Through Northern Nevada’s Eyes

A comparison of lives of Northern Paiutes from about 1750-1850,
early Nevada settlers around 1900, and
contemporary residents of Northern Nevada

Leta Rabenstine

Portfolio Cover Sheet

Leta Rabenstine
Through Northern Nevada’s Eyes
A comparison of lives of Northern Paiutes from about 1750-1850, early Nevada settlers around 1900, and contemporary residents of Northern Nevada

Nevada Standards
H1.2.2  Use artifacts to understand how people lived their daily lives.
H1.2.4  Recognize similarities and differences of earlier generations in areas such as work, dress, manners, stories, games, and festivals.
H2.2.1  Identify ways in which people cooperate to achieve a common goal.
G5.2.1  Identify titles and symbols maps.
G5.2.3  Construct a map key from given symbols and choose a map title.
G6.2.1  Define region and provide examples of regions.
G6.2.2  Describe neighborhoods and communities as places where people live, work, and play.
G6.2.3  Identify traditions and customs that families practice.
G6.2.7  Locate his/her city and state on a map.
G7.2.2  Categorize different ways to move people, goods, and ideas, i.e., air, water, land, phone, and/or computer.
G7.2.3  Define and compare rural and urban communities.
G8.2.1  Tell how the physical environment affects community activity, i.e., recreation, water usage.
G8.2.3  Identify how people shape the physical environment.
G8.2.4  Define and provide examples of natural hazards.
G8.2.5  Identify natural resources and where they can be found in the neighborhood.

Background
The movement of people in Northern Nevada caused many changes from 1750 to the present.  Northern Paiute people once occupied this area.  The “Numa” as they called themselves, were respectful of the land.  They walked from place to place in order to gather food.  Children worked alongside their parents.  In the spring men hunted ducks and caught fish while women gathered eggs, plant shoots, and roots.  Summer brought fish, berries, rice, and seeds.  In fall, Paiute groups worked together to collect pinenuts, trap rabbits, and enjoy visiting, dancing, and singing.  During the cold, short winter days they hunted game, told stories, played games, and made tools.  Children learned stories, customs, and ceremonies from their parents and grandparents.  

Reeds, grasses, cattails, sagebrush, pine boughs, and willows provided shelters, and when family groups moved on, they left their homes behind. Sagebrush was pounded and twisted into fibers that were then woven into skirts, shoes, and even diapers.  Clothes were made from tules and animal hides, and rabbit skins were made into blankets.

In about 1840 Europeans came to Northern Nevada.  John Fremont, Kit Carson, and Joseph Walker mapped the land.  Pioneers on the Emigrant Trail crossed Nevada on their way to farmland and gold in California.  Their cattle ate the plants and the hungry pioneers killed the game that Paiutes used to live.   Miners came to Virginia City for gold and silver.  They cut down the pinon pines for lumber and hunted for food.  The new arrivals took over the land where Paiutes had once lived.  First John Snowshoe Thompson and then the Pony Express brought mail to the new residents of Northern Nevada.  Nevada became a territory in 1861 and a state in 1864.  The Central Pacific Railroad made the trip west easier for newcomers.

The new Northern Nevada families did not move around to find food like the earlier Paiute groups.  The earliest homes were crude cabins.  People cooked over open fires.  Common foods were flour, bacon, coffee, tea, brown sugar, molasses, rice, corn meal, fish, wild game, berries, nuts, beef, and pork.  Medicines were made from herbs, roots, and bark of trees.

Some people worked as miners or store keepers.  Others raised animals, like pigs, and planted crops.  People worked together at parties called “bees”.  There were quilting bees, corn husking bees, and barn raisings.  Everyone would work together and then enjoy food, music, and dancing.  Most children worked hard.  The boys might work in the fields, hunt, or fish.  Girls learned to make and mend clothes, cook, bake, and preserve food.  Typical chores might have been cleaning the ashes from the fireplace, milking cows, finding eggs, or making butter or cheese. 

To stay safe, children needed to learn how to build a lean-to in case they got lost, how to find wild foods and water, and how to determine directions. At first children learned to read and write at home, but soon, one room schools popped up.  Churches were an important part of early societies.  

For fun kids would swim and have picnics.  They played with homemade toys and games. In winter, early families sometimes made braided rugs, wrote in diaries, sang songs, read aloud, or played with tangrams, checkers, or bean bags.

People rode horses or rode in wagons or buggies that horses pulled during this time.

Portfolio Table of  Contents

Activities and Learning Goals:

Activity 1:  Primary Source:  GLAD Observation Charts – “What in the West???”
Learning Goal:   In cooperative groups, students will study pictures and photos from Northern Paiute, early Nevada settlers, and current day communities.  They will compare and contrast work, dress, cooking tools, and homes of Nevada Paiutes, early settlers, and current residents.

Activity 2:  Wordle Activity:  Paiutes, Settlers, and Now
Learning Goal:  Students will compare and contrast Paiute and settler wordless in groups and then sketch to illustrate similarities and differences.  Finally, the whole group will work together to make a wordle of current life in Nevada on the Active Board.

Activity 3:  Literature Connection:  “The Pine-Stick Doll”
Learning Goal:  Cooperative groups will discuss together and determine setting, characters, problem and solutions in the story.  In addition, each student will write or tell a summary of the story.

Activity 4:  Foldable:  Scout Award Facts
Learning Goal:  Our foldable makes a horizontal pocket in the front of our construction paper folder.  (The folder contains all papers and products from the Nevada Communities Unit.)  Students receive scout awards for following class rules during instruction.  Each award has a fact about the unit we’re studying that can be used in our culminating “Jeopardy” Process Grid game.

Activity 5:  Art Piece/Writing:  The Corn Husk Doll
Learning Goal:  Students will create a homemade toy that was used by children in pioneer times and write a letter from or to the doll.

Activity 6:  Poster Project:  What Do You Know?
Learning Goal:  Students will use a Step Up to Writing Strategy to write a four paragraph report about either Northern Paiute or settler life in Nevada, then illustrate it with a poster.

Primary Source Activity

GLAD Observation Charts

• For the beginning of the unit collect 3 sets of photos or drawings.  Each set should depict the lives of people in one “era” of Nevada history:  Northern Paiutes (1750-1850), early white Nevada settlers (around 1900), and current time.  Tape a blank page below the pictures.
• In cooperative groups, students travel to each set of pictures.  They study the set of pictures and write (each group has a different color marker to differentiate their ideas) a comment, prediction, or question about them. 
• Talk about the pictures and the ideas students wrote whole group.

Learning Goal:  Compare and contrast work, dress, cooking tools, and homes of Nevada Paiutes, early settlers, and current residents.

Evaluate by observing and talking with students as they study the pictures.

Follow up could be Shared Reading of Indian Children by Annette Wynne.  The poem can then be put into Personal Readers.

Indian Children
By Annette Wynne

Where we walk to school each day
Indian children used to play-
All about our native land,
Where the shops and houses stand.

And the trees were very tall,
And there were no streets at all,
Not a church and not a steeple-
Only woods and Indian people.

Only wigwams on the ground,
And at night bears prowling round-
What a different place today
Where we live and work and play!

Wordle Activity

Learning Goal:  Students will compare and contrast the life styles of Paiutes and early white settlers.

First the teacher will create a GLAD Comparative Input Chart, presenting information about food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and social activities of Paiutes and early settlers.  The next day, the class will revisit the chart, and add vocabulary and picture cards. 

After students have been exposed to the content and vocabulary, students will compare and contrast 2 wordles about Paiutes and settlers.  They will draw sketches to illustrate the differences and similarities of the 2 cultures and share them whole group.

Finally, using the Active Board,we will create a wordle together that will reflect the food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and social activities of our culture.

Literature Connection

“The Pine-Stick Doll” by Mary L. B. Branch, Stories of Early America, Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co., Inc., N. Y., 1958, p 224-236.

Learning Goal: Cooperative groups will discuss together and determine setting, characters, problems, and solutions in this story.

The teacher will read the story aloud, stopping at predetermined points to allow time for discussion in groups.  The consensus will be recorded.  Predictions will be discussed but not recorded.

Stopping points and questions:

Pg 225 – What is the setting? 
               What do you predict will happen next?
Pg 227 - Who are the characters?   
               What is the problem?
              What do you predict will happen next?
Pg 231 – What is the solution?
                What do you predict will happen next?
Pg 233 – What is the new problem?
                What will happen next?
Pg 236 – What is the solution to the problem?

Evalution:  Students will write or tell a summary of the story including setting, characters, problem and solution.

Foldable

This foldable will be used to collect scout awards earned during lessons.  The scout awards have facts about early Nevada communities.  Students will use them to answer questions during our “Jeopardy” Process Grid Game at the end of the unit.  They will also reread them with partners during center time. 

Students will make a horizontal pocket by gluing a half sheet of trimmed paper around three sides, one long and two short.  The paper will be positioned on the bottom half of the inside cover of a large sheet of construction paper that will be used as a folder for our Nevada Communities Unit.

Paiutes made blankets from rabbit skins.

Paiutes ground pinenuts using a mano and matate.

Grass was used to cover Paiute homes.

Animal hides were scraped and made into clothing by Native Americans.

Sagebrush fibers were used by Northern Paiutes to make clothing.

Badger and other animal skins were used to make boots or moccasins.

Paiutes carried babies in cradle boards.

Early pioneers rode in buggies or wagons pulled by horses.

In the 1890’s Nevadan rode on bicycles.

Early settlers bought food, tool, and other things at stores.

Pioneer women wore long skirts and dresses made of cotton.

Steam engines pulled trains in Nevada.

Families went on picnics and swimming in the summer.

Wagons pulled by oxen or horses brought settlers to Nevada.

Early Nevadans cooked over open fires or on wood burning stoves.

Miners found gold, silver, copper, and other minerals in Nevada.

Cattle ranches provided beef to eat.

Art Piece/Writing

As a follow-up to “The Pine-Stick Doll”, students will make a cornhusk doll using cornhusks, wire, corn silk, and markers. 

Students will then choose to write:

• A letter to the doll describing current life in Nevada
• A letter from the doll describing Pioneer life in Nevada

Each student must include information about his/her home, clothing, methods of travel, and social activities/play.

Self Assessment

Yes   No
___   ___      I wrote about my home.
___   ___      I wrote about my clothes.
___   ___      I wrote about how I travel.
___   ___      I wrote about my social activities/play.

My letter has:
___ Date
___ Greeting
___ Indented paragraph
___ Closing
___ Signature

 

Poster Project

Students will use our completed Process Grid to write a four paragraph report about either Northern Paiute life or early settler life in Northern Nevada.  The paragraphs will address food, clothing, shelter, and social activities/play.  To illustrate their writing, students will create posters depicting Northern Paiutes or early settlers. They will use 12 x 18 construction paper and crayons, pencils, or markers.  The posters must show the information in their reports.

Bibliography

Branch, Mary L. B. “The Pine-Stick Doll,” Stories of Early America, 1958, Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co., Inc., N.Y., p 224-236.

Cobb, Neal and Jerry Fenwick, Reno Now and Then, 2008, University of Nevada.

Fowler, Catherine S., In the Shadow of Fox Peak, 2002, Nevada Humanities Committee, Fallon, NV.

Hermann, Ruth, The Paiutes of Pyramid Lake, 1972, Harlan-Young Press, San Jose.

Kimball, Violet T., Stories of Young Pioneers In Their Own Words, 2000,Mountain Press Publishing Co., Missoula, Montana.

King, David C., American Kids in History Pioneer Days, 1997, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Levine, Ellen, If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon, 1992, Scholastic, N.Y.

Miluck, Nancy C., Nevada History Coloring Book, 1993, Dragon Enterprises, Genoa, NV.

Rossi, Joyce, The Gullywasher, 1995, Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, Arizona.

Wallner, Alexandra, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1997, Scholastic, N.Y.

Waters, Kate, Mary Geddy’s Day A Colonial Girl in Williamsburg, 1999, Scholastic, N.Y.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls, Dance at Grandpa’s, 1932, Scholastic, N.Y.

Williams, Suzanne, M., From Sea to Shining Sea Nevada, 1949, Children’s Press, N.Y.

Wynne, Annette, “Indian Children”, Stories of Early America, 1958, Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co., Inc., N.Y.

Zike, Dinah, Notebook Foldables for Spirals, Binders, and Composition Books, 2008, Dinah-Might Adventure, San Antonio, Tx.