*Teaching Children for the Lord*Deuteronomy 6:5-9*


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* The attitude and motive of our heart as Wives, Mothers and Keepers of the Home is very important *

"And whatever ye do, do it heartily as unto God and not unto men, knowing that of God ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance; for ye serve Christ." Colossians 3:23 & 24

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Monday, June 7, 2010

The girls and I did a study of this last year...

And I wanted to post this, because I think I am going to print this off and us do a study of it again this year. The difference being us having it printed off instead of reading it out of the book at the library. If you Love the Old West like me then please go and check it out at the library. They had some pretty good illustrations in there, too.



Packing the Wagons?!

So what was inside all those wagons?


Everything that would fit. Anything you needed on the trip, or would need when you arrived, you had to take with you. There wasn't any real stores out west. There were a few forts, but if they had any extra supplies when you got there, they'd be wildly expensive.


Can you guess how the pioneers kept their eggs and fragile dishes safe in the bumpy wagons? ...They packed them in their barrels of flour and cornmeal!

Pioneers packed their wagons with hundreds of pounds of food-per person! For each traveler, guides recommended bringing at least 200 lbs of flour, 75 lbs of bacon, 30 lbs of hardtack {hard bread}, 25 lbs of sugar, 10 lbs of rice, 10 lbs of salt, 5 lbs of coffee, 2 lbs of tea, and various amounts of dried beans and fruit, baking soda, and cornmeal. Along with all that, families crammed the wagons with pots and pans, dishes, extra clothing, tools and spare wagon parts, medicine, sewing supplies, and cash {for toll bridges, ferries, and the purchase of replacement wagon parts or food along the way}. Pioneers also managed to squeeze in pieces of furniture, cook stoves, books, and a few keepsakes. All this in the space only about as big as a minivan!



A Day on the Trail...Part 1

What served as an alarm clock on the trail?


Rifles shot into the air-at 4:00 A.M.! If you were a pioneer, your day started before sunrise. Before the wagons were on their way at 7:00 A.M., there was much to do. In the darkness, the women and older girls began building fires. They cooked breakfast, took care of the babies and young children, cleaned up, pulled down tents, and packed the wagons. At the same time, men and boys rounded up cattle, yoked the oxen, and went hunting. Younger children helped gather fuel for the fire, fed the animals, and milked the cows.

How would you like to do all those chores--before school???




A Day on the Trail...Part 2

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A BREAKFAST OF "SLAM JOHNS AND SOW BELLY"???

If you've had pancakes and bacon, you have. The pioneers liked to start the day with a hearty breakfast. They usually had some combination of bacon and cornmeal cakes, pancakes, or hardtack {hards bread}; sometimes with beans, fried meat, and gravy. Everyone, including children, drank coffee because plain water often tasted so bad that even animals would not drink it. Some families drove their cattle along with them, so they had fresh milk to drink.

Lunch meant cold leftovers, and the evening meal brought more of the same if the men had bad luck hunting. Fresh meat, fish, and wild berries were favorite trail meals.


BUFFALO CHIPS WERE A TRAIL TREAT.

Pioneers liked these chips, but not as snacks! Buffalo chips were dried buffalo droppings. Because they burned well the chips were handy for lighting cooking fires on the treeless plains. Children found other uses for the chips as well, such as throwing them at one another or seeing who could make them sail the farthest. How would you like to toss that kind of Frisbee? LOL




WHY WERE WAGONS CALLED "PRAIRIE SCHOONERS"?

Because they had tall white canvas tops that looked like ships' sails. When wagons traveled across the Great Plains {the wide open prairies, or grasslands, of the American Midwest}, tall prairie grasses hid the wagons' wheels from view and made the wagons look, from a distance, like a fleet of ships in an ocean of grass. So wagons were nicknamed "prairie schooners" or "ships of the plains."

The best prairie schooners were strong, to lightweight. To help make them waterproof, pioneers covered the wooden bottom with tar and the white canvas top with oil. The top, which was stretched over five or six U-shapped bows, could be closed in the back using a drawstring if the weather was bad. Hooks on the inside and outside of the wagon held milk cans, tools, and women's bonnets. Spare wagon parts were stored underneath the flooring.




Trail Chores...

HOW OFTEN DID PIONEERS CHANGE THEIR CLOTHES ON THE TRAIL?

About as often as they bathed--not very often at all!

Most pioneers wore the same dirt-encrusted clothes day after day. It wasn't easy to find clean water for washing, which pioneer women probably thought was just as well. Laundry was an awful chore that took the entire day.

To keep their dresses from dragging in the mud, women wore their skirts a little higher than they had back home. A few daring women wore the new fashion of bloomers, or loose pants that were gathered at the ankles. Men and boys wore linen or woolen pants and shirts. To protect their faces and eyes from the sun, men and boys wore wide-brimmed hats and women and girls wore bonnets. Everyone wore sturdy shoes or boots.



HOW DID PIONEER CHILDREN LEARN THEIR LESSONS ON THE TRAIL?

Since there was no school to attend, some parents gave their children lessons on the trail. Other children just read the few books they brought along, kept journals, and wrote letters to friends and family.

But even more than spelling and math, children's biggest lessons were probably the ones taught by trail life itself. Pioneer children learned how to identify new plants and animals, how to fix things when they broke, and how to invent and adjust to new ways of doing things {like using buffalo chips for firewood!}.


Parents learned things along the trail, too.
Pioneer women discovered that the bumpy
wagons churned their butter for them if they
just left the milk can hanging on its hook!



Landmarks

HOW DID THE PIONEERS LEARN WHAT WAS UP AHEAD?


From those who'd gone before them. By 1845, many pioneers owned guidebooks, like The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, written by scouts and earlier travelers. The books described landmarks along the trail and gave advice on where best to cross rivers and camp for the night.

To see for themselves what was coming up, some members of the wagon train rode ahead on horses. An even better source of information, pioneers found, was a message system called the "roadside telegraph": notes from earlier travelers scrawled on paper and attached to trees, placed under rocks, or wedged into notched sticks stuck into the ground. Other times pioneers painted their messages right onto rocks or onto the skulls of cows, oxen, deer, or even humans. Some messages were notes to friends, but others warned of danger. One message read, "Look at this--look at this! The water here is poison, and we have lost six of our cattle. Do not let your cattle drink on this bottom."


**Sometimes pioneers learned what was up ahead from go-backs, discouraged pioneers who had turned around to go back east. These travelers were said to have " seen the elephant" This expression suggested they'd seen something new and different-the hardships of the West-and didn't want any part of it.



Trail Dangers

WHAT WAS THE GREATEST DANGER TO PIONEERS ON THE WESTWARD TRAILS?

a) accidents
b) sickness
c) Indians
d) buffalo

All these things were dangerous, but the answer is b. Of the thousands of pioneers who died on the journey west, most were victims of diseases such as cholera, measles, small pox, typhoid, or dysentery. Pioneers did have medicines and herbs, but no one knew much about treating these diseases.




Accidents were the next biggest cause of death. Children fell from the wagon and were crushed under its wheels; people were trampled in buffalo stampedes or drowned during river crossings; men on watch at night shot one another by accident. Travelers got lost, starved, froze to death, or unknowingly drank alkali water, which contained deadly mineral salts. Very few were killed by Indians. {In fact, pioneers killed more Indians than the other way around.}


No one knows how many pioneers traveled west on the overland trails, but the number is probably somewhere between 250,000 and 650,000. We do know that at least 20,000 people died on the journey, which averages about ten graves per mile of trail.



HOW DID THE PIONEERS AND INDIANS GET ALONG?

Sometimes they fought, but most meetings were peaceful enough. Indians often came up to wagon trains, hoping to trade buffalo meat or horses for guns, tobacco, cloth, food, or metal fishing hooks. Some Indians even acted as scouts or helped ferry pioneers across rivers. Indians who looked warlike were usually headed to fight an enemy tribe, though some young tricksters did like to steal pioneers' animals. Still, pioneers were afraid of the Indians. In 1847, the United States government set up forts along the trails to help protect the pioneers.


IF YOU WERE A PIONEER'S STOVE, WHERE MIGHT YOU END UP?

In a furniture graveyard along the trail! As wagons headed into the mountains, many families had to lighten their loads for the tired oxen. Heavy stoves and furniture were often left behind, no matter how treasured they were. Pioneers abandoned dressers, tables, chairs, food, books, stoves, fine china, trunks, tools, bedding, and even a piano.



Frontier Life

WHAT WAS THE BEST PART OF THE TRAIL?

Reaching the end of it! Actually, the dangers and difficulties of the trail were only the beginning of hardships the pioneers would face. By the time they arrived in Oregon or California, pioneers were exhausted. Most were nearly, if not completely. out of supplies. But there was no time to waste. Winter was coming quickly, and they needed a place to live.

Many pioneers built temporary houses called "lean-twos"--simple log shelters left open on one side--to live in while they began working on a cabin. Others lived in their wagons while they worked. {OH, HOW TIRED THEY WERE OF THOSE WAGONS!~NOT ME!!!} Then they took their wagons apart and used the wood to build furniture or pieces of their new home.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO RAISE A LOG CABIN?

a} three weeks b} two months

c} one day d} one year

Believe it or not, the answer is c. It took a long time to clear the land and prepare logs for a cabin. Still, if a family did that ahead of time and the neighbors came to help, they needed only one day to raise a one-room log cabin. {Pioneer families could raise log cabins all by themselves; it just took longer.}


WHY WERE PIONEER FAMILIES SO BIG?

Because more children meant more pairs of hands to help do the work. In Pioneer days, people worked from sunup to sundown. They had to make everything from soap to bread to candles to clothes by hand.

Even the youngest children had chores to do. They gathered eggs, nuts, berries, and fuel for fires. They weeded the gardens, fed the chickens, and watched the fields to drive away squirrels and birds who ate the corn. Older children helped make jams, jellies, butter, candles, soap, and medicines. They fetched water, milked cows, plowed, planted, washed, ironed, mended, and looked after the younger children. No wonder one pioneer woman wrote, "A lazy person should never think of going to Oregon."



WAS THERE TIME FOR SCHOOL ON THE FRONTIER?

A little. In the early days of the frontier, children were taught at home because people lived so far away from one another. Even when more settlers arrived, some children did not go to school because their parents needed their help at home. Those who did go usually attended one-room schoolhouses where children of all ages were taught together. Often the teacher wasn't much older than some of his students!

Some teachers had a hard time making teenage boys behave. Young men who had driven teams of oxen across the continent and maybe even fought Indians or shot grizzlies didn't want to be told what to do! One California teacher made it clear he was the boss by placing a six-shooter on his desk on the first day of school and saying, "We're here to learn. If anyone misbehaves, there's going to be trouble."

It wasn't all work on the frontier. Children did find time to climb trees, jump rope, visit swimming holes, and play tag, hopscotch, and hide-and-seek. They also played with homemade marbles, checkers, tops, and rag or corn husk dolls.


WOULD YOU GET MAIL ON THE FRONTIER?

Yes, but at first you'd have to wait a long time for letters because mail service wasn't very regular. When stagecoaches began running in 1858, mail service got much better.

Even speedier than the stagecoaches was the Pony Express. This famous mail service from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, whisked letters across nearly 2,000 miles in just ten days. Brave young horseback riders rode at top speed all day and all night, even in snow and sleet or through the desert. Each rider rode 70 miles and changed horses six times before he handed the mail off to the next man. The Express was in business about nineteen months before telegraph lines connecting the East and West made it unnecessary in 1861.


Settling the Plains

WHY DID THE FIRST PIONEERS PASS UP ALL THE LAND ON THE GREAT PLAINS?

Because they thought the wide-open spaces between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains were much too...plain. Early explorers had looked over the flat, windy, treeless land and named it "The Great American Desert." For many years pioneers believed the plains could not be farmed and were a place fit only for Indians.


WHAT CHANGED PIONEERS' MINDS ABOUT THE PLAINS?

As areas farther west filled up. many people were still hungry for land. To open room on the plains, the United States government began pushing Indians who lived there onto reservations, or small pieces of land that were set aside for them. In 1862, the government passed the Homestead Act. This act gave 160 acres of land {about nine football fields' worth} to anyone who paid a $10 filing fee and agreed to work and improve the land for five years. Within months, thousands of settlers had moved to Kansas and Nebraska. They found out the land they now owned was no desert, but it was dry and challenging to farm.

So many Germans settled in Kansas
and Nebraska that some Indians
there learned German, not English,
as a second language!



HOW DO YOU BUILD A HOUSE WHERE THERE ISN'T ANY WOOD?

The same way you light a fire without it--you use what's there. Pioneers who settled on the Great Plains became known as "sod busters" because they cut up the sod {grass with the roots and dirt still attached} to clear fields and build their houses. These sturdy "soddies" were cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and they wouldn't go up in flames in a prairie fire. Even so, the houses leaked when it rained and were impossible to keep clean. Worse, snakes and mice were known to work their way through the sod walls and ceiling and occasionally "drop in" for dinner!

One homesteader, a doctor named Brewster Higley,
was so fond of his new Kansas home that he wrote
a poem about it in 1872. The following year, a
neighbor set the poem to music, and soon
everyone was singing "Home on the Range":

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.


WHICH WERE THE HARDEST THINGS ABOUT LIVING ON THE GREAT PLAINS?

a} flooding and tornadoes

b} drought, dust storms, and prairie fires

c} blizzards and frigid winters

d} grasshoppers devouring crops

e} loneliness

Take your pick--all these dangers were part of living on the plains. Tornadoes and floods in the spring gave way to hail storms and drought in the summer. Hot, dry weather stirred up dust storms and made conditions perfect for prairie fires. Some years grasshoppers flew in and ate nearly everything in sight, ruining crops in a matter of hours. The insects would eat leather, cloth, curtains, fence posts, door frames, and food in cupboards. When winter came bitter cold and blizzards killed people caught outside.

But for some, the worst thing was the year-round loneliness. Neighbors could be a mile or two away, but sometimes as distant as thirty miles. The whole world seemed to be only grass and sky and sky and grass.


One woman of the plains became famous
for her series of Little House books, which
describe her life on the prairie. You
might've read these books. Do you know
who the woman is?

{Answer: Laura Ingalls Wilder}



The Great California Gold Rush


WHO WERE THE FORTY-NINERS BEFORE THEY WERE SAN FRANCISCO'S FOOTBALL TEAM???

They were the thousands and thousands of gold seekers who rushed to California in 1849 {get it?--forty-niner's?}in hopes of getting rich. In 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall had found gold in a stream near Sutter's Mill, California. Word of his discovery spread like wildfire. Gold hunters streamed in from across America and around the world.




WAS MINING FOR GOLD EXCITING?

No. It was awfully hard work, and people rarely struck it rich. Miners spent long days squatting at the edge of a stream, shoveling and picking at rock, shaking their heavy pans to clear the gold specks from the dirt. They worked in wind and rain and sometimes even stood waist deep in freezing water.

Most miners were young, single men. They lived in rough-and-tumble camps and towns that had equally rough-and-tumble names: Poverty Hill, You Bet, Squabble town, Git Up and Git, Mad Ox Ravine, Chuckle head Diggings, and Humbug Canyon were just some of the most descriptive.



WHO CALLED CALIFORNIA "GOLD MOUNTAIN"?

The Chinese. Many Chinese sailed across the Pacific Ocean when they heard about the gold rush because there were wars going on in China and lots of people there were out of work. But life in California wasn't much better for the Chinese. When frustrated white gold hunters didn't get rich, they wanted someone to take out their anger on someone. They picked the Chinese. Soon Chinese immigrants were forced into jobs like washing clothes or rolling cigars. They had to live apart from everyone else, they had no rights, and they had to pay extra taxes. Many eventually went home. Those who stayed often started China towns in the cities where they settled.




~TRUE OR FALSE~

MINING FOR GOLD WAS THE BEST WAY TO GET RICH DURING THE GOLD RUSH???

False! Most of the people who got rich from the gold rush made their money from the miners, not from the gold. How? All those thousands of miners needed food, clothing, and supplies. Prices went sky-high: Flour was $800 a barrel; shovels were $100 a piece. The miners especially needed sturdy pants to wear while they bent, dug, and squatted. The pants that were invented to meet their need might be the same kind you're wearing right now--jeans, made by Levi Strauss.{Well those of y'all that may where pants.}


Indian Removal

TRUE OR FALSE???

INDIANS TRAVELED FROM EAST TO WEST BEFORE THE PIONEERS DID?

True. Unfortunately, they moved for an entirely different reason--they were forced.

From the time Columbus landed in North America, Indians' lives would never be the same. At first, Indians and Europeans often met as friends and traders. But the friendships didn't last long. The newcomers wanted land, and the land belonged to the Indians. As the settlers pushed farther into Indian lands, they fought the Indians, took their land without asking, and signed treaties {agreements between nations} forcing or tricking them into giving it up.

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. This meant that Indians in the East were forced to leave their homelands and go to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.


WHAT WAS THE TRAIL OR TEARS?

The Trail of Tears, or the "Trail Where They Cried," as the Cherokees called it, was a terrible forced march from the tribe's sacred homelands in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee to the Indian Territory in the West. In the late 1830's soldiers forced young and old at bayonet point through blinding blizzards and freezing temperatures. Four thousand Cherokees, or one in every four, died of cold and starvation on the journey. More died of disease and poor living conditions once they reached the hot, dry land that is now Oklahoma.

WHAT DID THE PLAINS INDIANS THINK ABOUT THE FIRST PIONEERS?

At first, the coming of white settlers seemed to many Indians to be a good thing. A number of Indian tribes, including the Dakota, Comanche, and Cheyenne, lived on the Great Plains in the 1800's. The tribes that were part of the fur trade especially liked getting guns and other goods that made them more powerful than their enemies.

But soon the Indians realized that the white people brought bad things, too. The worst, more deadly than any weapon, was disease. European germs such as smallpox, measles, and influenza wiped out huge numbers of Indians across North America.


Cowboys

WHICH PIONEERS LIVED IN THEIR SADDLES?

Cowboys. Not all pioneers came west to claim land and settle down. Some came to ride the wide-open spaces, rope cattle, and make their living as cowboys. Most cowboys were young, poor, and had little education {another words, not much schooling!!! LOL} They came from many places--the South, the East, the Midwest, and even as far as Europe. About one in six was Mexican, and about the same number were black. Some were full- or half-blood Indians. Some weren't cowboys at all--THEY WERE COWGIRLS!!!




TRUE OR FALSE...

COWBOYS SPENT THEIR DAYS TAMING A MESS OF BUCKING BRONCOS.

False. Cowboys' days were dirty, dangerous, and often dull. Their job was to poke, prod, and guide longhorn cattle north from Texas to railway towns on the plains. For each day cowboys were on a cattle drive {which took two to three months}, they spent at least fourteen hours on horseback. Cowboys rode through quicksand, among rattlesnakes, insects, and hostile Indian tribes, and in sun, rain, wind, sleet, hail, and even snow. Their days were so long and their pay so low that only one out of three cowboys returned for more than one drive.

One of the most famous cowboys was a former slave named Nat Love. In a rodeo in 1876, Nat won so many roping and shooting contests that he was nicknamed "Deadwood Dick." Another former slave, Bill Pickett, became a famous rodeo star for inventing bulldogging, or wrestling a steer to the ground by pulling on its horns. Sometimes he would drag it down while biting its lower lip!



HOW MUCH WATER DID A COWBOY'S TEN-GALLON HAT HOLD???

Not ten gallons! In fact, the word gallon probably came from the Spanish word galo'n, referring to the braid around the hat. But a sturdy, wide-brimmed hat could hold enough water to refresh a cowboy's horse. It also served as an eye shade when he took a nap, a fan when he was hot, and a mini-umbrella that protected him from sun and rain.


A cowboy also wouldn't be much of a wrangler without his trusty....

* chaps, worn over his pants to protect his legs

* bandanna, to keep the dust out of his nose and mouth

* boots, to keep his feet in the saddle and protect him from thorns and snakes

* spurs, to urge his horse on

* lariat, or rope, to catch stray cattle;

and--most of all--

* his saddle, which was his driver's seat, his office, and often his pillow at night


The following articles .. were borrowed from "The Pioneers" by Kenneth C. Davis.

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