Showing posts with label Lewis and Clark. Show all posts

Lewis and Clark and The Corps of Discovery, part 4; The Return Trip Home

Lewis and Clark, Part 1: From Saint Louis to Fort Mandan

Lewis and Clark, Part 2: Fort Mandan to the Rocky Mountains

Lewis and Clark, Part 3: Rocky Mountains to Fort Clatsop

This week we followed Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery on their trip home. They divided up into several different groups for the journey home so that they could make more discoveries. The trip home was generally uneventful with the exception of a skirmish with the Blackfeet Indians, in which two were killed.

We watched the National Geographic episode, Great Journey West on Netflix.

This is, as most National Geographic productions are, very good in terms of the photography and the boys were able to get a good sense of the journey in that way. It is a bit melodramatic both in terms of the story and the crashing orchestration, which sometimes is so loud that it drowns out the narration. I recommend it for elementary aged students.

For older students, I recommend the PBS production narrated by Ken Burns instead. It would be alright for younger students except for one scene in which it describes the Corp being offered Indian women for the evening as part of a Buffalo Dance ceremony. It has, however, a lot more detail in it than the National Geographic production, and might be too much for younger students.

As review, we made and played a Lewis and Clark game.

This type of game could be made for any history subject. I printed out the states that the Corps traveled through and then laid out a trail with colored dots.

I then copied quotes from the journals that talk about their different experiences and glued them next to the dots.

On the dots we put things like Move Ahead 3, or Go Back 2, Lose a Turn, etc. Some were left blank. I also copied out pictures of the Keel boat, Pirogue and Canoe to use as the pieces to move across the board.

To play, each person rolled a die and went forward that many dots and followed the directions on that space. The die was then passed to the next person. The winner was the first player to go all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back again.

They also did their own narrations of what they remembered, using the salt-dough map to help them remember the Corps journey.
And after all the schoolwork was finished, the boys went outside and pretended to be part of the Corps of Discovery. This is when I know they have taken their history lessons to heart.

A good culmination to this unit on Lewis and Clark would be authentic food (recipes can be found here.)

Honey-Black Walnut Bread

Hominy with Bacon

Summer Berry Cobbler

Lemon Meringue Pie

Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes

Buffalo, Turnip, and Berry Ragout

Plum Tart

Corn with Sunflower and Black Beans

William Clark's Birthday Fruit Salad

Hazelnut-Cornmeal Pancakes

Lewis and Clark and The Corps of Discovery, part 3: From The Rocky Mountains to Fort Clatsop

Lewis and Clark and The Corps of Discovery, part 1: From St. Louis to Fort Mandan

Lewis and Clark and The Corps of Discovery, part 2: From Fort Mandan to the Rocky Mountains

The last time we followed the Corps of Discovery, they were trading with the Shoshone for horses...

in order to cross the Rocky Mountains...

portion of a map from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History

because the pirogues could not cross them. They buried the pirogues along with some other supplies in a cashe for their return trip.

After they crossed the Rockies, they met the Nez Perce on the other side. The men were starving due the lack of game available in the mountains and the fact that crossing the mountains took longer than they had expected.

from History Pockets: Native Americans

The Nez Perce fed them camas roots...

and dried salmon.

from History Pockets: Native Americans

We learned about how much the Nez Perce valued horses. They decorated the horses foreheads with decorations that looked like this.

The Nez Perce also showed them how to make canoes by burning the insides of large logs. This made the logs so that the insides could then be easily dug out. We made little canoes by digging out the seed part of cucumbers. (We then filled them with spiced Feta cheese and ate them.)

The Corps of Discovery, after a difficult trip down the Columbia River in the canoes, finally made it to the Pacific Ocean. The Corps of Discovery was out of all their supplies, so they got salt by evaporating the water from the Pacific Ocean. They hunted elk for meat.

map from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History

They decided to stay near the Clatsop Indians and built a fort for them to stay in for the winter.

Lewis and Clark and The Corps of Discovery, Part 4: The Return Trip Home

Lewis and Clark and The Corps of Discovery, part 2 From Fort Mandan to the Rocky Mountains

Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery, part 1: From St. Louis to Fort Mandan

In April of 1805, the Corps of Discovery was ready to leave Fort Mandan and begin the second part of their journey. They sent their Keelboat back to St. Louis with a small party of men, their journals and a map of what they had experienced so far, along with animal specimens. That winter at Fort Mandan they had made six dugout canoes and so the rest of the Corps continued up the Missouri in two pirogues and the canoes.

photo source: Going Along with Lewis and Clark by Barbara Fifer

Along the way, Lewis and Clark collected many plant samples and pressed them in a plant press to keep them. We decided to make our own simple plant presses to take along on our nature walks.

These are simple to make and lightweight to carry. We followed the directions at Handbook of Nature Study.

All the materials you need to make a simple plant press.

All you need for these presses is two pieces of cardboard the same size and some copy paper cut or folded to be the same size as the cardboard. Layer the cardboard on the outside of the sandwich and the copy paper is folded inside.

Rubber-bands keep the press together and tight so that the plants will press.

The boys have mainly been pressing the four and five leaf clovers they have been finding.

James' leaf rubbings

They also added some leaf rubbings and...

Quentin's watercolor sketches

some sketches of plants to their journals, just like Lewis and Clark.

This is a wonderful resource for seeing just what plants they saw and collected.

Quentin's narrative sketch of Lewis and Clark meeting the Grizzly bear

There are many exciting stories told by Lewis and Clark and their men about their adventures. For example, they were not used to the Grizzly bear and were impressed by its strength, fortitude and speed. On one encounter with a Grizzly bear, the had to shoot him eight times before he was killed.

Another incident involves the interpreter Charbonneau who was hired by the expedition. He and his wife, Sacajawea are in one of the pirogues and a sudden squall comes up. Charbonneau, not an experienced sailor, doesn't know what to do and begins shouting for God's mercy. The pirogue fills with water and important articles such as the journals, maps and instruments begin floating away! Cuzatte, another member of the Corps, begins shouting directions to Charbonneau and Sacajawea begins collecting the items floating away. The pirogue was finally taken under control and Sacajawea had saved most of the items.

our salt map of the US

The Corps finally comes to a junction where the Missouri river splits into two branches. Which way is the right way to go? They scout both rivers and then decide to follow the southern branch. The men all believe that the northern branch is the way they should go, but tell Lewis and Clark that they will follow them wherever they choose to go, which tells a lot about how much they trusted and were fond of their captains.

The Corps then finally comes to the Great Falls and discovers that it is not just one waterfall but a series of five falls and it turns out that it takes 18 miles of portage to go around them. They make two wagons with wheels made of slices of cottonwood trees. The white pirogue's mast was cut in two for axle rods Prickly Pear cactus was a major problem during their walk because they went through the men's moccasins.

Alex's sketch of Sacajawea

The Corps was also in search of the Shoshone Indians so that they could buy horses from them to get over the Rocky Mountains. They were hoping that they would be willing to trade for them since they had Sacajawea, a Shoshone, along with them as interpreter and guide. It turned out that Sacajawea's brother, Cameahwait, was the chief of the tribe now! The Corps spends six days with the Shoshone making saddles, taking celestial observations, documenting the ethnography of the Shoshone and making a cache. They dug a big pit in the ground and buried supplies for the return trip, including the pirogues and canoes, along with plant specimens.
We also enjoyed looking back over the states that the Corps went through in our Postcard-Geography Album.

Montana

Oregon

North Dakota

South Dakota

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Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery, part 3 From the Rocky Mountains to Fort Clatsop

Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery, part 1: From St. Louis to Fort Mandan

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We labeled the rivers on our salt dough map.

We began our study of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery by following the course they took.

Alex's notebook page

They learned about President Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase,

map from Story of the World Activity book

and mapped the areas before the journey.

lesson from Draw Write Now

They drew pictures completed copywork about Lewis and Clark.

map from Interactive 3-D Maps: American History

This week we learned about their journey from St. Louis in December of 1803 to Fort Mandan, (what is now Bismark, North Dakota) where they stayed for the winter of 1804-1905. They traveled through what is now Missouri, parts of Kansas and Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota.

We learned about keelboats,

the animals of the plains...

from History Pockets: Native Americans

and the Sioux Indians. We completed the pocket for the Sioux,
(We had begun the pocket when we studied North Dakota. It is really nice when history and geography overlap.)