Herron’s Whisper
Crafts, Games and Activities

Personal Decoration: Bead stringing is a project that has benefits on many levels–eye-hand coordination, color skills and tactile stimulation, to name a few. In this project we try to use materials that Native people would have had before Europeans came to this land. No pasta! Remember that glass and plastic occurred post-European contact.

Some natural beads are made of wood, corn, beans, seeds, walnut shell slices, acorn caps, bird bones, stones with natural holes, horn, antler or any other natural materials that can have a hole put in them. Small sumac branches can be cut into sections and a hole can be made the length of the section by running a hot wire through the center. Cut the sections of sumac to about 10 inches long, make a hole and then cut into smaller 1-inch sections. Drilled sea shells are great. Hollow chicken or turkey bones or vertebrae can be cleaned and used. There are also beads of pottery, copper, woven basketry, bark and even quills. It is not recommended that porcupine quills be used for young children, but large bird quills are fine

Clothing: Learn to identify different Native American cultural and environmental areas through clothing. Have different sets of traditional Native clothing drawn on paper for use as coloring sheets. Have the children discuss the differences and similarities, i.e., a set of Woodland clothing vs. a set of Eskimo clothing. When talking about the clothing, show pictures of the animals that are in that area. Then let the children try to figure out from your clues where the environmental area is on the map. Remember to stick to very basic clothing without a lot of fancy accessories that might confuse or detract. The goal of this project is to teach that not all Native people were alike. This project works well in conjunction with a bulletin board display of the map.

Stereotypes: Many children and adults think of Native people as long ago and far away. It is very important to present Native culture in both a historical and modern context. One way to do this is through comparative photographs and/or drawings. A then-and-now approach gives a great perspective.

Games: At this age, games are great. There are so many games to choose from! There are many very simple races that appeal to this age group. Bear race, frog race, fox and geese, and catch the fish are a few. Cat’s cradle was highly developed by Native people. Also, try “button, button, who’s got the button” (use a stone or bead). Make a Do Wah pouch or stick, or use corncob darts with supervision. Older children can learn more advanced games such as toss stick, darts, “spear the moose,” “hot rock,” silent relay and follow the leader (use obstacles and have followers track the exact steps of the leader).

Two great books to access are: Handbook of American Indian Games by Allan and Paulette Macfarlan (Dover Publications) and Games of North American Indians by Stewart Culin (Dover Publications).

Tools: Explore Native American recycling. How did Native people impact their environment? What permanent impact have Native people left on this continent? Look at pictures and discuss. Explore the tools used by earlier Native people and see how the tools changed with the advent of Europeans.

Try coil or slab pottery. Use incised design techniques to recreate early Native designs. Sew together leather pouches with pre-punched holes and a drawstring top.

Shelter: Make a woodland village by adding a piece each day. This is a project that will take some initial time to construct, but once constructed it can be used repeatedly. Please do a little research on the village you plan on constructing. Is it pre- or post-European contact? On what type of terrain was this style of village generally constructed? What were the reasons for choosing such a site? Were the houses clumped together or scattered apart? Was this the village of an agricultural people? These are all things to think about.

Over time, you can have a very nice display that will interest the children and, it is hoped, spark them into contributing to this ongoing project.

Dance: Learn a simple round or social dance. There are good cassette tapes of Native American music. Ask your librarian for information and check with the interlibrary loan system.

Stories: At this age, rely on storybooks that retell traditional Native stories. Stay away from those that perpetuate stereotypes. Also, check out the absolutely wonderful audiotapes called I’Coyote Stories, Stories From the Earth, Retold by Dr. Cricket. Dr. Cricket is also Dr. David Hillgoss, Professor of Experimental Studies at Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois.

(To “beware” is to “be aware.” One needs to be aware of the materials on the market that purport to be traditional Native teachings, but are actually a homogenous mix of many world cultures. Please check out your materials and guest speakers and ascertain that they are who and what they claim!)

Music: Explore different types of Native music. View a video of a Native American dance or powwow. Try and find samples of music from each of the areas. Check out Native American rock ‘n’ roll with the class. View a cartoon or movie that has stereotyped music in it. Discuss.

Make rattles from rawhide or bark. Use them to learn basic Native rhythms and unlearn stereotyped beats. Play them along with recordings of real Native music.

Social Structure: Begin to explore the social structure of Native culture. For teaching purposes, we tend to place Native people into specific groups. Why? We tend to think of all Sioux people as being Plains people. Why? Why were there 28 Siouan root languages in the southeastern part of this continent if the Sioux are only a Plains people? Begin to look at Native languages and where they are in use. Are there Iroquois Indians or is Iroquois a language? Start to look at language groups, then at specific Native nations. Inside some nations the social structure is further broken down into clans, and then families. Try and identify the differences and similarities within a language group and where a specific language was used.

Begin to talk of clans and the clan system. Find out which nations have clans and try and find what the names of the clans are for that nation. Use clan stories to illustrate the moral and cultural aspects of being a clan member. (Hint: Lenape, or Delaware, people have three clans. The Seneca have eight clans and the Cherokee have seven.)

Discuss the idea of matriarchy and patriarchy. Pick a few different nations and identify with which system they worked.

Government: Pick a specific nation and explore its government. Set up that system in the classroom and see how it works. How are leaders nominated and elected? How many positions of responsibility were there? How many were for men and how many were for women?

Recording History: Many Native nations had ways of recording important events and stories. Some Iroquois nations used a notched stick with pictographs on it. Many northeastern nations used the wampum belt to record important events. The Ojibwa sometimes used birch bark rolls, called Mide’ Rolls, engraved with symbols that are almost true hieroglyphics. These Mide’ Rolls helped them remember items that were important to their people. Some western tribes used the winter count to record history. The following project will help give your class a chance to record its own history.

Make a winter count hide. Take a large sheet of brown paper or poster board and tear it into the shape of a hide. Every day the class should decide on the most important event of the day and add a relevant pictograph. Use your own pictographs, not ones from a book. Next take a brown paper bag for each student and tear it into a smaller hide. Every day, each student should record his or her most important event of the day.

Language: Explore Native American words in use today. Geographic names are a great place to start. What rivers, towns, states and counties bear Native names? Take a county map and mark all Native place names in one color. With another color, begin to mark all known Native sites such as villages, burials, battles, etc. Have the children talk to their parents, grandparents and other relatives for family stories of suspected sites. Mark those in a third color.

Agriculture: Gardens were very important to Native people, as many nations farmed on an extensive basis. When talking about gardens, first decide which cultural and environmental area you wish to address. Remember that the food grown in Ohio was not the food grown in Maine or Texas. How were the crops planted? Were some planted together like the “three sisters?” Why were the “sisters” planted together?

Do we still use these planting methods today? Do we still use any of the same crops today?

Trace the origins of corn. Where did corn come from? What did it originally look like? Did the corn used before the Europeans came have ears as big as the corn we use today? What is pod corn? Find out how many uses corn has today in our modern world. (Hint: Some plastics are made from corn oil and some fuels are made from corn.) Find out if Native Americans really used what we call “Indian corn.”

Find out which beans were native to this land. Try growing them in the classroom. Note the color of bean flowers from the native beans. Check with your local extension agent for tips.

Work: Discuss the divisions of labor within the different cultural areas. What work was done by women, and what was done by men? One of the great misconceptions about Native life is that women were work slaves while the men hunted and lazed about. Take a specific nation and try to list all the work that would need to be done in a village. Then try to identify who did the work. Were they male or female, young or old, or did everyone share the job? Here are some jobs to help you start your investigation: cooking, wood gathering, education of the young, hunting, sewing, protecting the village, shelter building, religious services, harvesting, government and entertainment. Look to our own lives as a guide to identify some of the jobs. Point out to the young people the similarities and differences.

Food: Prepare a Native American meal without any European foods. You can either pick a menu from a specific cultural and environmental area, or pick one food from each of the areas. Look at what we eat today and see if it is similar to traditional Native food. Take a close look at the foods associated with the Thanksgiving holiday. Another hint is to look at what we call Mexican food. Were those foods in use in Europe before 1492?

Clothing: Using one specific Native nation, take a look at how their clothing styles have changed over 500 years. How has European contact changed their clothing? When these people were moved, as in the Cherokee Trail of Tears, did their new neighbors influence changes in their clothing styles? What kind of clothing are they wearing today for daily life? Do they still have special clothing for special Native events? Learn to do a basic finger weaving project. Start with a simple bracelet.

Shelters: Look at the environmental impact of specific Native houses on their place of origin. How did a bark house work within its environment? What impact did a cliff dwelling have on its surroundings? In a shelter, what materials from the surrounding environment were used and how did they help Native people to survive? What was used to help insulate, to help weatherize and to help regulate the temperature within the dwelling? How were a dwelling’s openings constructed to deal with the problems inherent to its climate? Are any Native people still living in their traditional dwellings?

Tools: Make a Native tool from the materials traditionally used. Try and use that tool for the purpose it was intended. This can be a project for individuals or for groups assigned to the different cultural and environmental areas on page one.

Using heavy paper or lightweight cardboard, make a birch bark bowl. Finish around the top with basket wicker.

Music: Learn about Native American drum groups and how they function. What are their different aspects within their specific culture? Are they spiritual, social, personal, entertaining or musical, or are there other functions to the group? Find out how many different types of drums have been used by the Native people of North America.

Dance: Learn a social dance used at a modern powwow. Is it northern, southern or Oklahoma traditional? Is it an off-growth of an older dance? If so, how has it evolved into today’s form?

Games: Teach another class the Native American games you have learned. Hold an inter-class competition.

Stories: Learn why stories are so important to a people who are an oral society. Act out a teaching story for another class. Learn the story so well that you are not reading it. In the old days most stories were not written down. Another challenge would be to learn a Native story in Native American sign language. Sign it to your class or another class and see if they can interpret what you are saying.

Social Structure: Webster defines a custom as a usual practice or habit, and a social convention carried on by tradition. Native American custom covered many aspects of social behavior that are too extensive to go into here. However, one area of social custom of special interest is that of marriage and divorce. Learn the courting, marriage and divorce customs of two different nations from separate environmental and cultural areas.

Government: Before Columbus, Native nations presided over themselves by following their traditional forms of government that had been developed to meet that nation’s specific needs. In the last 500 years, many things have changed for Native people including how they now govern themselves. Learn about tribal government today. Find out about the B.I.A. Why are Native people partially governed by the Department of the Interior? What is a C.D.I.B. card and why do Native people carry it? Think about some of the difficulties in governing a Native nation within other government entities. For example, take a reservation that is partially in the United States of America and partially in Canada. You would be within two national governments, then within the state and provincial governments and then, within that, the county governments that exist on both sides of the border. Imagine just trying to sort out the paperwork!

Current Events: Make a scrapbook of current events. Include all articles pertaining to Native Americans. Discuss each new article. Also find out about reservation conditions, job opportunities, wages, schooling, health care, health problems, land issues and other issues that are important to Native people.

Make contact with one or more teachers who work in schools that teach Native children. Set up an exchange program between the classes. This can be as simple as a pen pal program, or as complex as you want it to be. One high school here in Ohio has an exchange program with a Native southwestern nation. During Homecoming Week, they bring the senior class from this reservation school to live with host families from the senior class in Ohio. In the spring the seniors from Ohio go to the southwest and stay on the reservation with their friends. It’s a very successful program. You don’t have to go that far away to find Native people. There are several reservations in New York and Canada just five hours from northeast Ohio. Subscribe to a Native American newspaper.

Language: Learn about the Cherokee syllabary and the Cherokee Phoenix. Find out about Native oratory. Read to the class orations such as those by Logan, Tecumseh, Seattle and Black Elk. There are many beautiful orations from which to choose.

Stereotypes: View a movie or television show about Native Americans. Discuss what was stereotyped and how it made you feel. Would you like to be represented like that? List the pros and cons.

Have the class bring in ads and products that use an identity with Native Americans to advertise and/or sell their product. Is the image portrayed a stereotype? Is it a positive or negative image? Talk about the use of Native identity as mascots for sports teams. Think in context of other ethnic groups, how they are portrayed how the images correlate.

Removal: On a map trace three tribes from their point of first contact with Europeans to where they reside today, if they even still exist as a tribal entity. Was it a great distance? Was the nation broken and scattered? Was it a forced removal such as the Cherokee Trail of Tears? Talk about being “removed” from your own home. Roll playing is appropriate.

This is an opportunity to discuss racism through setting up the pros and cons of the issue of Native removal. By briefly living one part or another, this becomes more than an abstract idea and becomes a part of one’s experience.

Medicinal plants: Find out how many modern medications come from plants used by Native Americans.