Cobblestone articles from January 2008

Cobblestone archives from January 2008

Editor's note.(Editorial)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Americans were getting that crowded feeling in the late 1700s. Living clustered together along the East Coast, they needed elbow room. Some had begun pushing through the boundaries of the original colonies into the...

Joe Meek: mountain man.(Joseph LaFayette Meek)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It all started when early explorers to the West brought back beaver pelts they had received in trade with Indians. The luxuriant fur became a popular fashion, and in the early 1800s, the fur trade took off. A great...

A day on the trail.(California Trail)
January 1, 2008... Editor's Note: The following article describes a typical day on the California Trail. Such a day might be June 20, 1852, and our typical pioneer group might include the Keegan family. If their crossing was on schedule, they would be close to...

Mormon migration.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Most American pioneers migrated westward voluntarily. The story of the Mormons, however, is very different. They went because religious persecution forced them to flee their homes. Between 1846 and 1869, about 70,000...

A higher call.(missionary Narcissa Whitman)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Narcissa Whitman was one of the first women to make the difficult journey overland to the Oregon country in the early 1830s. She wasn't part of a wagon train, though. She and her husband, Marcus, were Presbyterian missionaries. They believed...

Forced removal.(removal of Cherokee Indians from their lands)
January 1, 2008... For many, the West represented a chance for a wonderful new life. But for America's native people, the push westward resulted in quite the opposite experience. The story of the Cherokee Indians, the single largest Native American group in the...

Frontier forts: symbols of American ambition.(Era overview)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The desire to settle the United States from coast to coast was more than just an American dream--it became an all-out official national policy known as Manifest Destiny, beginning with the administration of President...

A soldier's life.(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Daily life for soldiers in a frontier fort was often routine and pretty boring. Most men spent the majority of their time using a shovel or axe rather than a rifle. They did construction, guarded and maintained their forts, gardened, carried...

'Orphans preferred'.(employment of orphans in delivery services)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With the notice above, a Leavenworth, Kansas, company named Russell, Majors & Waddell hoped to establish a spectacular 10-day mail service from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. That may not sound so...

The Celestials' railroad.(Chinese rairoad workers)(Era overview)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On the Utah prairie where a thousand workers had gathered for the ceremony, four Chinese men carried an iron rail toward the track. It was the last link in the railroad that within moments would span the continent....

Gold.(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... James Marshall galloped through a heavy rainstorm to Sutter's Fort and burst in on John Sutter. Marshall excitedly showed him some golden nuggets he had discovered in the American River. Sutter performed several tests on them to determine...

Cobblestone 2007 index.
January 1, 2008... A Aanenson, Quentin, Sep 07:31-33 Activities. See also Contests; Plays; Puzzles. code breaking, Apr 07:28-29 cooking assembly line, Mar 07:28-31 fun libs Dutch-style, Oct 07:24-25 journal jottings, Feb 07:30-31 ...

Exodusters.(African Americans who traveled West in 1879)(Era overview)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dramatic change rarely happens overnight. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, African Americans in the South faced constant oppression and discrimination. They were denied education and the right to vote, they...

Following the herd.(Era overview)
January 1, 2008... For the men who became ranchers and cowboys, the West offered a place where success was measured by talent and skill, not the color of one's skin. Consider this story of an unlikely friendship across the racial divide. Charles Goodnight...

Boomtowns.(settlements that appeared overnight in the 1800s)(Era overview)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Boomtowns, so called because they appeared to spring up overnight, popped up all over America's West in the 1800s. In Kansas alone, towns such as Ellsworth, Caldwell, Wichita, and, the most famous of all, Dodge City,...

Dressed for the occasion.
January 1, 2008... Cowboys spent long hours on horseback, and they often worked in harsh weather, so their clothing and equipment had to be comfortable and practical. Try to match each item to its description in the left- and right-hand columns. Answers are on...

Voices from the Prairie.(pioneers Laura Ingals and Willa Cather)
January 1, 2008... A great way to get a feel for what it was like to be a settler in the West is through the stories of two women who were pioneer children themselves. Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather both moved west with their families in the 1870s and...

Future frontiers.(Going Global)
January 1, 2008... It may seem as though the world has run out of frontiers for new generations of pioneers to explore and settle, but there are a few places that still offer interesting possibilities. GO SOUTH, YOUNG MAN For those brave souls searching...

Animal alliteration.(Your Letters)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Angry armadillos ate antelope antlers. Baby bandicoots bully bawling bats. Crazy cougars cough continuously. Dingoes dance down dwarf dams. Echidnas eat Estonian electric eels. Funky flamingos fry flopping fish. ...

Conch Shell Found.(Your Letters)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... conch Shell Found I went to the beach with one mission in mind-to look for shells and hopefully a conch I would find. I saw a shell within my reach, and so I knelt right down on that beach. I realized as I...

Your letters.(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... I read your magazine a lot (I enjoy the comics). I'd like to know if the slang you mentioned in the language article of Those Roaring 20s issue (April 2006) was used only in the United States, or by people in other countries like Canada and...

I liked your article called "Whose Army Is It, Anyway?" (A Look Inside the U.S. Army, May 2006 issue).(Your Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... I liked your article called "Whose Army Is It, Anyway?" (A Look Inside the U.S. Army, May 2006 issue). You told interesting facts. I liked the story "Dogs of War" because it gave details about specific dogs and what they did. You mentioned that...

Trench Soldier.(Your Letters)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Trench Soldier Dirty, wet, dying inside, covered in someone else's blood. Lying in the trenches is a lover of a normal life, sun, and peace, who feels mud, hunger, and despair; who needs food, ammunition, and...

Beyond the Mississippi: Early Westward Expansion of the United States.(Books to Read)(Children's review)(Book review)(Brief review)
January 1, 2008... Beyond the Mississippi: Early Westward Expansion of the United States by Angela M. Herb (New York: Lodestar Books, 1996, us.penguingroup.com/) guides readers on a journey through the early exploration and settlement of America's West, from the...

Cowboys and Coffin Makers.(Books to Read)(Children's review)(Book review)(Brief review)
January 1, 2008... Cowboys and Coffin Makers by Laurie Coulter (Buffalo, New York: Annick Press/Firefly Books, 2007, www.annickpress.com) carries the sub title One Hundred 19th-Century Jobs You Might Have Feared or Fancied. It's filled with brief descriptions and...

Your Travel Guide to America's Old West.(Books to Read)(Children's review)(Book review)(Brief review)
January 1, 2008... Your Travel Guide to America's Old West by Rita J. Markel (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2004, www.lernerbooks.com) is designed as a guidebook, offering a fun, creative way for readers to understand the West, with recommendations for which...

The West: An Illustrated History for Children.(Books to Read)(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... The West: An Illustrated History for Children by Dayton Duncan (New York: Little, Brown, 1996, www.hachette bookgroupusa.com/children/index.html) begins with an introduction to the West before white settlers left their mark on it: with the...

The Conquest of the West edited by C. Carter Smith.(Books to Read)(Children's review)(Book review)(Brief review)
January 1, 2008... The Conquest of the West edited by C. Carter Smith (Brookfield, Connecticut: Millbrook Press, 1992, www.millbrookpress.com) details how 100 years' worth of military battles, wars, and shows of strength resulted in the United States' taming and...

Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself.(Books to Read)(books about the West)(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself by Rachel Dickinson (White River Junction, Vermont: Nomad Press, 2007, www.nomadpress.net) takes readers on a journey through the West in the footsteps of the first pioneers. Easy-to follow...

Rachel's Journal: The Story of a Pioneer Girl.(Embry's Review)(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Rachel's Journal: The Story of a Pioneer Girl by Marissa Moss (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998, www.harcourtbooks.com/). Rachel, an ordinary 10-year-old girl, tells the story of her Oregon Trail journey in this...

More media.(Movie review)(Brief review)
January 1, 2008... For a general overview of the West, we highly recommend The West, a PBS film that explores what this part of the country meant to many different people before it became divided up into the territories that eventually became the Union's newest...

On the Web and places to visit.(Digging Deeper)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... At the Library of Congress's site, memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/codhtml/hawphome.html, you can browse through the Denver Public Library's collection of more than 30,000 photographs of the late-1800s West, from the many Native American groups...

Ethan rates it ...(Digging Deeper)(website on the Wild West history)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... ***** [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] we think of the Wild West, our minds conjure up images of western icons like Buffalo Bill, or intense desert chases, with cowboys and outlaws galloping on horseback. These images have been imprinted on our...

From the archives.(Brief article)(Recommended readings)
January 1, 2008... With the information brought back by Lewis and Clark, the West was opened. COBBLESTONE has devoted a number of issues to westward settlement, starting with the several routes along which people and goods traveled: The Oregon Trail (COB8112),...

The causes of war.(Flashback to ...)(United States-Mexican War)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The War with Mexico. The Mexican War. The U.S.-Mexican War. The Invasion of 1847. All identify the two-year-long conflict (1846-1848) between the United States and its southern neighbor. Many Americans today are unaware that U.S. troops once...

Brain ticklers.(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Give your brain a little tickle to see how well you read and understood this issue on how the West was settled. If you believe the answer to be false, give yourself the ultimate test and see whether you can explain why it is false. Answers...

A final word.
January 1, 2008... What aspect of moving westward would have excited you the most? What would you have found most difficult?

Cartoon connection with Ebenezer & the Colonel.(Cartoon)
January 1, 2008... You know, two of my great-great-great uncles joined a wagon train of people headed out west. Really? They must have been pretty TOUGH characters! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To be honest, Cornelius and Edward were kinda GEEKY. A pair of...

The comeback kid.(Creature Feature)(American bison)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BeFore the westward trails and covered wagons carved routes across the Plains, the American bison--sometimes incorrectly referred to as "buffalo"--roamed free. About 60 million bison once lived across North America,...