Living History
Living History
Excerpt from a series of essays: The Stories I Tell
The State of New Jersey requires all children to learn the state history along about 4th grade. Most of the other states in the area - NY and PA particularly- also have similar requirements and therefore all kids study Native Americans, usually sometime between the second and the fifth grades. That can be anywhere from about ages 7-11 or so, depending, for anyone unfamiliar with the US grading system.
As a Historical Interpreter at a living history museum/park area, my job is primarily to teach school children about the Lenape Tribe. The Lenape are a forest-living tribe who were local to this part of the East Coast until the Europeans killed them off or kicked them out and sent them off to Okalahoma. Lenape are also sometimes called “Delaware Indians.”
The average day works something like this:
The kids get off the bus about a half mile from where I actually do the tour. We meet them at the bus and divide the school into manageable groups, and ‘manageable’ is extremely subjective depending on how many guides we have and how tough the crowd is. I lead groups of anywhere between 10 and 60 kids, plus chaperones and teachers. Usually, I have about 30 kids, plus the requisite but usually underperforming supervisory adults.
At the parking lot, we do the hello speech. Please bear in mind that whatever amount of energy the kids seem to be generating when I first get up there, it is my job to generate just a little bit more. I have to be the most animated person when I’m talking or their eyes glaze over and they start kicking each other.
The hello speech usually goes about like this: “Hi! I’m Mrs. Graham, I’ll be your tour guide! What school are you from? (insert yelled name of school). “Really? Great! What grade are you in?” (more yelling) “And have you been studying the Lenape? (yelled response) “Great! Well, let me tell you how it’s going to go today! I’m going to take you FROM the parking lot TO the picnic area where you will drop off your lunches! Then I’m going to take you on our tour. We have two rules I really need you to follow - ONE! I’m the guide! This means that I know where I’m going and you very likely don’t! Therefore, I NEED TO BE IN THE FRONT. DO NOT GO AHEAD OF THE GUIDE! That means whenever we’re going anywhere, you guys stay behind me. Got it?” (yelling). “Great! The second rule is, STAY ON THE PATH! There are rocks you could slip on and poison ivy you could end up with if you don’t STAY ON THE PATH. Anybody want poison ivy? (emphatic yelling in the negative) “Good! I don’t want you to have it either! So, STAY ON THE PATH! Are you ready to go? (deafening screams) “Okay, follow me!”
Having established my position as leader and threatened them with poison ivy, I take the children up to the picnic area and help them stow their lunches in a large green wooden box set there for just that purpose.
At that point, I try to get them started. Sometimes I’m thwarted by a teacher who insists on herding them all to the bathrooms, at which case I lose about 20 minutes to utter chaos.
When I’ve got them ready to go, I jump up on a picnic table. At this point, I either reiterate the rules: "I’m the Guide! STAY BEHIND THE GUIDE and STAY ON THE PATH! or occasionally I add more rules, such as Do NOT throw things at the (geese/chickens/other children) and do NOT throw any (rocks, sticks, whatever the hell they’ve brought with them that’s missile-adaptable)!
I also sometimes throw in rules for the adults, if they appear to require a few: Parents and Teachers please turn your cellphones to SILENT during the tour, so as not to distract the children and please help me keep this group TOGETHER as much as possible! Thanks!
When I’m done giving smiling but very firm instructions to everybody, I jump off the picnic table and start marching them through the woods.
It’s about a half-mile walk to the Lenape stuff, so they have plenty of time to talk to each other, ask me weird questions, demand exact times for lunch and gift shop, forget all the rules (STAY ON THE PATH!) and generally run wild. When we get near the start of the Lenape tour, they all go insane because we have a spirit-representation painted on the trees.
I love those things, because it neatly transfers power back to me. They all want to know what those things are and as a rule, I’m the only one around who can tell them. A child is much more willing to listen when they think you have valuable information.
Incidentally, so are adults.
Curriculum varies by the age of the group. Little kids get bare basics on Lenape culture, we talk more about nature, using what you have available, solving problems of food, water, shelter, etc. The oldest kids get bored by that, so if we get anything above 5th grade or so, we do a lot more stuff about how the Europeans were able to so completely stomp out the Natives.
In general, Lenape tour includes the following exhibits, all strung out along a path in the woods. At each site, I talk for anywhere from 45 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on what’s going on around me. Usually I spend about 5-7 minutes at each site, plus time for questions.
Introduction - can be done anywhere, depending on the crowds. Involves establishing that life was DIFFERENT four hundred years ago and a lot of questions from me to the group to find out what the kids have been learning in class.
Petroglyph - also known as “the rock” - it’s an example of a story carved into stone. This is where we talk about oral tradition and storytelling.
Sweat Lodge - talking about the mechanics of getting clean when there’s no running water and the natural water sources get mighty cold come winter.
Maple Tapping - the process of getting sugar out of trees. This is one we skip if we’re pressed for time or leading the pack of school groups. Whoever is in the front has to keep moving or other groups get stuck behind you and the guides have to improvise stuff to keep the kids from losing interest.
Hunting - an inevitable favorite. Also takes a long time, a lot of information. We talk about who did the hunting (men!) and what they hunted (deer and bear!) and what they used to hunt (bow and arrow!) and I walk around the exhibit showing them examples of bones and fur and fire-starting tools and all the rest of it.
The hunting is exhibit is where the children always ask me what the Lenape used the animals’ eyeballs for. Official Response? Great question! Can anyone think of any possible uses for eyeballs? Real Answer: I have no idea.
Next up is Fur and Leatherworking, where I get to gross them out by talking about using brains to cure skins. (That usually shuts down the eyeball kid.)
Gardening - we talk about corn, beans and squash, also known as the Three Sisters. We talk about Grandma keeping watch to throw rocks at animals that might eat the garden, and, inevitably, the What If questions about grandma killing the animal, killing the people who were gardening, falling off her little watchtower, etc etc etc.
Shaman’s Longhouse - the first indoor exhibit, they always scream when they see the first mannequins dressed as Lenape. We talk about religion and spirituality in very general terms, calling on the spirits to heal people (”If you have a BAD spirit making you sick, you want to call a GOOD spirit to help kick it out!”) and an overview of natural medicines and early healing.
Crafting - aka Making Stuff With What You’ve Got. Baskets, pottery, wood carving, beadwork, etc. We talk about toys and games and where clay comes from. Some guides take *forever* at crafting.
I am not one of them.
Archeology - I hate this site. It’s a simulated archeological dig that takes forever to explain and involves concepts the average 4th grader just can’t quite grasp. We talk about post-molds and going through ancient trash to get clues about daily life. There are some fake human bones. ”No, these are not real bones! These are fake bones, fake bones, and the fake bones tell us…” and fake mastodon bones ”A mastodon is like a big fluffy elephant, like a wooly mammoth, that lived over 12 thousand years ago!”
Archeology takes at least ten minutes no matter what you do.
Next comes the Grave Site- ”No, nobody’s really buried here!” and funeral customs. Sometimes I slip the three clans into this one, if I get a group that’s actually studied them.
Women’s Enclosure - oh, this one is dangerous. This is where we talk about babies, how they were carried, what the customs were to protect them, etc. THIS is where I always get asked where babies come from, what happens if…and how did the Lenape circumcise people, anyway? (Answers: “Same place they do now, ask your parents for details, no ‘what if’ questions right now please” and either ‘sharpened seashells’ or ‘ask your teacher’, depending on the age of the group.)
Ceremonial Circle - always a favorite. This is where I get to tell them about the punishment for naughty children (being picked up by a guy in a spirit costume and carried around the village in a bag of snakes). This is also where I talk about naming, the levels of heaven, depending on how pressed we are for time.
Fishing - by fishing, if I’m not careful, they’re glassy eyed, so I always hop up on a rock and wave my arms around when I talk, which forces them to pay attention because I’m so tall and I’m moving. Men did the fishing, we fished with nets, spears, weirs, fishing poles, bows and arrows…yadda yadda. I also talk about “feet and canoes” as the transportation available to Lenape.
At fishing, someone always asks when lunch is.
From fishing we go up the hill to the actual village part and the Communal Cooking Area. The cooking area is really a filler exhibit that gives you something to talk about if someone is in the Longhouse ahead of you.
Longhouse - The longhouse is always fun. Men built them, women owned them. Even the adults get a kick out of that one. Marriage customs, divorce customs, matrilineal society, Mohawk hairstyles, natural disasters and rebuilding - the long house lecture is varied by the group.
Hands On Area - they pound corn, touch furs, and throw corn darts. I hate corn darts, and I delegate a chaperone to make sure nobody puts anyone else’s eye out.
Language and Wrap Up - “hello”, “thank you” and “your welcome” in Lenape and then final questions.
After that, I take them back through the woods to the picnic area for lunch, and they become their teacher’s problem once again. The guides customarily gather for hot chocolate and commiseration before we usher our schools back to their buses or bail out and head home ourselves.
I have learned a few things doing this job:
If I get a “What if” question anywhere before Hunting, it is best to switch over to the special “What If Tour", in which I shoot most of the usual What Ifs down before they get a chance to ask.
Anything that comes out of a child’s mouth that starts with “One time..” has to be immediately shut down or you’ll be there forever. This job has enabled me to spot a story disguised as a question from a mile off. Children -and adults- are always a little shocked if you cut them off, but a little shock is worth if it keeps everything moving on schedule.
If I stand in one place, everyone’s eyes glaze over. Thus, I do a lot of walking around inside the exhibits. I also wave my arms a lot and gesture when I talk. I am frequently asked if I am Italian, which I am not.
Teachers are useless for keeping discipline, they expect the tour guide to do it. As a result I identify children by what they’re wearing (“You with the red hat”) and have no qualms about moving one child away from the other, telling people to hush up and sending a persistent offender to walk WITH the teacher. Teachers hate that, but it gets the problem child out of my hair for at least two sites.
Chaperones are not to be trusted. Ever. They ask questions that throw off the age-scale of the tour, they never really turn their cell-phones to silent even though you asked them to, and they’ll distract the kids by chatting with each other if you let them. I have no problem telling the adults to be quiet if they’re mucking up my tour, which for some reason shocks them mightily. Every single time.
All children of any age are always starving, cold, tired and wanting to know when they’re going to see an animal. The proper responses to questions about lunch, the weather and local fauna are: “Not yet. Yes, it’s chilly today” and “Most animals avoid large groups of loud children.”
All told, the tour takes about an hour-and-a-half, though it can be cut down to a speedy 45 minutes if there was a bus problem or it’s raining really hard. The ability to project one’s voice is priceless. You have to be louder than they are or they walk all over you.
And the last thing? At least one child, or one adult, in every group will corner you to talk about their Native American Ancestry. By the second week of any season I will have had two Cherokees, a Crow, a couple of Sioux and a whole pile of ‘one-sixteenth’ of some tribe they’re not sure the name of.
When in doubt: smile, nod, and remind them about the poison ivy.
Excerpt from a series of essays: The Stories I Tell
The State of New Jersey requires all children to learn the state history along about 4th grade. Most of the other states in the area - NY and PA particularly- also have similar requirements and therefore all kids study Native Americans, usually sometime between the second and the fifth grades. That can be anywhere from about ages 7-11 or so, depending, for anyone unfamiliar with the US grading system.
As a Historical Interpreter at a living history museum/park area, my job is primarily to teach school children about the Lenape Tribe. The Lenape are a forest-living tribe who were local to this part of the East Coast until the Europeans killed them off or kicked them out and sent them off to Okalahoma. Lenape are also sometimes called “Delaware Indians.”
The average day works something like this:
The kids get off the bus about a half mile from where I actually do the tour. We meet them at the bus and divide the school into manageable groups, and ‘manageable’ is extremely subjective depending on how many guides we have and how tough the crowd is. I lead groups of anywhere between 10 and 60 kids, plus chaperones and teachers. Usually, I have about 30 kids, plus the requisite but usually underperforming supervisory adults.
At the parking lot, we do the hello speech. Please bear in mind that whatever amount of energy the kids seem to be generating when I first get up there, it is my job to generate just a little bit more. I have to be the most animated person when I’m talking or their eyes glaze over and they start kicking each other.
The hello speech usually goes about like this: “Hi! I’m Mrs. Graham, I’ll be your tour guide! What school are you from? (insert yelled name of school). “Really? Great! What grade are you in?” (more yelling) “And have you been studying the Lenape? (yelled response) “Great! Well, let me tell you how it’s going to go today! I’m going to take you FROM the parking lot TO the picnic area where you will drop off your lunches! Then I’m going to take you on our tour. We have two rules I really need you to follow - ONE! I’m the guide! This means that I know where I’m going and you very likely don’t! Therefore, I NEED TO BE IN THE FRONT. DO NOT GO AHEAD OF THE GUIDE! That means whenever we’re going anywhere, you guys stay behind me. Got it?” (yelling). “Great! The second rule is, STAY ON THE PATH! There are rocks you could slip on and poison ivy you could end up with if you don’t STAY ON THE PATH. Anybody want poison ivy? (emphatic yelling in the negative) “Good! I don’t want you to have it either! So, STAY ON THE PATH! Are you ready to go? (deafening screams) “Okay, follow me!”
Having established my position as leader and threatened them with poison ivy, I take the children up to the picnic area and help them stow their lunches in a large green wooden box set there for just that purpose.
At that point, I try to get them started. Sometimes I’m thwarted by a teacher who insists on herding them all to the bathrooms, at which case I lose about 20 minutes to utter chaos.
When I’ve got them ready to go, I jump up on a picnic table. At this point, I either reiterate the rules: "I’m the Guide! STAY BEHIND THE GUIDE and STAY ON THE PATH! or occasionally I add more rules, such as Do NOT throw things at the (geese/chickens/other children) and do NOT throw any (rocks, sticks, whatever the hell they’ve brought with them that’s missile-adaptable)!
I also sometimes throw in rules for the adults, if they appear to require a few: Parents and Teachers please turn your cellphones to SILENT during the tour, so as not to distract the children and please help me keep this group TOGETHER as much as possible! Thanks!
When I’m done giving smiling but very firm instructions to everybody, I jump off the picnic table and start marching them through the woods.
It’s about a half-mile walk to the Lenape stuff, so they have plenty of time to talk to each other, ask me weird questions, demand exact times for lunch and gift shop, forget all the rules (STAY ON THE PATH!) and generally run wild. When we get near the start of the Lenape tour, they all go insane because we have a spirit-representation painted on the trees.
I love those things, because it neatly transfers power back to me. They all want to know what those things are and as a rule, I’m the only one around who can tell them. A child is much more willing to listen when they think you have valuable information.
Incidentally, so are adults.
Curriculum varies by the age of the group. Little kids get bare basics on Lenape culture, we talk more about nature, using what you have available, solving problems of food, water, shelter, etc. The oldest kids get bored by that, so if we get anything above 5th grade or so, we do a lot more stuff about how the Europeans were able to so completely stomp out the Natives.
In general, Lenape tour includes the following exhibits, all strung out along a path in the woods. At each site, I talk for anywhere from 45 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on what’s going on around me. Usually I spend about 5-7 minutes at each site, plus time for questions.
Introduction - can be done anywhere, depending on the crowds. Involves establishing that life was DIFFERENT four hundred years ago and a lot of questions from me to the group to find out what the kids have been learning in class.
Petroglyph - also known as “the rock” - it’s an example of a story carved into stone. This is where we talk about oral tradition and storytelling.
Sweat Lodge - talking about the mechanics of getting clean when there’s no running water and the natural water sources get mighty cold come winter.
Maple Tapping - the process of getting sugar out of trees. This is one we skip if we’re pressed for time or leading the pack of school groups. Whoever is in the front has to keep moving or other groups get stuck behind you and the guides have to improvise stuff to keep the kids from losing interest.
Hunting - an inevitable favorite. Also takes a long time, a lot of information. We talk about who did the hunting (men!) and what they hunted (deer and bear!) and what they used to hunt (bow and arrow!) and I walk around the exhibit showing them examples of bones and fur and fire-starting tools and all the rest of it.
The hunting is exhibit is where the children always ask me what the Lenape used the animals’ eyeballs for. Official Response? Great question! Can anyone think of any possible uses for eyeballs? Real Answer: I have no idea.
Next up is Fur and Leatherworking, where I get to gross them out by talking about using brains to cure skins. (That usually shuts down the eyeball kid.)
Gardening - we talk about corn, beans and squash, also known as the Three Sisters. We talk about Grandma keeping watch to throw rocks at animals that might eat the garden, and, inevitably, the What If questions about grandma killing the animal, killing the people who were gardening, falling off her little watchtower, etc etc etc.
Shaman’s Longhouse - the first indoor exhibit, they always scream when they see the first mannequins dressed as Lenape. We talk about religion and spirituality in very general terms, calling on the spirits to heal people (”If you have a BAD spirit making you sick, you want to call a GOOD spirit to help kick it out!”) and an overview of natural medicines and early healing.
Crafting - aka Making Stuff With What You’ve Got. Baskets, pottery, wood carving, beadwork, etc. We talk about toys and games and where clay comes from. Some guides take *forever* at crafting.
I am not one of them.
Archeology - I hate this site. It’s a simulated archeological dig that takes forever to explain and involves concepts the average 4th grader just can’t quite grasp. We talk about post-molds and going through ancient trash to get clues about daily life. There are some fake human bones. ”No, these are not real bones! These are fake bones, fake bones, and the fake bones tell us…” and fake mastodon bones ”A mastodon is like a big fluffy elephant, like a wooly mammoth, that lived over 12 thousand years ago!”
Archeology takes at least ten minutes no matter what you do.
Next comes the Grave Site- ”No, nobody’s really buried here!” and funeral customs. Sometimes I slip the three clans into this one, if I get a group that’s actually studied them.
Women’s Enclosure - oh, this one is dangerous. This is where we talk about babies, how they were carried, what the customs were to protect them, etc. THIS is where I always get asked where babies come from, what happens if…and how did the Lenape circumcise people, anyway? (Answers: “Same place they do now, ask your parents for details, no ‘what if’ questions right now please” and either ‘sharpened seashells’ or ‘ask your teacher’, depending on the age of the group.)
Ceremonial Circle - always a favorite. This is where I get to tell them about the punishment for naughty children (being picked up by a guy in a spirit costume and carried around the village in a bag of snakes). This is also where I talk about naming, the levels of heaven, depending on how pressed we are for time.
Fishing - by fishing, if I’m not careful, they’re glassy eyed, so I always hop up on a rock and wave my arms around when I talk, which forces them to pay attention because I’m so tall and I’m moving. Men did the fishing, we fished with nets, spears, weirs, fishing poles, bows and arrows…yadda yadda. I also talk about “feet and canoes” as the transportation available to Lenape.
At fishing, someone always asks when lunch is.
From fishing we go up the hill to the actual village part and the Communal Cooking Area. The cooking area is really a filler exhibit that gives you something to talk about if someone is in the Longhouse ahead of you.
Longhouse - The longhouse is always fun. Men built them, women owned them. Even the adults get a kick out of that one. Marriage customs, divorce customs, matrilineal society, Mohawk hairstyles, natural disasters and rebuilding - the long house lecture is varied by the group.
Hands On Area - they pound corn, touch furs, and throw corn darts. I hate corn darts, and I delegate a chaperone to make sure nobody puts anyone else’s eye out.
Language and Wrap Up - “hello”, “thank you” and “your welcome” in Lenape and then final questions.
After that, I take them back through the woods to the picnic area for lunch, and they become their teacher’s problem once again. The guides customarily gather for hot chocolate and commiseration before we usher our schools back to their buses or bail out and head home ourselves.
I have learned a few things doing this job:
If I get a “What if” question anywhere before Hunting, it is best to switch over to the special “What If Tour", in which I shoot most of the usual What Ifs down before they get a chance to ask.
Anything that comes out of a child’s mouth that starts with “One time..” has to be immediately shut down or you’ll be there forever. This job has enabled me to spot a story disguised as a question from a mile off. Children -and adults- are always a little shocked if you cut them off, but a little shock is worth if it keeps everything moving on schedule.
If I stand in one place, everyone’s eyes glaze over. Thus, I do a lot of walking around inside the exhibits. I also wave my arms a lot and gesture when I talk. I am frequently asked if I am Italian, which I am not.
Teachers are useless for keeping discipline, they expect the tour guide to do it. As a result I identify children by what they’re wearing (“You with the red hat”) and have no qualms about moving one child away from the other, telling people to hush up and sending a persistent offender to walk WITH the teacher. Teachers hate that, but it gets the problem child out of my hair for at least two sites.
Chaperones are not to be trusted. Ever. They ask questions that throw off the age-scale of the tour, they never really turn their cell-phones to silent even though you asked them to, and they’ll distract the kids by chatting with each other if you let them. I have no problem telling the adults to be quiet if they’re mucking up my tour, which for some reason shocks them mightily. Every single time.
All children of any age are always starving, cold, tired and wanting to know when they’re going to see an animal. The proper responses to questions about lunch, the weather and local fauna are: “Not yet. Yes, it’s chilly today” and “Most animals avoid large groups of loud children.”
All told, the tour takes about an hour-and-a-half, though it can be cut down to a speedy 45 minutes if there was a bus problem or it’s raining really hard. The ability to project one’s voice is priceless. You have to be louder than they are or they walk all over you.
And the last thing? At least one child, or one adult, in every group will corner you to talk about their Native American Ancestry. By the second week of any season I will have had two Cherokees, a Crow, a couple of Sioux and a whole pile of ‘one-sixteenth’ of some tribe they’re not sure the name of.
When in doubt: smile, nod, and remind them about the poison ivy.