Wampanoag Lessons

Lesson One--People of the First Light, Wampanoag Homes

Our read aloud during this unit was Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims.

I found a nice site to introduce the different aspects of Wampanoag life. On this day I will be using the section on housing to introduce the wetus. I'm focusing only on the Wamapanoag for now though I'll be using both this and the next site as well in our upcoming unit on Pilgrims and the cultures together.

We will also listen to the wetu and footprint section on this great site.

This is a video showing a Wampanoag homesite recreation. You get a look inside various wetus.

I will be reading a portion of a story I made of the life of a Wampanoag boy focusing on housing for today. That's not necessary for this plan but was easy to put together. I made it because I couldn't get this book from our library but if you can I suspect it would be wonderful for these lessons.

Activities:

Make a wetu. There are directions for one made of mud here but we’re doing it the clean way both because it's less messy and also because I think it's more accurate in terms of the way these homes were constructed. I'm saving the mud wetu link though because I may do something similar for homes made of mud or mud-like materials in other units. We used pipe cleaners with playdough at the base for stability and torn lunch bags as our bark.

There are directions on this site for making food dye (scroll to Nature's Paint Box, but note all the other neat ideas too) that we will use for colored mats. As I got ready for this lesson today I decided to wait on this portion because I believe I would rather use it in our upcoming lessons on colonial life. I'll leave it here though because if a person were using these materials for a Thanksgiving type unit I would probably leave it in this lesson.

Wetu coloring picture

We sang the "Song of the Tee Pee" listed on this site (scroll down to unit theme ideas) modifying it for a wetu.

Lesson Two--Wampanoag Clothing

View the clothing section and read the clothing section of my Wampanoag boy story.

I might use this Leather Painting idea (Native Americans Theme section; this site has so many good ideas I thought) to make our grocery bags look more like leather.

We'll be making pouches.

We'll be making headbands.

We'll be making jewelry. There are several ideas on that link for jewelry (note: Lately that link has been down. I"m leaving it here in case it's back up soon but the site I've been linking has an idea for clay jewelry that would work or you could dye pasta as well.


Lesson Three--Wampanoag Food and Corn Planting

We'll read my story and then watch this and the deer, turkey, and then the hoe section from here.

Activities:
A. Make journey (or Johnny) corn cakes or other recipes widely available on various sites.

B. Act out the motions of planting corn using the script from this site.

We will make a makeshift Wampanoag hoe which was originally made out of a stick and clam shell. The boys will dig through a recycling paper-shredded garden “soil” following the script. We will possibly use a paper fish* to bury and candy corn or construction paper pieces for corn for the seeds. Real dried corn would be better of course. We will talk about later planting beans after the corn sprouts and why this was a good practice in terms of the soil quality.
*I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the fish. There is some evidence that this was not widespread among tribes yet we know Squanto taught the Pilgrims to include fish. I think the debate is whether he learned it from his tribe or while he was in Europe. I may save the fish inclusion for an activity we will do later with Squanto and and the pilgrims.

C. Our “harvest” will be based on this craft.

Lesson Four--Travel and Canoe Making

We'll read the travel section of my story which includes travel by foot and also the specific procedure for making the canoes.

We'll then possibly watch the canoe section here though it's pretty basic.

We will watch the following videos either in whole or in part. They are both via youtube and show making a Wampanoag canoe and traveling by canoe. Both start sort of slow and there is lots of talking but the content and video demonstration is good so I’m using them in some manner I'm nearly certain.

Wampanoag canoe coloring picture.

We will read my story portion on the chores. This includes how Wampanoag children would help their mother get clay for pots and use some to make their own play things.

We will view the chore portion and possibly "school" section from this site

Activity:
Make a canoe or pots out of clay. I have a link for making a paper canoe as well but I think I'll do the clay as it's closer to what a Wampanoag child might have done.

Lesson Five--Wampanoag Games

We'll read my story and watch the strawberry section and games section.

We'll pretend that we are Wampanoag children and do some of the things they did for fun long ago.

Toss and Catch game

Outside and inside games as listed on this site.


Extra Day--Transmitting and Preserving Culture

I'm not sure where I'll fit this day or if I'll portion it out on various days perhaps but I plan to use this video of a present day Wampanoag, Mashpee drum circle and tie it in with rhythm objectives in the Core Knowledge Sequence for music as well as the concept of preserving a culture.

We will listen to this site with a recording of the last speaker of the Wampanoag dialect (Chief Wild Horse, Mashpee division). I might use this site with Wampanoag names for various animals as well.

We will watch the oral tradition section of this site and talk about storytellers and the importance of stories in terms of oral history. I believe I will use this legend discussing the purpose of folk tales (in this case to explain the geography of the area).

I found images of the places referred to in the legend.
Gay Head Cliffs picture
Satellite image of Nantucket Island
I *think* these are the rocks referred to in the legend.