Bedford Hills Fourth Graders Learn About Native American Life from a Living Historian

“What piece here makes you the most curious?” Drew Shuptar-Rayvis, an anthropologist and member of the Pocomoke Indian Nation asked a group of Bedford Hills Elementary School fourth graders. In front of them, there was an array of artifacts ranging from furs and handmade bowls to bows and deerskin leggings.

Shuptar-Rayvis’s entire presentation was dictated by what students asked and the conversations that came up while learning. The focus of the information he shared was on Algonquian life in the eastern woodlands within a few years of European contact.

“I’m really curious about all of these foods. I’m interested in what they might taste like.”

“How did you get clean?”

“Did you basically make all of your own stuff?”

Shuptar-Rayvis answered all of the students’ questions thoroughly, sometimes citing primary sources in his responses.

They learned about clothing, harvesting food, making the tools they used (from harvesting clay for their pots to creating paint from minerals and plants to embellish their clothing), the introduction of European goods and so much more.

“If you were a traditional Native American here in Bedford,” he said, “you would have spent your whole life outdoors. All that kept you warm would be your furs and your fire.”

When Europeans came with wool blankets, the native people quickly realized that wool didn’t burn and that it kept you warm even if it was wet. This led them to trading in their fur mantles for wool.

“Native people were incredibly inventive,” Shuptar-Rayvis said. He told students about how they created fish weirs, which are like fences for fish that guide them into an area where they get caught. Native Americans would then use woven baskets to pull them up.

Students were so engaged and full of questions that they wiggled their hands in the air with excitement as they waited to ask questions.