Cobblestone articles from October 2003

Cobblestone archives from October 2003

From hunters & gatherers to settlers and traders.
October 1, 2003... Many groups of Indians originally inhabited the land now called the southeastern United States before Europeans arrived during the 1500s. (See the map on page 12 for a look at the southeastern area.) Like all other Indian groups in North...

Ancient mound builders.
October 1, 2003... The ancestors of today's southeastern Indian peoples constructed many mounds out of the earth. These were used as tombs, temples, and chiefs' houses. Some of the mounds were very large, requiring the coordinated labor of many tribe members....

Carve a soapstone bird.
October 1, 2003... The ancient mound builders greatly respected birds. These early Indians fashioned various types of birds out of clay or carved them in stone like alabaster and soapstone. While thousands of these bird carvings are in museums and private...

Digging for history: and interview with archaeologist John Blitz.(Interview)
October 1, 2003... To me, the most rewarding thing about being an archaeologist is discovering something about a past way of life that no one else knows, and then sharing this new knowledge with others," says John Blitz, professor and archaeologist at the...

First contact with Europeans.
October 1, 2003... In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon led an expedition northwest from Puerto Rico. He and his men were looking for a land known as Bimini. According to rumor, Bimini was full of gold. It also was said to be home to the magical Fountain...

Devastation in Florida.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The American Indians of Florida greeted the earliest Spanish explorers with hostility. But they could not keep the invaders away forever. Even the Calusa Indians--a warrior tribe whose name may have meant "fierce people"--did not have the might...

No teepees here.(tradional housing of american-indians)
October 1, 2003... The teepee often is thought of as the traditional housing of all American Indians. Actually, only a small percentage of Indians--those residing on the Great Plains--inhabited teepees. The homes of Indians living elsewhere in America were as...

Did you know?(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... "Chattanooga" is the CheroKee word for "rock rising to a point." In the Choctaw language the word "ChicKasaw means "they left as a tribe not a very great while ago." The Choctaw and the Chickasaw Indians were once part of the same tribe,...

Leading their tribes.
October 1, 2003... Leaders of southeastern Indian tribes wanted to preserve their people's way of life. Yet, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, white settlers (Europeans, and by this time, descendants of the original Europeans) kept moving into...

A closer look at the big five.
October 1, 2003... Among the largest tribes of the Southeast between the 1500s and 1700s were the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. By the 1820s, they were referred to as the "Five Civilized Tribes" because they adopted governing systems and...

Seven generations.(Quote of the Month)
October 1, 2003... Harmony between people and the land" is the vision statement of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). "That is how I was raised," M. Darrel Dominick declared. He is a member of the Choctaw Nation of...

Green corn ceremonies.(A Summertime Thanksgiving)
October 1, 2003... Each summer, the people of many southeastern Indian communities gather together to celebrate and give thanks for the gifts of nature, especially the food-bearing plants. The most important of these foods is corn, long a staple for Indians of...

Meet the clan.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Family is very important to southeastern Indians. Extended families--parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents--are organized in terms of lineages, which form the basis of clans. Matrilineage, or lineage traced through the...

Brain ticklers.
October 1, 2003... Give your brain a little tickle to see how well you read and understood this issue on the Indians of the Southeast. 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.
October 1, 2003... The leaders of the different southeastern Indian groups had difficult decisions to make during the 1800s. They could try negotiating with the U.S. government or they could fight. Imagine it is the nineteenth century, and you are an Indian...

If I Saw a European.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Poem)(Illustration)
October 1, 2003... If I Saw a European If I were an Indian and I saw a European, what would I do? What would I say? I'd wonder what they were going to do with me. Should I go or should I stay? Only cowards run away. ...

The Pilgrim.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Poem)(Illustration)
October 1, 2003... The Pilgrim The ship sails through the waves, Hitting other shivs. The Pilgrim finally mocks. Even on the ship, the men get sick. People get trapped in parts of the ship. Inside the galley, the cook...

Nothing to Be Seen.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Poem)(Illustration)
October 1, 2003... Nothing to Be Seen I was hidden in the bushes with nothing to be seen, except the white men. Will they be nice or mean? I was hidden in the bushes with nothing to be seen. I think they had a big ship. ...

Lolly and Varnack.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Poem)(Illustration)
October 1, 2003... Lolly and Varnack Lolly-- the fresh, gentle breeze of spring going across a light blue island. The nice, mild sound of a flute. The sweet taste of a peach. The color of the sky. The soft shape...

Blue.(Letters)
October 1, 2003... Blue Blue is a stream trickling over pebbles. Blue is the sky in the afternoon light. Blue is a lake by a cabin where all is quiet and still. Blue is a ribbon of hope after a hopeless war, not...

Walking Home.(Letters)
October 1, 2003... Walking Home I had gotten out of school, and I was walking really cool-- until I saw a cat. It meowed and pounced off. I started walking again-- until I felt a nibble. I looked down, and I saw a rat. ...

Orange.(Letters)
October 1, 2003... Orange Orange is like a round ball. Orange is the smell of flowers blooming in the spring. Orange is like a bird chirping. Orange is a pencil being used. Nick Lange Onalaska, Wisconsin

Dear Cobblestonians.
October 1, 2003... Two hundred years ago, a group of men set off on an exciting journey. They were asked by then-president Thomas Jefferson to explore America's newly acquired land in the West. Try to picture what it must have been like to travel in places...

Books to read.(Digging Deeper)(Bibliography)
October 1, 2003... Native Americans of the Southeast by Christina M. Girod (San Diego: Lucent Books, Inc., 2001), part of the Indigenous Peoples of North America series, explores the history, culture, religion, and conflicts of the southeastern Indians. The book...

More media.(Digging Deeper)
October 1, 2003... Indians of North America is a ten-volume video collection aimed at grades 4 through 10. Each video in the series, which contains titles like "The Seminole" and "The Cherokee," has a viewing time of 30 minutes. Through scholarly discussion of...

On the Web.(Digging Deeper)(simahoyo.freeyellow.com/ southeasttribes.html)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Use simahoyo.freeyellow.com/ southeasttribes.html as a starting point to link to sites on or about southeastern Indian tribes, such as Chickasaw Nation, Creek Language, Cherokee Fonts, Chocktaw Nation of Mississippi, Seminole History, and many...

Places to visit.(Digging Deeper)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Following is a list of some mound builders' sites in the Southeast territory. Consider contacting them for more information or even visiting during your travels: Kolomoki, Blakely, Georgia Etowah, Cartersville, Georgia Ocmulgee,...

The Journal of Jesse Smoke: a Cherokee Boy.(Book Review)
October 1, 2003... by Joseph Bruchac (New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2001) tells the story of a young Cherokee man exiled from his homeland to Oklahoma in 1837. Living freely until white men confiscate his land, sixteen-year-old Jesse is taken along the "Trail...

From the archives.
October 1, 2003... To learn more about American Indians, check out those featured in these past issues of COBBLESTONE: The Cherokee Indians (COB8402), Dine: The People of the Navajo Nation (COB8907), The Sioux (COB9206), The Cultures of Pre-Columbian North...

Cartoon connection.
October 1, 2003... No, we said we were hunting deer today.