Walam Olum

Cornell Notes 

Don’t write everything!  

Main ideas, events, and people Wait until end of each slide

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Use phrases, not full sentences

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Use abbreviations and symbols

Walam Olum “The Red Record”

Walam Olum Background 

Composed on birch bark  

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Walam: painted Olum: notched stick or engraved piece of wood

Written in pictographs 

Pictograph: drawings that represent words and ideas

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Comprised of 3 books/cantos and 186 symbols

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Relates the history, legends, and mythology of the Lenape Native Americans (Delaware)   

Creation Floods Migration

Walam Olum as Authentic Text… 

1840’s: Educated Indian Chief George Copway declared the text authentic in signs, dialect, and ideas and conceptions

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Respectable anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians upheld authenticity

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Lenape tribe used birch bark scrolls

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C. Rafinesque was a scientist

C. Rafinesque: Walam Olum Forger 

Lived 1783-1840

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Naturalist with interests in biology, botany, geology, anthropology, and linguistics

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Professor, writer, scientist with mild lifetime success

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Not widely accepted by the scientific community for new specimens

Walam Olum as Hoax C. Rafinesque Suspicious origins: • Dr. Ward • Sacred text as payment • Why Rafinesque? Linguistic inaccuracies: • Modern Lenape language • Proficiency in language • Backwards translation Other problems: • Story compiled from other sources • Hybrid pictographs • Rafinesque very ambitious No proof: • Originals are “lost” • No record of existence • Differs from traditional Native traditions

How does Walam Olum compare to traditional Native American mythology? Walam Olum

Native American mythology

Migration from Asia

Always lived “here”

Single male deity creates world

World created by animal or mothers and fathers

Good struggles against evil magician

No evil, just comic or stupid tricksters

Disease is punishment

Disease is accidental or results from misunderstanding

Animals and humans are separate and don’t interact

Animal world and human world interact fluidly

Cornell Notes: Questions 

Work individually

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Write one question from each level, three questions total

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Questions should line up with the related notes on your paper

A/B Sharing Hypothesize as to why this was not found as a hoax for 150 years. Imagine the impact of this incident on the Lenape people.

Cornell Notes: Summary 

Word individually

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Write a 6-8 sentence summary

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Use different words than are in your notes

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Include:   

Big idea Support Conclusion