The Artist Explorer

The Age of Exploration.

What do you immediately think of as you read those four words?

More than likely, you would throw out some of the more famous explorer's names and where their expeditions took place.

Some of you might tell me about their goals such as claiming land for the monarch who financed the expedition and how in the case of some bringing Christianity to the natives was in most cases a guise to seize lands and riches.

You most certainly wouldn't be wrong, but as many expeditions to the New World continued more people arrived who weren't just fortune hunters, soldiers and religious men wanting to save souls.

Sometimes the monarchs themselves would order certain people to go along,  and in the case of explorers Jean Ribault an Rene Laudonnere, the French monarch ordered an artist to go along and capture not riches or natives but capture images of the things he saw in the New World.

The artist was Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues who lived between 1533 and 1588.

Le Moyne went along on Ribault's expedition in 1566 to what we would consider to be north Florida near the St. John River. Ribault hoped to establish a colony near present day Jacksonville, and he ended up building Fort Caroline.

Le Moyne not only served as an artist but was very useful as a cartographer.

The expedition erected a stone marker near the mouth of the St. John River which happened to be a standard French marker used in the New World. It was a hexagonal column of white stone engraved with the royal standard. Eventually, Le Moyne writes that the Timuca, a Native American tribe in the area, began to venerate the marker as if it was an idol.

Eventually, relations with the natives soured, some members of the expedition grew weary of the leaders and led mini revolts, and rival expeditions from other nations caused problems.

In 1565, a group of Spaniards led by Pedro Menendez de Aviles attacked the men at Fort Caroline.

Le Moyne made his escape with a few others, but only one of his drawings survived. What we do have are engravings which are recreations based on Le Moyne's memory. They are important because they happen to be the earliest images from the New World. Engravings of his work exist today as only one of his New World drawings was saved.  I've posted one of the engravings at the beginning of this post. Le Moyne also penned an account of the voyage titled Brevis Narration Eorum Quae in Florida Americai Provincial Gallis Acciderunt in 1591.

Le Moyne never returned to the New World. He devoted the last years of his life creating botanical art.

You can see more engravings based on Le Moyne's drawings here.

Another great source you could explore is The New World.

Static History...It Doesn't Exist

We would like to think that history is static meaning that it never changes. 

We would like to think the history we learn in school will be the same history our children learn, but it can't be.  

History does change.

Time marches on creating new history and existing history changes over time as well.   Each new generation analyzes past events based on their context - what they are currently experiencing.  The further we get away from a particular event points of view change, new variables come into play shaping the events, and attitudes shift over time. 

New resources such as journals, letters, etc. come to light all the time to give new interpretations.  New archaeological evidence is discovered that can change historical events dramatically.

Last year an interesting discovery was written regarding Africans and the Western Hemisphere.  It seems 49 skeletal remains were found by archaeologist working at the colony of La Isabela in present-day Dominican Republic.  The colony was founded by Columbus during his second voyage to the New World in 1493. 

1700 souls helped settle the colony and when 300 remained due mainly to disease and starvation Columbus finally abandoned the place.

Last year the reports...this one included...advised two of the remains found were thought to be of African descent.   If this is proven we could be teaching students within a few years that Africans reached the New World possibly 150 years before we previously thought, and it might possibly turn out they came here of their own free will since their arrival pre-dates known slavery.  The last update regarding the testing and analysis of the situation is the one I linked to above.  I haven't been able to find a new update.

When I was in elementary school Christopher Columbus had a very tall pedestal and went from THE man who discovered America to one of the men who discovered America.   Then there was the discussion regarding how you can discover a place where folks were already living there, and the most important change in the story came about when we began teaching how natives were treated once Columbus arrived.  Many educators were actually criticized for giving the Columbus myth a black eye, yet we cannot keep teaching the same story once new details are discovered.

Yes, history changes.

Sometimes history changes because corrections have to be made.  The other day I was writing an installment of my local history column and discovered a slight error regarding the travels of Benjamin Hawkins, an Indian Agent, through the wilderness of Georgia and Alabama in the early 1800s.

You can find my post, Credit Where Credit Is Due here.

Slip of the Tongue

Several months ago I was embroiled in an online conversation at a local forum I visit from time to time. The topic of discussion had twisted and turned until one of the participants…someone who normally makes it his job in life to rub everyone the wrong way…. made mention that there was no purpose for Latin.
He said, “Latin is a dead language.”

When I read what he had written I stared at my computer screen a little dumbfounded because in my eyes and in the eyes of several others Latin does live on since it is the root language for Italian, French, Spanish and English. It is also very much in use and spoken in the legal field, medical field, in academic circles, the Catholic church uses it for certain papal bulls and mass is often conducted in Latin, AND certain members of the clergy speak it very well, so it isn’t dead as a door nail, is it?

I had a little fun sparring with my online friend as I sought to educate him a little regarding Latin, but you know? There are just some people you can’t teach…..no matter what. I did have fun for several weeks posting comments to everything he wrote by writing my comments in Latin with a little English translation, just so he had an idea regarding what I was saying.

Languages can be extinct. Those are languages that are no longer spoken. There are approximately 82 known languages that can be termed recently extinct languages – like Arwi, Modern Gutnish, and Wappo. Yes, Wappo…..I kid you not.

Languages can also be dead. Those are languages that are no longer spoken by anyone as their main language. Therefore, using that distinction……I have to admit Latin is a dead language since there are no native speakers, but it does live on in so many arenas as I mentioned above. There are also several devotees to the Latin language. So much so they have even created a section of Wikipedia written in Latin with over 40,000 articles to date!

Recently, there was a new discovery regarding an extinct language……a very important discovery right here in what used to be termed the New World.

Archaeologists have been excavating the ruins of the Magdalena de Cao Viejo church at the El Brujo Archaeological Complex, just north of Trujillo, in northern Peru for some time now. El Brujo is actually an ancient monument of the Moche culture and dates back to some point between 1 and 600 A.D. but the church there dates to colonial times. Researchers believe indigenous people were forced to inhabit the area by Spaniards, probably for purposes of conversion to Christianity. At some point the roof of the church collapsed more than likely in the mid-to late 17th century, and papers kept in the library or church office were trapped staying buried until the last couple of years.

In fact, a very important letter was discovered in 2008 but was not divulged to the public until it could be examined. Recently the journal, American Anthropologist, published a piece concerning the letter.

Jeffrey Quilter, an archaeologist at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology told Reuters, “Our investigations determined that this piece of paper records a number system in a language that has been lost for years…..the language appears to have been influenced by Quechua, an ancient tongue still spoken by millions of people across the Andes….the language in the letter could be the written version of a language colonial-era Spaniards referred to in historical writings as Pescadora, for the fishermen on Peru’s northern coast who spoke it.

Until the letter was found no other evidence of the Pescadora language has been found.

The letter is also important because it gives evidence of numbers being translated which clearly shows the lost language’s numerical system was a ten-based, or decimal system like English. An article at National Geographic advises while the Inca used a ten-based system, many other cultures did not: the Maya, for example, used a base of 20.

Gee, I can’t wait until an online translator for Pescadora is available, so I can have a little fun with my online friends!
IBM has a Virtual Archaeology site for the El Brujo Archaeological Complex here.

Northwest Possible

The search for the Northwest Passage, a route that was eventually mapped and traveled through the Arctic Ocean connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is one of those ongoing events in history that teaches what real desire, real guts, and real determination is all about. In fact, many historians point to Sir Humphrey Gilbert as the person who coined the name Northwest Passage as early as 1576 when control of trade was the inspiration that spurred the explorers attempt to find a passage. It took nearly 300 hundred years of continuous searching before the passage was found.

Yes…yes….I know….there was an element of greed, power, and thirst for adulation but the men who kept going out time and time again weren’t just power or attention hungry. These were men who kept going out time and time again even after the growing body of evidence pointed to the fact that all that awaited them was another dead end and possibly death.

When it became evident after many years of searching that there was no water route across the United States the explorers began to head north in their search. If you travel far enough the Northwest Passage does exist. Unfortunately, the waters are frozen for most of the year and the quest to finally make it through from the Atlantic side to the Pacific claimed many a life.

Look at the painting I’ve posted below:

The painting is titled The North-West Passage by John Everett Millais and it hangs in the Tate Gallery in London. Notice the maps and other mementos of the sea that surround the old man and the younger girl. Notice the man’s clenched fist. Millais meant for this painting to elicit public sentiment and represents British frustration at their failure to conquer the passage.

Millais completed his painting in 1874. Twenty-nine years earlier Sir John Franklin had gone missing along with the crews of the HMS Erebus and Terror during a Northwest Passage expedition. In 1850, Robert McClure and the crew of the HMS Investigator were sent out to search for Franklin. McClure and his men overwintered in the Arctic three different times before they finally circumnavigated the Americas by discovering and traversing the Northwest Passage over ice and via ship. McClure and his men had to abandon their ship when it became caught in the ice during their second journey and just recently the ship was discovered in 36 feet of water in relatively good shape.

See the article here.

The find reminds me of the fictional move National Treasure and the location of the Charlotte……a ship that held important clues for Nicholas Cage and is a wonderful connection for kids to make between history in a book and history in real life.

Staking My Claim...Again

Some things just bear repeating.

I’ve been at the beach…again…for the last couple of days, so it’s more than appropriate to share a repeat of an earlier post written on this very same beach three years ago this month…..

Mr. EHT and I were up and out very early this morning enjoying yet another sunrise on MY beach.

It is not lost on me how things change….and how they remain the same.

Enjoy my post I Conquer This Beach in the Name of ElementaryHistoryTeacher!

MY St. Augustine

I just returned from St. Augustine, Florida to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary. It has everything this history teacher loves….lots of history and the beach as well. The picture I’ve posted above was made as we were leaving the beach area and looks over the historic area of St. Augustine. You can just make out the buildings over the trees....

Say “St. Augustine” and you might instantly think of its designation as the oldest continuously occupied European established city and oldest port in the continental United States. However, if you told me that the city was founded by Ponce de Leon on his search for the much ballyhooed Fountain of Youth I’d have to pull out my big red marker and place an X on that lovely forehead of yours.

No, the credit of founding St. Augustine does not go to Ponce de Leon. In fact, the idea that he even landed on the North American continent at St. Augustine is still heavily debated by many history scholars. While some argue St. Augustine was the place others believe he came ashore south of St. Augustine at a place known as Ponce de Leon Inlet or even further south at Melbourne Beach in 1513. Yes, old Poncey was looking for the Fountain of Youth but even that is debated since there is no known connection between Ponce de Leon and the supposed Fountain of Youth. The dots were connected by history writers after his death and the facts are on shaky ground.

The current touristy Fountain of Youth location in St. Augustine is merely a tribute to the story…..a story….a story….no facts, my dear history lover. No facts. It is a good story though. :)
The credit for founding St. Augustine goes to Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1565. He was a Spanish admiral and pirate hunter.

You might tell me that St. Augustine was attacked by the British in 1702 and again in 1740 by the colony of Georgia’s own James Oglethorpe as he led the British in the Siege of St. Augustine during the War of Jenkin’s Ear. Yes, an ear….men will fight a war of every little thing, won’t they?

You might want to remind me St. Augustine had the first free community of ex-slaves in 1738 or that the city was in the hands of Loyalists during the American Revolution serving as the location where three signers of the Declaration of Independence cooled their heels on the British dime.

You might want me to remember the large number of Greek settlers in the area or the Minorcans whose story resembles that of the Cajuns in Louisiana.

You might want me to remember St. Augustine as the location of the fortress Castillo de San Marcos which was built by the Spanish and later renamed Fort Marion after Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion of American Revolution fame. Over time the fort housed such notables as Osceola, John Horse, and the daughter of Geronimo was born at Fort Marion.

A modern thinking person such as yourself might want me to know St. Augustine became a winter resort of the wealthy due to Henry Flagler and his railroad. You might even want me to know that St. Augustine abounds in little known and untold Black History that has only come to light in recent times such as the fact that the U.S. Signal Corp had a training facility there that trained the Tuskegee Airmen.

Yes, yes, yes….you could tell me all about St. Augustine, but this past weekend all I cared about was my companion for the last twenty-five years, my nice bed and breakfast (which I strongly recommend to all my friends and family…no children allowed though), my nice private pool, and the beach……MY beach…..not Ponce de Leon’s ….not Pedro Menendez de Aviles’….mine, mine, mine, ALL MINE. :)

Tools of the Trade: Study Guide

When I began teaching one of the first “real world” moments came to me when I met with parents at conference time especially when the student had a “C” or worse in my class. I’d ask parents:

*Has your child been bringing home his/her textbook and reading a little each night?
*Has your child asked for your help regarding the unit vocabulary?
*Have you seen your child’s Social Studies folder?

Invariably the answers would be:

*I thought they couldn’t bring their book home, or…..textbook? What textbook?
*What vocabulary words? You mean his/her spelling words?
*What notebook? You mean his/her Trapper Keeper I picked up at Walmart?

At this point I’d bring out my copy of the state objectives for social studies and I would go over the items students were to master. As of last year our standards are now printed in our textbook so that makes it a bit easier to share with students and parents. Most parents are simply blown away by what their child must know at the fourth grade level....sometimes I am as well.

In Georgia, fourth and fifth graders complete the very same content they will see again in their high school American History course. Fourth graders journey from Native Americans prior to 1500 to 1860…just shy of the Civil War, and fifth graders continue by beginning with the Civil War and on through present day. It can be quite a daunting journey for students and their parents who are not used to the large amount of content, new vocabulary terms, and intricate details. For example, the new standards for third grade contain 10 main standards with 25 elements. The new fourth grade standards show 16 main standards with 42 very detailed elements. From third to fourth students are expected to take a skip, leap, and a very high jump in the amount of content the state of Georgia wishes to cram in little heads. You can view Georgia’s fourth grade standards here, and fifth grade standards here.

For the last several years Georgia Standards in all subject areas have been revamped and then slowly rolled out by subject matter. The 2008-2009 school year is the year Social Studies standards are being rolled out. Realistically there is nothing new for me and my fourth and fifth grade colleagues other than the stopping and starting points involving the Civil War (I have always taught the Civil War since I began teaching fourth grade). The other main difference with these “new” standards is a few things have been deleted or worded a bit different. For example, in the old standards I was to make sure students knew about the Native Americans groups in South America….Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. Now that standard is gone, yet magically these native groups appear from the fog to become the nemesis of various Spanish conquistadors.

Getting back to my study guide I knew early on in my teaching that I had to provide something for parents to use as tool. I also needed a tool to help students get an overview regarding what we would be studying for the unit, and I found that the study guide could serve to help me as well. By providing the study guide I indicate I’m willing to help, willing to provide more information, and I’m there for parents. Once I’ve “taught” parents to look for the study guide many of the phone calls, notes in their child’s agenda book, and emails cease because the study guide has everything a student and parent needs in order to be successful with the content.

The image I’ve placed here with this post is a typical study guide for one of my units. If you click on it you will get a much larger image. I’m also reproducing the text for you below if you would like to cut and paste.

Over the years I’ve had to tweak my study guides depending upon vocabulary changes, a new textbook adoption, and even due to the lesson plan format requirements my school system metes out. This particular study guides goes along with the Learning Focused theories hawked by Max Thompson….notice I have an over-arching essential question for the entire unit and further down a set of key questions that also serve as the various lesson questions.

Essential Question: What was the Age of Exploration, and what effect did it have on the Americas?

Following the essential question are the standard elements for the particular topic. I think it is important for students and parents to know exactly what is expected. Students cannot hit a target unless they are shown where the target is. Reading through the standards I’m sure you understand that nine and ten year olds would not understand the language. This is why I generally spend the time following a unit test handing out the new study guides, and I go over it in depth with the kids. We find the verbs in each standard….describe, explain. We discuss various words in the standards such as reasons, obstacles, and accomplishments to determine if we know what they are and so on through each and every standard. Sometimes I have students write a clue word or words out to the side of each standard to job their memory. Here are the standards as they appear on my study guide:

Standards: Students should be able to:

*Describe the reasons for, obstacles to, and accomplishments of the Spanish, French, and English explorations including the explorations of Cabot, Balboa, Ponce de Leon, Columbus, Hudson, and Cartier.

*Describe examples of cooperation and conflict between Europeans and Native Americans

*Describe how the early explorers adapted, or failed to adapt to various physical environments in which they traveled.

*Explain how the physical geography of each colony helped determine economic activities practiced therein

*Describe opportunity costs and their relationship to decision making across time (such as decisions to send expeditions to the New World).

The next two sections of the study guide are fairly simple…..I provide students with a date for their unit test, and I provide the textbook pages. The page numbers help the parents out more than the students. Students cannot go home and say they forgot or more importantly cannot tell their parents I didn’t tell them. My rear end is covered because parents know I always give a study guide at the beginning of a unit…..come Hell or high water. Here are the test and textbook sections:

Final Unit Test: The unit test will be given on Wednesday, November 1st.

Textbook: This unit of study is presented in the following pages of our textbook: 84-119.

As I stated before the key questions serve as my lesson questions for the unit. This study guide indicates six questions so I have at least six lessons in the unit. This doesn’t mean my unit is six days. Lessons can last two, three, four, even a whole sometimes depending on the content. Sometimes I allow the content itself to drive the number of lessons or the lesson question. Sometimes our text does this. Notice the sixth question involving latitude and longitude. This is a skill students should know, and it happens to be a lesson included in our text so in this instance the text drove my decision to add the question/lesson. Notice how I explain a little about the key questions. Students should be able to answer these questions following a lesson. The purpose of the lessson is to find the answer to question. I begin the lesson by identifying the question, and I close the lesson by revisiting the question and we look at possible answers. Here are the key questions:

Key Questions: The following questions will help students review the information presented during the unit of study. Answers can be located in the textbook or class notes:
1. How did early European, African, and Asians trade?
2. What new technological advances led to the discovery of North and South America?
3. Who were the early explorers in North America and what did they discover?
4. What was the effect of continued exploration in North and South America?
5. What types of people lived in New Spain and what kinds of lives did they lead?
6. How can lines of latitude and longitude help us locate places on Earth?

The final section of the study guide is for vocabulary. Notice I have divided it by lesson and have seperated the words into columns. I also provide some hints regarding where definitions can be found. While many of these words are in the text I often have words that aren’t. Students have to resort to using their all important notebook which I teach is the most important tool they have for learning. When we go over the study guide I say each and every vocabulary word and then ask students to repeat them after me. This particular activity is usually fun as I try to use proper pronuciation of the Spanish and Portuguese names. We all usually resort to fits of giggles as the kids try to pronounce the names like I do. Some are really intently serious about it. Students usually ask to go over the names one more time.

Here is the vocabulary section (I only included the first column of words….you can refer to the image for the rest):

Vocabulary: You should be able to identify the following terms in multiple choice format. Students can locate the words in their textbook or class notes as we progress through the unit. Vocabulary flashcards for each word including definitions and illustrations are due on test day.

lesson 1
kingdom
Ghanacaravan
Mali
Mansa Musa
Songhai
merchant
Marco Polo
Kublai Khan
the Silk Road
Zheng He

A Couple of Links to Share

When I begin to teach my unit on the Age of Exploration I’m moving students from a purely North American focus (Native American tribes prior to 1500 A.D.) to one that includes Europe and Africa. Some of my posts regarding exploration can be seen here.

We spend a few days in the beginning discussing the status of the world at the time and going back a bit in time to discuss the rise of African kingdoms and their role in trade networks. One of the kingdoms we discuss is the Kingdom of Aksum as discussed here. Invariably a question regarding the Queen of Sheba will come up. I provide some links regarding her factual or mythical existence (you get to choose) over at Got Bible.

I have a rather large collection of blogs authored by fellow Georgians over at Georgia on My Mind. They cover a wide range of topics from history and religion to local or national politics. There are craft blogs, photo blogs, and even a few “here’s what I did today” blogs. Recently I discovered one that I want to share here with you. It’s a wonderful source for lovers of history.

The name of the blog is Mary Zelda. The description on the blog states it is a story of a rural southern family as recollected by a child who wasn’t even born for the first 37 years and related in the voice of Mary, who was there. The blog also describes itself as a fictive account from the first half of the 20th century illustrated by actual photos….and I love this part….characters and events in this story are real. Conversations are remembered or imagined.

Quite simply Mary Zelda is a wonderful and creative way to catalog and remember family history. I’m most impressed and see all sorts of ways it could be used in a classroom covering the early 20th century. Please go check her out!

If you have come by expecting my wordless image to be up I’m going to try really hard to be a good girl in ‘08 and not post it until after midnight on Tuesdays or wait until Wednesday morning.

Prince Henry: Wealth Builder or School Administrator?

Before we begin discussing Portuguese exploration I often direct students’ attention to the world map in their text. Certainly I could use the map at the front of the room, but their personal text brings the world much closer to their vantage point. I want them to explore the map close up. Rotating through 28 kids to peruse the world presented at the front of the room would simply take too long..

Students examine their maps and make observations. I ask how many students watch the nightly news. A few hands go up….pretty good results for a group of nine year olds. I ask them if they see any of the countries they’ve heard mentioned in the news. They volunteer several. Then I ask students which countries are the most powerful. Some choose the largest countries while others choose the ones they hear repeatedly on the news. Finally, I remind students the time period we are studying is the late 1400s and 1500s. I ask, “Which countries were the most powerful when the explorers began their expeditions?” Some students stated the same group of countries as before. Make sense, doesn't it?

In all the years I’ve completed this exercise I have never had a student identify the country of Portugal, but she was a real powerhouse in the early days of the Age of Exploration. When I ask students to zero in on Portugal they are amazed a country so small in comparison to others led the series of expeditions that would became so rampant in the 1500s by the Spanish and English.

Last week’s wordless image is a wind rose located at Sagres which is supposedly on the grounds of the famed school of navigation funded by Prince Henry of Portugal.

Prince Henry was a prince of Portugal from the house of Aviz. He was the third son of King John I and had a connection to England’s royal family through his mother, Philippa. She was the daughter of John of Gaunt.

Like any person of historical note there are facts and myths attached to his life.

As a young man Prince Henry made a name for himself when in 1415 he encouraged his father to capture Ceuta, a port held by Muslims of North Africa. By taking and holding the port Prince Henry toned down the raids led by the Barbary Pirates against trade ships and Portugal was able to have an inroad to the Saharan trade routes. Prince Henry was always encouraged by the legend of Prester John and wanted to fund expeditions to locate the source of the gold Africans used in trade.

Prince Henry established himself at Sagres Point, also referred to as the end of the word, as this was the last piece of land that was close to the most southwestern point of Europe. From Sagres Prince Henry sent his ships out to trade, explore, and gather data. We can know with certainty he hired cartographers who took the information from sailors and charted land masses. As knowledge grew additional expeditions were more successful because they had up-to-date charts and information.

The process of data mining and data presentation is how many believe the legend of a great school at Sagres began. Peter Russell, in his book, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: a Life (2000) presents this theory, and it holds water with me as well.

You can visit Sagres today but there is little there to suggest a school on the grand scale that most texts suggest. In fact, the port Prince Henry used for his expeditions was Lisbon.

Many have said Prince Henry was well educated and had a scientific mind that eventually led to the invention of the caravel. While these are nice and tidy bits of knowledge there is no foundation of any of this in the historical records and some sources such as the writer Azurara had reasons to be biased. He was the chief archivist of the Portuguese kingdom. It would not have boded well for him to write anything that made Prince Henry or his family average.

So, if there was such an outstanding school it would seem the chief historian of the House of Aviz would devote many lines to the description of the school, however, some scholars state that the first mention of the school of navigation that is mentioned in our textbooks today was actually in a 17th Century text of English authorship….The Foundations of the Portuguese Empire by Diffie and Winus.

At any rate….the explorer who never explored was important, the knowledge his sailors gathered was important, and his role is worthy to be studied.

The Door of No Return

This week’s wordless image portrayed stone walls, a narrow passage way, and a doorway that opened onto a body of water. I’ve placed a similar picture here, but it is at a different location. Most of the comments centered upon an optimistic point of view---- Qtpies7 thought the doorway meant an escape, kat said she thought it was a doorway to freedom, and Alasandra thought it looked similar to a fort in Massachusetts. The image inspired others to think about relaxation, a volcano, and someone questioned were they going out or in.

Until the location of the image was correctly identified by Keith as the Island of Goree off the coast of Senegal the picture posed a postive impression. No one considered the image could represent something sad and tragic.

I’m going to explain the image by telling you a little story…..

The year is 1540. You are an African tribesman going about your daily business early one morning. Let’s say you are sitting outside your hut working on a basket that you will use to store food. Suddenly you are surrounded by fierce looking warriors from a neighboring kingdom your chief has been at war with. Now you are their prisoner, and as the custom dictates you are now the property or slave of the neighboring king. You travel at the point of several spears to a location far, far away from your hut, your village, and your family. No one saw you being taken, and you were unable to say goodbye.

After a couple of days of walking your captors meet up with a group of very light-skinned men. You have never seen people such as these. They smell funny and have hair all over their faces, chests, and arms. Strange sounds come from their throats that make no sense. Your original captors leave you with the light skinned men who immediately place shackels and chains around your neck, wrists, and ankles. They use long sticks to prod you along the path and occaisionally slam the sticks against your body when you don’t move fast enough.

Eventually you meet up with other light skinned men who also have prisoners. You scan the men, women, and children who are also in chains for a recognizable face, but they are just as strange as the light-skinned men, but as your eyes you realize they are just as confused and scared as you are.

At the end of the journey you know you are coming upon the coast because you can smell the sea. Suddenly you notice a very large building looming ahead. It is the largest structure you have ever seen. It’s not made of plant material like your hut…..it’s constructed of rock and rises from the ground two or three stories. The noise level is very high as prisoners like you are screaming and crying. There are wagons and carts going this way and that and many, many more light-skinned people are moving about. You are forced to enter the large stone building and eventually you are thrown into a very small room with several other prisoners. There is no window and a wall that you can see through at certain points prevents you from walking out.



Time passes very slowly. You loose track of how many days and nights you remain in the room. There is no place to relieve yourself and the food that is thrown to you and your cell-mates is often unedible. You begin to fight over it with the other prisoners even though you know you can’t it.

At one point the barrier keeping you in the cell is opened and the light-skinned men come in. They use their sticks to push and prod everyone out into the passageway. You are lined up and forced to walk. The passage is so narrow you could touch the walls on either side. Up ahead you begin to see light…the first light since entering this evil place. You continue to hobble towards it with the others. As you get closer to the light you begin to blink and your eyes water. Suddenly you find yourself through the opening and into the warmth and brightness of full Sun. You breathe in and find that there is no more smell of humanity and death.

Unfortunately, what you don’t realize is you have just walked through the door of no return and are about to be placed in the hold of a Portuguese slave ship…….

My original wordless image is from the House of Slaves on the island of Goree. The story goes that slaves would leave the many, many Portuguese trading centers along the West African coast via the doors that led directly to the slave ships. There is some question regarding the authenticity of the doorways which are usually designated today for tourists to see. In some instances scholars are not certain slaves actually walked through the designated doorways, but they had to leave the trading centers somehow and the doorways are powerful images that draw many African Americans each year as tourists.

Some historians have stated as many as 12 million Africans were transported from their homes into slavery. Of that number it is estimated only 26,000 (still a large number) actually passed through Goree’s House of Slaves which was built in 1776. There is a great Time Magazine article about the island found here.

While slavery in Africa had exisited for hundreds of years prior to European exploration we have the Portuguese to thank for the exportation of African slaves from the west coast of the continent beginning as early as 1444.

Elmina Castle is another Portuguese trade center built on the Gulf of Guinea. It is the oldest European buildng in existence below the Sahara. The location of Elmina was due to a gold mine in the area which of course, was exploited by the Europeans.

Eventually the Dutch seized all Portguese possessions in Africa in 1637, however, the slave trade from Elmina continued until 1873 when the castle became the posssession of the British Empire.


I’m still thinking about the original impression my readers had of my image. Why so positive? I’ve used this same exercise in the classroom with students and had similar results. Going through a doorway often means a transition into something better, and I’m fairly postive none of Wednesdays participants have ever entered into a slave situation, so they have no context of what it means. Of course, I have had the jokester occasionally who quipped entering the door of my classroom is often entering into servitude.

History can often be a difficult subject to teach in that students have no frame of reference for certain time periods in history. This is where building empathy comes into play. I often try to place students in the role of the historical figure I’m trying to explain whether it is a slave or slave owner.

These concepts are so foreign to students that they can’t relate to either without stories, role play, and much introspection.

Digging For the Truth: Who Built Great Zimbabwe?

As early as the 1500s Portuguese writers passed along tales of a great stone complex located far inland on the African continent. One writer in particular, Joao de Barros, a Portuguese historian, referred to the stone complex as Axum, the fabled city of the Queen of Sheba. Other writers theorized the complex was Ophir, which is said to be the place where the Queen of Sheba acquired the gold for Solomon’s Temple. Unfortunately in the 19th century archeologists were more concerned with ignoring evidence and rewriting history to fit their own racial views.

Adam Renders, an American-born German hunter and explorer found the stone remains in 1867. He found structures built with granite slabs that fit so tightly together that there was no need for mortar.

In 1871, Carl Mauch, a German geologist, hypothesized that a section of the complex other archeologist refer to as the Great Enclosure was built especially for the queen.

Many of these 19th century archeologists found it difficult to admit Africans themselves had the know how to build such an intricate set of structures. Adam Renders stated Great Zimbabwe “could never have been built by blacks”. Cecil Rhodes, the architect of British imperialism, visited the site in the 1890s where he advised Bantu chiefs that he had come to see “the ancient temple that once upon a time belonged to white men.”

Theodore Bent, who was hired by Rhodes to work the Great Zimbabwe site thought the complex had been built by “a northern race coming from Arabia…” He was referring to the Phoenicians or Egyptians.

White explorers and archeologists continued to believe and promote the dribble even when there was clear evidence that local people had inhabited the complex for some time. There were no artifacts found that would have given evidence to whites building or living at the complex. Artifacts that were found included pottery relics, bronze and copper spearheads, adzes, axes, and tools for working with gold, and they all pointed to the Bantu people.

Finally, in 1906, David Randall MacIver began to see the light. He stated the complex was “unquestionable African in every detail” describing mud dwellings belonging to a period “which is fixed by foreign imports as, in general, medieval.” His findings did not sit well with British Imperialist who basically banned further archeological study of the site for approximately twenty-five years.

Gertrude Caton-Thompson, another British archeologist, identified Chinese and Persian artifacts on site as imports dating from the 1300s to the 1500s. She also found large numbers of articles produced locally by excavating down to the bedrock. She found evidence of Africans living at the site through each layer of earth and published her findings in her book The Zimbabwe Culture: Ruins & Reactions (1931). She based her work on the found artifacts, the dwellings themselves, and the oral traditions of the people living in the area at the time.

Once myths take hold, however, they are hard to eradicate. In the 1960s, Ian Smith controlled a minority white government that broke away and became Southern Rhodesia. The falsification of Great Zimbabwe continued. Guidebooks were printed that showed tribal leaders bowing low to Europeans. Visitors were led to believe Great Zimbabwe was built by Europeans. Rumors continued that Great Zimbabwe was built and maintained by foreigners continued until Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.

Radiocarbon dating in the 1960s shows The Great Zimbabwe is not ancient, but there is no evidence that is was built or inhabited by white men. An accepted view today is the complex was built by the Shona who are the ancestors of the Bantu people.

References consulted for this post include Great Zimbabwe by Peter Gazlake (1973) and The Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites by C. Wilson (1996)

What's In a Name?

One of the great things about serving on a textbook adoption committee is you get to review and usually keep several editions of various textbooks that can become valuable resources.

It’s always interesting to see how the different publishing companies treat certain events. Today my interest is drawn to Giovanni Cabato, or John Cabot.

Houghton Mifflin’s Social Studies provides a three page discussion of Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Exchange. The text then launches into the expeditions of Pedro Alvarez Cabral (1500), Amerigo Vespucci (1499), Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1501), and Ferdinand Magellan (1519) and mentions the map created by Martin Waldseemuller in 1507 (the map pictured with this post) that is credited with using the word America for this first time. Explorer Amerigo Vespucci is the usual choice to explain where the word America came from, right?

Scott Foresman’s Building a Nation also provides three pages to Christopher Columbus and includes the Columbian Exchange. Some of the same explorers are mentioned above as well. Harcourt’s Horizons, however, is the only textbook reviewed by my committee that mentions the explorer Cabato. The text in Harcourt’s book states, “In 1497, the king of England paid an Italian sailor named Giovanni Cabato to lead an expedition….”
How sad…..students in school systems across the nation who are using Houghton Mifflin (my school system) or Scott Foresman’s book and elementary teachers who have more background in math, language arts, or science are loosing out on a great accomplishment and very interesting story.

One of the activities I often provided in my classroom is to allow students to peruse various texts and look for the inclusion of the name Giovanni Cabato. It’s a great way to prove to students that textbooks are a great tool for learning, but they aren’t the only tool.

Sometimes…..we (meaning students and teachers) have to get out of the book for the rest of the story. Cabato’s story gives us that opportunity and provided me with the details behind my wordless image this week.

Cabato’s expedition set a course that was much further north than Columbus, and most sources agree that he reached what we refer to today as Newfoundland. Like Columbus, Cabato was certain he had reached Cathay (referring to East Asia/China) and returned to England telling tales of the fish that could be simply scooped up by the bucketfuls.

Now….getting back to the wordless image. It is a coat of arms belonging to one Richard Ameryk (also spelled Amerike) of Long Ashton and Bristol, England. He was a merchant, served three times as the King’s Customs Officer, and served as the sheriff of Bristol in 1497. There is documentation that Ameryk was involved in paying Cabato his pension as the seaman following his receipt of a letter of authority from King Henry VII directing Cabato to set sail and claim lands for the crown. Ameryk may have been involved with the building of Cabato’s ship, the Matthew as well.

It is a common argument today (and a rather fun one) that America was not named for Amerigo Vespucci, but was actually named for Richard Ameryk in recognition for the help he gave to Cabato. A book by Sam Llewellyn titled Small Parts in History mentions a calendar found in the city of Bristol for the year 1497 and it mentions America by name. This would be two years before Vespucci ever set sail for the New World and ten years before Waldseemuller’s map.

Many state the story lacks real hard evidence, however, Rodney Broome’s books titled Terra Incognita (2001) and The Briton America Is Named For (2002) are interesting reads for further details.

I love this story simply because it doesn’t matter which theory you agree with because every point of proof seems to have a point that counters the information. This provides a terrific opportunity for students. They love puzzles and they love detective work. In the past I’ve given students the basics of the story, provided a few bookmarked weblinks and asked them to find out as much as they can in teams. Once they have collected the information they analyze and discuss the facts to come up with a position regarding who America was named for. The position and the facts they use to support it become the basis for a position paper.

I Conquer This Beach in the Name of Elementaryhistoryteacher!

The beaches along the Florida and Alabama Gulf coast are lovingly referred to as the Redneck Riviera. It’s true---you see more cars with Georgia tags in Panama City Beach than you do on an Atlanta interstate. Dear Hubby is on a fishing trip up the beach with the men from church while Daughter Dear and I are ensconced in a condo somewhere between Pensacola and Mobile Bay. It’s my first time here and I want to come back. It’s simply lovely.

It’s fall ya’ll, but summer is apparently still tugging away at folk’s hearts. It would appear that my compatriots here on the beach are all Southerners----our accent gives it away, you know. We’re a mixed bunch from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky. We’ve all been true to our Southern selves as we have smiled politely, said our how do you dos and where ya froms before retreating quietly to our own plots of sand. We’ve all claimed our small little colonies. Individuals and groups, large and small, huddle around their rented chairs and umbrellas with assorted coolers, bags, books, buckets, shovels, nets, and other beach accoutrements.

I’m reminded of the European explorers who arrived at shores like these sans condominium and came ashore bringing their supplies staking claim to land in the name of the king or queen back home, eager to explore their new land, and oblivious to the fact it belonged to others. We Southerners have done much the same this morning on our plot of sand as we planted our coolers in an effort to make the statement, “Here I am….this is MY space.” The explorers who came to the shores of North and South America were all different and they came for different reasons. I can’t help but sit here as I observe my fellow Southerners and make a few comparisons between them and various groups that came to the New World.

Two women, two kids, and whiney girl are nearby. Whiney is about six or seven----a butterball of a girl that I suspect whines simply to be whining. The repetitive music of the waves is broken every two to three minutes by a whine that resembles the beginning of a good cry but never quite develops beyond the opening notes. She whined because another girl was playing too close to her spot in the sand. She whined to go in the water, she whined to go back to the beach, and she whined to go up to the pool. Three hours of her whining and I was quite ready to slap her. Just to be sure I wasn’t being too hard on whiney girl I asked Daughter Dear to observe for a few minutes.

Daughter Dear said, “Damn, she is whiney!”

“Shhhhhhh…….,” I said. No, I didn’t correct her for the expletive. There are times when damn is the appropriate response even if you are just thirteen. I just thought she said it a little too loud.

Whiney girl reminds me of the Portuguese who began the whole exploration thing anyway. Oh, what whiners they could be! Rather than sticking it out and angered at what they saw as an over abundance of Spanish flags flying in North and South America the Portuguese whined to the Pope in hopes they could be given more rights to explore additional land. This resulted in the Line of Demarcation of 1493 and is the basic reason why Portuguese is spoken in Brazil and not in more of the South American continent. Not satisfied they whined some more and a second Line of Demarcation was set in 1494.

Some family groups come out en masse….grandmas, grandpas, mom, dad, kids, assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins. They invade quickly and suddenly. They are loud, overbearing, and irritating. They vanish just as quickly as they drift away to explore more, do a little fishing, throw a football, or collect some shells leaving their stuff behind in their wake. They remind me of the Spanish who made such a presence in North America for a long time, but began to drift away as more and more of the English ended up on our shores. The Spanish bit by bit slowly sank away to bide their time in Mexico and South America.

Quiet man and woman on one side of me and ultra quiet no-sun-at-all woman on the other side of me are good neighbors. All three of us remind me of the many thousands of Europeans who came later after the initial explorers. They simply wanted to live their lives as they wished, beholden to no man. Quiet man and woman with their novels, me with my pen and paper, and no-sun-at-all woman with her crossword simply want to be. Yes, we are the stuff that will make this beach great!

A couple of spots around are all set up for folks but not a single solitary person has visited the claim, and I’ve diligently camped on my spot all day. I guess these folks could be compared to the French…..wanting a presence in the New World so much but too busy elsewhere to really make a lasting go of it. Yes, I remember the fur traders and I’m painfully aware of New Orleans across Mobile Bay from where I am sitting, but face it, they just really didn’t have what it takes to make it for the most part.

So here I sit…the sun is now to my right and it is slowly descending towards the water. Bit by bit my fellow Southerners are disappearing. Even Daughter Dear has gone in. Like my English forebears I still sit. They had a rough time of it in the beginning. Several attempts at colonization failed and there were starving times, yet they kept trying, and they remained.

I’m not leaving my colony on the beach. I’ve waited a year to be here, experienced a very sad life-changing summer and wind-blown, sun-baked, hippie beach guy will have to pry my cold, dead fingers from my rented lounge as I intend to see the sun set. I intend to be the last Southerner on this beach today. That sort of attitude is what won the exploration race and forged a great nation.

By the way…….I was the last Southerner on the beach!