Appleseeds articles from February 2005

Appleseeds archives from February 2005

Many routes and reasons.(children, frontier life)
February 1, 2005... During the 1800s, thousands of people traveled west in hopes of finding a better life on the American frontier. Many of those settlers were young children who had dreams of their own. Meet four real children and read the stories they might have...

La comida: mealtime in the Southwest.
February 1, 2005... What would it be like to eat with a Spanish colonial family in the 1800s in the American Southwest? Come with me and I let's follow our noses to the kitchen, ducking under the strings of dried red chiles that hang from the rafters. The wood...

Looking for a better life.
February 1, 2005... Imagine that the year is 1877. You live in a southern state, and you are African American. The Civil War between the North and the South freed you from slavery, but white people still treat you badly. Your family can't own land, and you are...

Moving west: a native American perspective.
February 1, 2005... Wouldn't it be wonderful to discover gold on your land? Well, when gold was discovered on land where Cherokee Indians lived in Georgia, it wasn't wonderful at all--at least, not for them. By the 1800s, white settlers had already taken most...

Little bird that was caught: Jane DeBow Gibbs.(Biography)
February 1, 2005... "Janie, Janie, stay with your mother and Rosette. Your little feet may carry you too far away." Jane DeBow Gibbs heard these words often from her father. In 1834, Jane's "little feet" did carry her far from her home in Batavia, New York....

Swing your partner: frontier fun.
February 1, 2005... On the frontier, families usually lived many miles apart. Lonely pioneers often used work as an excuse to visit. If a settler needed to clear land, he planned a logrolling. People came from miles around. The men worked all day cutting trees...

Sticks and stones.(Fun Stuff)
February 1, 2005... Frontier children didn't get an allowance or go to the mall to buy toys, but they had plenty of imagination. Boys and girls played catching, guessing, and counting games. They used materials like wood, paper, buttons, and stones. Corncobs...

Riders in the night: the story of the pony express.
February 1, 2005... Hooves thundered as the rider sped through the night. A blizzard threatened behind. Wolves howled ahead. Still he galloped on. Locked into the rider's saddlebag, mail raced along the route. Riders changed horses every 10 to 15 miles. After 12...

Young Davy Crockett.
February 1, 2005... "I'm half horse, half alligator, with a little touch of snapping turtle.... I can outfight, outshoot, outjump any man in the country. And I will!" Legend says that Davy Crockett made such a boast the day he was born. Tall tales like that...

Rough and tumble--growing up in a mining town.
February 1, 2005... Mining towns in the western frontier were often high in the mountains at the end of narrow, winding roads. Most of the towns could be reached only by mule-drawn wagons. Anne Ellis remembers her log cabin in the silver-mining town of Bonanza,...

What's that smell?
February 1, 2005... Peuw! What's that smell? If you lived on the frontier, it could be you! Frontier children lived without fragrant bath soap, toothpaste, or showers. After long days of working and playing, you can imagine how they smelled. Most pioneers...

Worms, bones, and cold dust: odd jobs for frontier children.
February 1, 2005... Have you ever tried to figure out a way to earn some spending money? Well, frontier kids did, too. Pet sitting is a great job. But how about worm sitting? In the 1800s, in Utah territory, Violet Lunt gathered armloads of mulberry leaves to...

Make your own sod house.(Fun Stuff)
February 1, 2005... The grassy plains where many pioneers settled had very little wood to build with. So, instead, many settlers built small houses of sod (sections of dirt with grass roots holding the dirt together). Much like clay bricks, bricks of sod were...

Logical dominoes.(Puzzle Power)
February 1, 2005... Kids growing up on the frontier didn't have many indoor games to play. One exception was dominoes. They were fun because there were different ways to play with them. Here's a fun way to play with dominoes. Logical Dominoes Take a look...