of the passage, you should reread it, even if the question doesn’t give the line reference.
Usually, you can predict the answer to the question once you’ve reread it. That lets you avoid wasting time with the answers.
It sounds like the Haudenosaune anglers used the beads to ask the Gods for success in fishing. This is mentioned as an example of the variety of early uses of Wampum.
Note that I got this right, but I didn’t pay much attention to the anglers when I first read the passage. I knew it was something I could figure if a question asked about that detail – I’d reread it and pay attention only then. Which is exactly what happened.
___________
- The fishermen threw wampum in the river. That’s a religious practice, not an encoding of knowledge. You don’t put knowledge into something by throwing it into a river!
- The Europeans used wampum for money. But the author never said that this prevented the Haudenosaune’s other, traditional uses of wampum.
- The fishermen’s practice happened before the Haudenosaune confederacy. Paragraph two is describing traditional practices from before the confederacy’s formation. Notice the timeline words in lines 28-39: “legend indicates”, “later”, “however….the formation”
- The wampum didn’t have the story of the fisherman encoded into it. Historians must have learned of this fishing practice some other way.
- CORRECT. This matches. Wampum originally had religious significance, then only later became a tool to encode the constitution of the Haudenosaune confederacy. This fishing practice was an example of an earlier religious use of Wampum.
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I’m having trouble following the thought process for discrediting answer choice A, and justifying choice E. Not that I doubt the correct answer, more that I am experiencing difficulty coming to the same conclusion. The question asks what the fishing practice was offered as an instance of. To me, this means that it is being used as an example. The text corroborates this view stating in the sentence about the fishing practice “Legends indicate, for example…”. If we read earlier in the paragraph, it seems that it is offered as an example of the beads representing basic ideas. Religious in nature yes, but concepts and ideas to be sure . The early use of beads as encoders of knowledge also appears to be the main point of the paragraph, in which the fishing practice is offered as the oldest example.
The knowledge encoded in the beads with the fishing practice would not have been the action of throwing them in the river, but the reasoning behind that action and what the beads represent. The knowledge that the beads correlate to and represent, religious ideas and concepts, is what leads to this use. While I agree that this constitutes a more traditional use and represents a stage in wampum’s evolution, considering the textual context, intent of the paragraph, and actual use of the beads, it appears to be offered primarily as an instance of wampum being used to encode knowledge. Can you describe your thought process in a bit more detail, and possibly help me identify where my though process goes astray? This is getting a bit into the weeds I think, but I’m gunning for that Elle Woods Score!
Thanks for your comment! It’s great to see you’re closely reading the passage, and here’s further elaboration of why (A) is incorrect: (A) suggests that the fishing practice itself is an example of a “type of knowledge” that was passed on via wampum. But, there’s nothing in the second paragraph that suggests that the fishing practice is a type of knowledge, and there’s also no discussion of an attempt to pass this practice on.
As the explanation points out, it seems to have been a spiritual practice that employed wampum to convey a message. So, it’s true that the wampum they used encoded something–in this case perhaps a plea to the spirits–but we’re asked about the function of the fishing practice, and not the wampum within the practice.