[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
“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.
“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.
“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.
OK, for the second Friday of National Native American Month 2024, here is a reading on colonialism along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I assume I needn’t belabor the disaster that colonialism visited upon indigenous peoples all over the world–the literature on the subject is vast (but if you need a recommendation, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown is an excellent place to start, as is King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild).
I have, at times, been highly irritated and offended at the way colonialism is soft-pedaled in the high school social studies curriculum, particularly as, historically, I have tended to serve students predominantly with familial and ancestral roots in former colonies who know, with their families, of course, they are being fed (and then tested on, for what else is the point of learning something if you can’t pass a test on it?) a line of crap in their global studies courses.
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.
“Iroquoian languages: Family of about 16 North American Indian languages aboriginally spoken around the eastern Great Lakes and in parts of the Middle Atlantic states and the South. Aside from the languages of the Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, all originally spoken in New York, along with Tuscarora, originally spoken in North Carolina) and Cherokee (originally spoken in the southern Appalachians), the Iroquoian languages are extinct and with the exception of Huron and Wyandot, the extinct languages are poorly documented. Iroquoian languages are remarkable for their grammatical intricacy, Much of a sentence’s semantic content is bound around a verbal base, so a single very long word may constitute a fairly complex utterance.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Iriquois Confederacy or League of the Iroquois: Confederation of five (later six) Indian tribes across upper New York that in the 17th-18th centuries played a strategic role in the struggle between the French and British for supremacy in North America. The five original nations were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca; the Tuscarora joined in 1722. According to tradition, the confederacy was founded between 1570 and 1600 by Dekanawidah, born a Huron, carrying out the earlier ideas of Hiawatha, and Onondaga. Cemented mainly by their desire to stand together against invasion, the tribes united in a common council composed of 50 sachems; each tribe had one vote, and unanimity was the rule. At first the confederacy barely withstood attacks from the Huron and Mahican, but by 1628 the Mohawk had defeated the Mahican and established themselves as the region’s dominant tribe. When the Iroquois destroyed the Huron in 1648-50, they were attacked by the Huron’s French allies. During the American Revolution, the Oneida and Tuscarora sided with the Americans while the rest of the league, led by Joseph Brant, fought for the British. The Loyalist Iroquois were defeated in 1779 near Elmira, New York, and the confederacy came to an end.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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