Rationale
The Ancient Story
American Indian history is extraordinary for so many reasons, not the least of which is their tragic demise and relocation in the 19th century. It's a history that is frequently misguided and misinformed. It's a history that is romanticized and mythologized. It is a history that is demonized in order to justify the unjustifiable. It's a story that pretty much starts and finishes with the great pilgrim Thanksgiving. There is one story that I want my students to hear and see. This one seems rather accurate.
The Moundbuilders, ancient peoples of North America, falls neatly into the category "Things I Would Have Learned in School had I Been Paying Attention." In fact, when I was introduced to the Moundbuilders via a video a graduate professor made me watch, I was awe-struck. In fact, I am a little embarrassed to say that I, probably much like my students, had no idea of human existence in North America much earlier than 1492. Perhaps I can make that statement worse. It's not so much that I had no idea of human existence in North America much earlier than 1492; it's that I really never gave it much thought.
It will be interesting to ask the students to draw a picture of Native Americans before 1492. I believe I would be safe in the assumption that most drawings would look the same. A tipi scattered here or there, Indian Braves with one feather sticking out of their head, perhaps a student with a penchant for the macabre would even draw a scalping, the savage raping and pillaging the helpless pioneer. What else do the students know? How long ago were Native Americans walking on the ground right under our feet? How many were there?
There is a site in Missouri, the Kimmswick Mound, in which archeologists unearthed bones of an extinct mastodon along side two intact Clovis points, and stone projectiles that were attached to an atlatl or spear (Milner 27). It's called the Paleoindian era, somewhere between 9 and 10,000 years BCE. It's a thought provoking way to start, a good bit earlier than the first Thanksgiving.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary of English Language, 2004 edition, the archeological definition of mound is "a large pile of earth or stones often marking a burial site." This, in my opinion, is the understatement of the decade when you consider what Charles C. Mann wrote in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus;
Anyone who traveled up the Mississippi in 1100AD would have seen it looming in the distance: a four level earthen mound bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Around it like echoes were as many as 120 smaller mounds, some topped by tall wooden palisades, which were in turn ringed by a network of irrigation and transportation canals; carefully located fields of maize; and hundreds of red-and-white-plastered wood homes with high-peaked, deeply thatched roofs (252).
That is a description of the Indian city of Cahokia in Illinois. I love that description and think that it is an incredible writing opportunity for students to read and view an image of Monks Mound in the Cahokia village and try to write as if they were seeing it for the first time like Lewis and Clark. The area was inhabited sometime before AD 800 and we don't know what these people actually called themselves and we don't know what language they spoke. According to Mann what we do know with a degree of certainty is that this "initial group belonged to a diverse, four-thousand-year-old tradition characterized by the construction of large earthen mounds." (254).
Up and down the Mississippi, from southern Canada all across the Midwest and southeastern United States tens of thousands of these mounds exist or did exist. Americans have known about the mounds or at least noticed them from the days of Lewis and Clarke and in fact, Thomas Jefferson had one in his back yard. But little interest, at least archeological interest was placed on these sites until the 19th century.
How did American Indians build these things? When you think about the tools available and consider the population, the mounds are really a stunning and perplexing achievement. Although only a small number of these mounds have been studied, most of them are earthworks in shapes like cones, pyramids, big birds, alligators, and snakes consisting of nothing but earth. Like Stonehenge, we don't really know what some were used for or why they were built. But many of them had stuff in them. What about the mounds that had things in them and the ones with bones? What kind of stories do these things tell?
Things
The artifacts found in these mound sites all across the country but particularly in the southeastern United States bear powerful images. Archeologists have largely determined what many of the artifacts were used for and their meaning. How can we really know? The completely untrained archeological brain may immediately summon up Disney's The Little Mermaid, when the Scuttle, the sea gull explains the uses of what you and I call a fork, as a "dingle-hopper," used for hair styling, and the pipe which Scuttle insists is a "banded-bulbous-snarfblatt" used to make beautiful music. . .or a planter.
One way for less than amateur archeologists to make sense out of these artifacts so we can begin to hear their story is to categorize them using the information around them and on them. Townsend first identified themes or categories found in the artifacts of the ancient Midwest and Southern United States over a three-thousand-year span of time (19).
Cosmic and Social Order
The idea of the American Indians connection to the earth and all living creatures did not necessarily evolve in a vacuum. Although not the only peoples of the ancient world to believe in this type of life connection, they saw their world as a network which spread from their communities "into the life of animals and plants, leading to the powers inherent in rivers, rocks, mountains, and other phenomena of the earth and sky, and the remote, immaterial, all powerful forces of life, death, and renewal" (21). How did these ancient people tell time? Their worlds were inextricably connected to the rising and setting sun and the passing of the seasons. Planting, cultivating, harvesting, hunting are all a part of the circle of life if you will. Summer people or "feather people" are represented by the hawk and summer activities. Winter people are represented by the cat, the "fur people."
There are beautiful things which represent these beliefs. The Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian, has an image of a shell gorget (a gorget is an ornament worn around the neck). This particular one has the carved images of a feline and a hawk facing each other that was worn as a symbol of high office in the society as well as symbolizing the two-part division of society, summer and winter (Townsend 20).
We often associate feather headdresses with the chief of a tribe or of high status. Many times the headdresses had more than feathers on them. For example some were decorated with small sheet-copper status symbols cut into different shapes. The Copper Bird Claw Status Symbol found in Bartow County, Georgia, at first glance, looks like some sort of tool or weapon. But, indeed it symbolizes status in the society and there are many other types of headdress accessories including shells and deer antlers (Power 120).
Domains of the Hunt and the Animal Powers
Bannerstones have been found all over the United States including Florida. These simple shaped and polished stones made from beautiful quartzes and other materials functioned as weights for spear-throwers (Townsend 22-23). While their exact significance is uncertain, they may have served as status symbols themselves, used in coming of age rituals, or simply increased the throwers skill and success at hunting.
Animals have instinct. Because of this and because they lived in the land outside the human society, hunters and gatherers believed the animals were closer to the all powerful forces of the world. They viewed animals as much more than a source of food and materials. Calling animal spirits and stories of turning into animals to garner their power and instinct are evident in these artifacts. A wood carving found in Collier County, Florida, in the Keys is an intriguing example. It is a human-cat figure kneeling the way that a human would but clearly with the slender back and head of a cat. And the feline, remember is associated with the "fur people," the winter and the earth. The relationship seen between human and animal is a powerful one and one that is told in many of the artifacts with an endless possibility of story (Townsend 28).
Gods and Heroes
Gods and Heroes in every culture across history across the globe are some of the greatest stories of all. American Indians were like other ancient cultures in their quest to explain the unexplainable, to call upon sources greater than themselves for good fortune, success in battle or in the hunt. Unlike some of the Greek or Roman gods, some of these figures remain a mystery. This gives us great leeway to create their stories.
The Blind Wolf Pipe dating back to 400 AD found in Tennessee is a beautiful smooth jet black stone with a wolf clinging on the round tube as it might cling to a log or crouch in the brush. What makes this pipe so interesting is that the wolf has no eyes but its stature looks as if it can see through and into everything and everyone it faces. A Human effigy pipe found in Ohio is carved with symbols that indicate high status. It may represent a hero or ruling family. The students will love the ear-spools (Townsend 30-31).
The Worship of Ancestors
As with all of these categories, you can easily see how even our things today could find a home and the ancestor worship is no different. It makes perfect sense when you recall the first category that addressed the cosmic and social order. All things connected, all journeying to a place of death and renewal, all connected in the network. The southern US tribes have the most enchanting belief of the dead; they believe that the constellation Orion was an open hand and was a gathering place for the souls of the dead on their way to join others as stars in the Milky Way (Townsend 33).
Ancestral monuments contain the most stuff, human effigies watching over the dead, beads, offerings, and of course the artifacts which identified the social standing. In our culture today, we do many things to honor the dead including visiting the gravesite to place flowers, to ponder, or to speak to the departed in whispers. American Indians had feasts at the monuments to celebrate their lineage and clan.
Here I am going to stray just a bit from the North American Indian because I must include some images of "mummy bundles" of the Inca. The Incas situate their dead in a squatting position then wrap them up in cloth. They wrapped and wrapped and wrapped and of course the type of cloth and the colors of the cloth identified a social status. These images are extraordinary. What the students may also get engaged with is that the Inca would prop their mummy bundles up, take them out, take them to dinner, and parade them around at festivals to keep the ancestors connected to the living. The manner in which they wrapped the head is also intriguing. Most attention is paid to the cloth wrapping the head and why might that be? The head is the most important part of the body; it's the part that holds thought and emotion. Great care was taken to adorn the head. The images are spectacular.
Personal Story Telling
Marketers are winning. Action-packed, flashy colors, entertainment stars, names on the shoes and jackets, food, and price it all at a couple of hundred dollars, and my students will focus intently for days. And they will be proud, proud to wear it, proud to own it, and they feel good for just a while until the carbs wear off and they have to go get some more things. There will be more things fast and furious. Just in time.
How can our profession compete with this fast-food computer game, Ipod world of things? There are a number of ways as you know from your own classroom. The crucial issue is to engage the student with relevancy and immediate application to something other than just their English class. As I have looked back at ancient things and tried to take the student on an imaginary journey to the stories behind those things, I believe it is time to take the stories home and make them personal.
The Power of Personal Story
I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren't just entertainment.
Don't be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
All we have to fight off
Illness and death (Silko 2).
Your own written words bring identity and voice. In a world when voices are shouted at us incessantly and we demand immediate communication of information but not too much because there are other things that I have to look at and I am not really listening to you because there is something catching my attention out of the corner of my eye and all I am really thinking about is my own misery and I don't really care about yours and I really have to go now. I agree with Lynn Nelson (2000), a 20 year veteran English teacher who wrote in the English Journal, that by beginning with the student's personal story, the student will feel meaningful. If there is another human actually listening (reading) to the story, the student is validated.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven is the story-teller but no one listens to his stories. He tells them over and over to any creature that will listen but no one will. This ultimately keeps him on the brink of the depths of alcoholism. "Thomas was a story-teller nobody wanted to listen to. That's like being a dentist in a town where everybody has false teeth" (61). In contrast, Alexie's Thomas Builds-the-Fire character in Smoke Signals is distinctively different. While Victor doesn't want to listen to Thomas' stories either, Thomas persists and seems unfazed at Victor's disdain for his stories. It is ultimately Thomas who leads Victor on his journey of discovery. I think both versions of this story-teller are important; one cannot survive without a listener and the other never gives up. But the stories are personal which is precisely why Victor can't bear to hear them.
This unit has focused on things, very old things with stories behind them. Some we know, some we don't, but it won't matter to us. We are going to look at these things and imagine another life and create another story. We are going put ourselves in Cahokia and describe it. We will read Alexie's stories, identifying the literary devices he masterfully and simply uses. And when we are good and comfortable, we are going to write our own stories and create our own things.
Nelson's article was passionate about the value of a personal story and I simply must include more of her words regarding this. "Violence is itself a form of communication, a form turned to when 'authentic communication' is denied" (May as cited by Nelson, 44). "Authentic communication" must have a listener, and that listener is me and you, the teachers.
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