Social Studies

Isaiah's 4th grade Social Studies is all about Ohio.
Helping him with his homework I realize what a great Indian history Ohio had and remember looking for indian arrow heads in fields as a child. I don't think I ever found one.
My grandparents had friends in Vermillion Ohio that had indian arrow heads they'd found displayed together in a wall hanging. The arrow heads were displayed in a pattern that looked like one big arrow head. It was probably in a frame that was 10 x 13 or so.
It's kind of hard to miss the fact that this was all Indian territory once upon a time. We live near the Mohican forest where people come to canoe the river during the summer.
We're surrounded by counties with such names as Erie, Huron, Tuscarawas, Seneca, Delaware, Cuyahoga and others.
I find myself helping Isaiah with his homework and wondering if he went to a school of Native Americans how the history would be written. I've sort of seen this before. When we lived in North Carolina I noticed my friends daughter was taught a different tilt on the Civil War era than I was here in Ohio.
Isaiah studied the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville. I find myself wanting to tell Isaiah that the indians didn't just move away, they were run off and sure there was murder and violence on both sides. Not to mention torture that is hard to believe any human could commit on another. That yes, the Indians took scalps, but there was a white British officer, Henry Hamilton, in Detroit that paid them money for the scalps. Which is more inhumane?
Also we paint them as savages but many tribes lived in villages with homes just like us. They were farmers and hunters who took just what was needed. Many whites who were taken captive by indians were treated so well that when they were found refused to go back to their old lives. Of course there was the running of the gauntlet that was a violent start to the "adoption" process, but how would whites have treated their captives? One run through the gauntlet is probably pie compared to the techniques we used, if we let them live.
I guess I want Isaiah to get a balanced sense of history. To know that things are done in the interest of "national security" or out of fear and we need to at times put ourselves in the shoes of those we're oppressing and at times be tolerant. That just because we don't understand another's way of life or agree, that doesn't make it wrong. That just because we're in a war with one group of people doesn't mean all are bad. Whether it's Indians, Japanese or Muslims. Because God knows, just because I'm white and Christian doesn' t mean I agree with everything or anything people like Jimmy Swagger, Benny Hinn, Jim Baker or many of our politians say or do!
Besides my kids are German, French, Scotch-Irish, English, possibly Native American. They have Pentacostal, Jehovah Witness, Methodist and Catholic Grandparents. Ancesters who moved across the plains on covered wagons with the Mormons. Loved ones who are in inter racial relationships, products of inter racial realationships or homosexual. So when someone starts flinging mud, it's gonna land somewhere very near us! So they remember that what we do today and how we treat others today, is tomorrows history and Social Studies lesson.