[Speech of surrender at tend of Nez Perce War, 5 Oct. 1877:] “I am tired of fighting…. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.
Chief Joseph, Quoted in Herbert J. Spinden, The Nez Perce Indians (1908)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Hiawatha. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and four comprehension questions about an actual person shrouded in myth.
When I reviewed this document just now, it looked, unsurprisingly, a bit crammed. It might be better revised as a full-page worksheet. If it happens that you are teaching Henry Wadsworth Longellow’s poem (i.e. the aforementioned myth, which in any case I rather doubt is much taught anywhere, anymore) about Hiawatha, “The Song of Hiawatha,” I imagine there might be a place for this worksheet.
Otherwise, I don’t know. I do know I can think of several English teachers I worked with who wouldn’t know either Longfellow or one of his most famous poems.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Anasazi Culture: North American civilization that developed from c.AD 100 to historic times, centering on the area where the boundaries of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah intersect. Anasazi (Navajo for “Ancient Ones”) is used to refer to the ancestors of contemporary Pueblo Indian peoples. Anasazi civilization is customarily divided into five periods: Basketmaker (AD 100-500), Modified Basketmaker (500-700), Developmental Pueblo (700-1050), Classic Pueblo (1050-1300), and Regressive Pueblo (1300-1550). As among present-day Pueblo peoples, religion was highly developed and centered on rites partly conducted in underground circular chambers called kivas. The best-known Anasazi ruins are the great cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde (Colorado) and Chaco Canyon (New Mexico).”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Navajos, who, as you may know, call themselves the Dine, pronounced dee-nay. The Navajo nation is the largest federally recognized First Nation tribe in the United States; they inhabit the largest reservation here.
This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences with five comprehension questions. Beware the final sentence, which is a doozy of a compound separated by two (!) semicolons. Because of my commitment to presenting excerpted text with complete fidelity to the original, I have not edited this final sentence. If you look at each clause, you’ll see that separating this is relatively easy, as in something like this:
Original: Today, they are known for their houses, called hogans, made of logs and earth; for their work as ranchers and shepherds; and for their skill in weaving distinctive blankets and fashioning turquoise and silver jewelry.
Revision: Today, they are known for their houses, called hogans, made of logs and earth. The Navajo also work as ranchers and shepherds. Their skill in weaving distinctive blankets and fashioning turquoise and silver jewelry is also well known.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Black Hawk: (1767-1838) Sauk Indian leader of a faction of Sauk and Fox whose defiance of government orders to vacate villages along the Rock River in Illinois resulted in the brief but tragic Black Hawk War of 1832. Long antagonistic to whites, Black Hawk, who had been driven into Iowa from his native Illinois in 1831, led his people back across the Mississippi the following year, only to face military opposition and eventual massacre, though he himself survived. The ruthlessness of the war so affected neighboring Indian groups that by 1837 most had fled to the far West, leaving most of the Northwest Territory to white settlers.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
The Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal for the third week of National Native American Heritage Month 2024 is this reading on Chicago along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Why Chicago? Well, because that it happens that the city sits on was once a rich homeland for a number of indigenous peoples on the shores of what we now call Lake Michigan.
Happily, it appears that there is a robust cultural and social community of indigenous peoples in Chicagoland, as the locals know this part of the United States. It also looks like the municipal government in the Second City conducts a rich observance of the month I am currently observing with this blog post.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“tepee: Tall tent dwelling used by the Plains Indians. It was suited to a nomadic life of buffalo hunting, being easily folded and dragged by a horse. It was made by stretching dressed and fitted buffalo skins over a skeleton of 20-30 wooden poles, all slanted in toward a central point and tied together near the top. A flap at the top allowed smoke to escape, and a flap at the bottom served as a doorway. The tepee became a popular symbol of all Indians, although the wigwam, wickiup, hogan, igloo, and longhouse were at least as important.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of an aborigine. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions.
This, as is often the case with The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, informs its user that the word aborigine means “the earliest known inhabitants of a region,” though the word is often used to refer to “the native hunting and gathering population of Australia.” In the English vernacular, that is probably the first association that comes to mind for most users of this word. If you use it to refer to the aboriginal peoples of Australia, then it is a proper noun and requires capitalization.
In general, the adjectives aboriginal and indigenous are roughly synonymous.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Totemism: Complex of ideas and practices based on the belief in kinship or mystical relationship between a group (or individual) and a natural object, such as an animal or a plant. The term derives from the Ojibwa word ototeman, signifying a blood relationship. A society exhibits totemism if it is divided into an apparently fixed number of clans, each of which has a specific relationship to an animate or inanimate species (totem). A totem many be a feared or respected hunted animal or an edible plant. Very commonly connected with origin myths and with instituted morality, the totem is almost always hedged about with taboos of avoidance or of strictly ritualized contact. Totem, taboo, and exogamy seem to be inextricably intertwined.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the concept of Manifest Destiny in United States history. This ideological oddity, which is really more of a theological than a political and social concept, held that Americans were destined, perhaps by the will of God, to expand across America to the Pacific Ocean.
In other words, basically a garbage idea that was used to justify and conduct a genocide against the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
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