* Sample Lesson with permission from Don Everhart *

Main Street, U.S.A.
Southeast
Basket Game of the Cherokees
Author: Don Everhart

Overview: Students enjoy playing games. This game not only uses
historical games of the Cherokee Indians; it also uses math in figuring the score. It is a game, which could be easily adapted for more difficult concepts, particularly multiplications.

Grade level: Grade 4 and 5. Could be adapted to grade 3, as well as grade 6 and above.

Time Needed: Twenty to thirty minutes.

Connections to the Curriculum: Geography, literature, mathematics.

Geographic Theme: Human environment interaction, location, region.

National Geographic Standards:
Geography Standard 12: The processes, patterns, and function of human settlement.
Geography Standard 17: How to apply geography to interpret the past.

Objectives:
The student will be able to make the basket game. The student will know what Cherokees may have used to make this game.
The student will know where the Cherokees lived in the Southeast.

Materials Needed:
Six lima beans or other flat bean, flat basket or box lid, permanent marker, Cobblestone Magazine, February, 1984. Questions and Answers About the Cherokees, by Ellen Hardsog, pages 6-9, Map of the United States.

Materials Included:
Map of the United States (Only available on hard copy) Procedure:

Preliminary information for students:
Who were the Cherokee Indians? Where did they live? Anyone have any ideas? I am going to read an article from Cobblestone Magazine about the Cherokees. Then we are going to play an Indian basket game that the Cherokee children played.

Read page 6 and part of page 7. After reading, ask about the sates where Cherokees lived. Using the United States map, have students show were the Cherokees lived.

The game we are gong to play is an activity that can be played by two or more people. The game originated probably before the arrival of Europeans (so that would be before what year?) and still played in North Carolina by Cherokee children. The basket that is traditionally used is handmade and is about a foot square. The dice were traditionally made of wood with the design burned into it. Today, children play with beans that are marked appropriately.

On one side of each of the six dice or beans, a design has been marked. The first player (whose last name begins closest to the end of the alphabet) starts by holding the basket containing the six dice, in both hands. The dice or beans are tossed into the air by flicking the basket and catching them again. (If dice land on the floor, the turn is automatically over.)

If all of the dice or beans land with the marked side up, you will receive three points. If all land wit the white side up, you receive one point. If five out of six dice or beans have the same side up, one point is scored. These are the only ways points ma be scored.

Your turn will continue as long as you are making scores. When you no longer make a score, the basket is passed to the next player. The player with twelve points wins the game.

Variations of the game: The game could be varied to match many different ideas-colors can be utilized to represent a particular point value, numbers can be added to the beans and the totals would be the score. The totals could be the product of all the beans.

Assessment: In the student Passport, have the students write about the following:
1. Why do you think Cherokee Indian children play this game?
2. Why would they use bens or wooden blocks?
3. How could this game be made more challenging?

Resources:
Hardsog, Ellen. Questions and Answers About the Cherokees. Cobblestone
Magazine. February, 1984.