Academic Musings & Tech for Learning

400 years ago, under the Dutch flag, Henry Hudson sailed into the river, known to the Lenape Indians as the Muhheakantuck, the River that Flows Two Ways.

From Ian Chadwick’s website about Henry Hudson [http://www.ianchadwick.com/hudson/hudson_03.htm], this an excerpt of September 1609’s voyage:

11: Hudson sailed through the Narrows and anchored in New York Bay. The first night he anchored off the northern tip of Manhattan.

12: A flotilla of 28 canoes, filled with men, women and children approached, but, Juet wrote, “we saw the intent of their treachery and would not allow any of them to come aboard.” However, the crew bought food from them. Hudson noted the natives used copper in their pipes and inferred there was a natural source nearby.

13: The crew traded for oysters with the Native Americans; the ship was near today’s Yonkers.

There are many quadricentennial celebrations and exhibits underway to mark this event. Some great gateways to explore stories and information about this are the Henry Hudson 400 web site home, with an interactive map filled with archival historical maps and links for more data, and Explore NY 400, a very comprehensive site dedicated to celebrating New York’s 400th year.

What did the native Lenape Indians eat? Check out Garden Lab’s Lenape Edible Estate,  which was created for the Hudson Guild and is located at 441 West 26th Street at 10th Avenue, New York, NY.  This Monday, September 14th,  there is a free, family Harvest Opening event from 6:00 – 8:30 PM featuring harvest activities, interpretive garden tours, native foods cooking demonstrations with field-to-fork food education program Growing Chefs, and other food demonstrations with Hot Bread Kitchen. On the website you’ll find pictures of the plants, the garden layout and lists of all the plants in the garden.

One of the more remarkable projects is The Manahatta Project. After 10 years of diligent, hard work the team, headed by Dr. Eric Sanderson, unveiled a website that details what Manhattan was like in 1609.

I had the good fortune to learn about his project at Teaching the Hudson Valley’s summer institute in July of 2008. It is truly a remarkable piece of well researched science and technology. The effort began with a very detailed British Army Survey Map from 1692. Using a sophisticated matrix of species and environmental conditions, scientists developed a ‘Muir Web’ of the likely flora and fauna for every inch of 1609 Manhattan. They estimate that there were 55 distinct ecological community type.  To get started,you’ll need to type in an address. Blocks are highlighted and clicking on one brings up another window with detailed information about the probable wildlife, plants, Lenape usage and landscape together with a photograph depicted that type of environment. You can easily mouse-over the map and do the same for every are of Manhattan.

There are some excellent teacher resources here as well including activities and lesson plans. One of these teaches the water cycle in an interesting, place-based way and compares the life of a water droplet in 1609 to present day. This is much more fun and realistic than the idealized charts we are used to. Another idea from here is to create a web using yarn going from one participant to another that connects specific plants, animals or environmental features. It becomes very apparent, very quickly, that everything is connected. To review and download the Manahatta Curriculum visit their website.