Students couldn't peel their eyes away! The visitor in the fourth-grade wing wore a breech cloth, moccasins and leg coverings, and was wrapped in a red blanket. His hair was pulled into a tight braid topped with a feather. A painted red band circled his forehead. Before him, on a woolen blanket, an array of bows, a quiver of arrows, gourds, drums, pots, rattles and animal pelts were set up like goods at a trading post.
The Native American greeted the students in what he later told them was an Algonquin dialect. “My name is Drew,” he translated. “Thank you for being here.”
Drew Shuptar-Rayvis, a member of the Pocomoke Indian Nation of Maryland, was visiting Increase Miller Elementary’s fourth grade as part of their study of the Native Americans of New York. Students learned about life in the Eastern Woodlands—an area which included their own neighborhoods—around the year 1620 using the artifacts on his blanket.
The students’ curiosity drove the presentation.
“What are you wondering?” Shuptar-Rayvis asked the students. “Ask me whatever you’d like. We’ll learn as a group.”
One of the students kicked it off. “Why aren’t you wearing a tee-shirt?” she asked.
Shuptar-Rayvis reminded students that he was representing Algonquin life after just a few years of European contact. He introduced the concept of primary sources—eyewitness account of an event, recorded in letters, diaries, paintings, even Delft tiles. “When Europeans first saw Native Americans, they wrote that they were not wearing a lot. If anything, they were wearing animal skins. After a few years, they began trading for woolen cloth like what I am wearing.”
The students’ questions prompted conversations about his tattoos, dangling earrings, wampum necklaces and bracelet, as well as what the Native Americans ate, and what their homes were like.
At the close of the conversation, students were invited to get a closer look at the artifacts Shuptar-Rayvis had brought.
“We’re making so many connections to what we’ve already studied, and what we will be studying,” said fourth grade teacher Jocelyn Lividini. “Thank you!”