Week of January 3: The Trail of Tears, Chief Joseph, and pennywhistles

We ended our westward migration study on a sad note which provided an authentic contrast to the joyful arrival of our pioneers in Hacker’s Valley last month. We looked at two different resources to learn about the Trail of Tears — the forced movement of most of the Cherokee tribe (as well as many of the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole people) from several southeastern states to the “Indian territory” — most of which is Oklahoma today.

We read a short play aloud from a Junior Scholastic publication. It said very little about the details of the actual journey made by various groups (including the most famous one that went with John Ross), but it did give a good explanation of the divided response within the tribe to the federal migration order and its eventual outcome. A minority of the Cherokee people were willing to accept the money that the government offered for their property and signed a treaty that sealed the contract. Congress approved treaty despite the fact that the group signing it had no positions in the tribal government and were not authorized to represent their people. Those Cherokee made the trip west in relative comfort in 1835.

When they arrived in Oklahoma, they set up a tribal government, ignoring the government that had already been created by Native Americans who had been moving into the territory in the decades before the Indian Removal act was passed in 1830. Those earliest migrants included many Lenape from our own area. When the forced migration of the larger group of Cherokee took place — involving those who had refused the government offer of money for their land and disavowed the representation of the so-called Treaty Party — they, too, set up a tribal government, and there was a lot of internal conflict among those various factions. In the end, the three principal leaders of the Treaty Party were assassinated, as they had grimly predicted would occur. Were they right or wrong to have signed the treaty? Would more lives and family wealth have been saved if the tribe had united behind them? What would have been lost as well as gained in that theoretical transaction? These are difficult questions, and our students were challenged by their complexity.

We then watched parts of a documentary made by a Native American film company. The great-great-granddaughter of John Ross told part of the story. We saw the beautiful, mountainous Southern lands they left behind, and we heard a young man tell us in Cherokee (with subtitles) about the deep attachment the people had to their ancestral home. We also learned a lot about the forced march west that began in the winter of 1838. By the time the unwilling emigrants completed their 1,200 mile journey, a fourth or more had died of exposure and disease.

One of the important pieces of information that the documentary included was the early history of the bad relations between the Native Americans along the Eastern seaboard and the colonists during the Revolutionary War. Because the British promised to protect and recognize the rights of the local indigenous people and because they had a long-established trading relationship, most Native Americans assisted the British instead of the rebels. When the war ended, many acts of violence were directed against them by the now-independent colonists bent on revenge.

The earliest leaders of the new United States, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, believed that, if the indigenous tribes could become civilized, peace would prevail. Ironically, the five tribes that were forced to go west in the 1830s had done exactly that. They spoke English, lived in houses, farmed the land (and, in some cases, owned slaves if they had enough land), ran small businesses, educated their children in white schools, and lived much like their white neighbors. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to protect them. It came down to racism and envy, and the “civilized” people were pushed off their prosperous lands by the uncivilized behavior of the United States government under President Andrew Jackson and many of its citizens.

We then moved forward in time to 1877 and learned about the travails of the Nez Perce tribe in Oregon under the leadership of the man generally called Chief Joseph in official documents. We watched a partly-fictionalized film called I Shall Fight No More Forever. Once again, we saw that the indigenous people were deeply attached to their lands, had signed treaty after treaty with representatives of the American government that promised them ownership of their ancestral territory in the Northwest, and were still ordered to move to a reservation when settlers wanted what they had.

Chief Joseph led a doomed effort to escape the order, taking his people hundreds of miles in rough, mountainous country, engaging in skirmishes with the pursuing federal troops, and finally giving up just 40 miles from the Canadian border, where he had hoped they could join Sitting Bull and the Sioux that had moved there.(I pointed out that it was about 40 miles from school to my house, a connection our children could understand.)

The film raised a lot of questions about duty, values, oaths, and honor. The general leading the forced removal of the Nez Perce was Sam Howard, an ex-Civil War soldier and founder of Howard University. In the film, he had many {fictionalized) conversations with a young adjutant throughout the pursuit in which they debated what the ethical choice should be when an oath to serve and obey was in direct opposition to one’s own values and sense of what is right. It was a lot for our young people to think about and might be a conversation worth continuing at home.

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As we now start to take up our study of Ireland, we have begun to learn to play the pennywhistle. Every student has one and will be encouraged to take it home when we are finished with this unit. (The pennywhistles were bought with money available from the Tony Hughes Fund. Established in Tony’s honor when he retired, it has supported our workbench activities, our classroom music in many ways, and other music/woodworking/science/technology projects throughout the school. We are very grateful to the donors who made this funding possible.)

We have a lot of budding and accomplished musicians in the group. Several are enjoying the chance to figure out and share tunes that are not part of what we are doing — currently some of the musical themes from The Lord of the Rings films. As they did with their dulcimers, a few of the boys have set up a shared Google doc in which they are writing instructions for playing things they have worked out on their own.What a wonderful idea!

I can see the benefit of the years of recorder instruction that our students have had from Diego. Although the fingering is not the same on the whistle, it is actually simpler, and many students have moved comfortably into the beginning work. A few were delighted to learn that it didn’t matter which hand was placed above the other, although most have chosen to stay with their left hand above their right, as is required on the recorder.

As we learn and practice tunes and songs, we’ll also be talking about Irish history and culture as well as incorporating some basic music skills. Most of the written music will be presented in 2 forms, usually on the same page — in standard notation (along with accompaniment chords designated by letter name much of the time) and also as a simple tablature that indicates the finger position but not much else. For example, the note G is played with the top three holes covered and the bottom three holes left open, so the number 3 is used to represent that. Although it’s not my intention to teach everyone to read music better than they may already do, we will be referring to the standard notation often for information about time signature, key, note duration, and the like. In truth, folk instruments (such as the dulcimer and the pennywhistle) can and should be played by ear and from memory more than from written notation in any form. We will be encouraging that throughout our lessons.

We’ll be finding time for pennywhistle lessons just about every day for short blocks of time. I have found that this is much more successful than meeting once or twice a week and expecting students to practice at home in the intervals. Students are welcome to take their whistles and books home, too, but we have tried to be very clear about how important it is to have them at school every day.

There is an excellent site for exploring Irish tunes here: The Session. Music can be downloaded and printed in standard notation and also in ABC notation, which is a format that can be use to print music and to hear the tunes played through your computer.  Visit the ABC site for more information if you don’t know about it already.

One thought on “Week of January 3: The Trail of Tears, Chief Joseph, and pennywhistles

  1. Is your Tony Hughes the same person who wrote a song called, “Little Blue Top”? My husband is folksinger Larry Hanks, who has sung this for years. We are looking for the origin on the song.

    Kindest regards,

    Deborah Robins

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