Grade 2 History and Social Studies Week 17 | Student Textbook

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Day 81: Legend or History?

Some stories about the past are documented history. That means people wrote them down or recorded them at the time, so we can check them. A legend is a story told and retold about a person or event. A legend may be partly true, or not true at all, and it can grow bigger each time it is told.

Many people have heard that young George Washington cut his father’s cherry tree with a hatchet and said, “I cannot tell a lie.” Washington died in 1799. A writer named Mason Locke Weems first published his book about Washington in 1800, and the cherry tree story first appeared in a new edition of that book in 1806. No record from Washington’s own life tells of it, so historians call it a legend.

John Chapman was a real man, born in Massachusetts in 1774. He planted nurseries of young apple trees on the frontier, in places such as Ohio and Indiana, and sold the trees to settlers. That is documented history. People called him Johnny Appleseed. Later stories said he scattered seeds everywhere he walked, just for fun. That part is legend: the real John Chapman planted nurseries on purpose and sold the trees.

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Day 82: Traditional Stories of the First Peoples

Long before there were books in North America, the First Peoples, or Native Americans, passed down their history, lessons and stories by telling them. Grandparents told stories to children, and those children grew up and told them to their own children. This is called oral tradition. Oral means spoken.

The Cherokee people once lived in the southern mountains, including parts of what are now North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and northeast Alabama. The Cherokee are still nations today. In the late 1880s, Cherokee storytellers in the mountains of North Carolina shared many stories with a writer named James Mooney, who printed them in 1900. One is about a race between a Rabbit and a Terrapin, a kind of turtle.

The Muscogee (Creek) people also lived in Alabama. Today the Poarch Band of Creek Indians lives near Atmore, Alabama. The Poarch Creek are a nation with their own government, and in 1984 the United States government recognized them as a tribe.

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Day 83: Black American Stories and a Folk Hero

Many Africans who were enslaved in America came from places with a rich tradition of storytelling. They carried stories with them in their memory. A favorite character was a small, clever animal who outsmarts bigger, stronger animals. In Africa the trickster was often a hare. In America he became Brer Rabbit. Brer means brother. Enslaved Black storytellers told these tales for many years before anyone wrote them down in the late 1800s.

John Henry is a folk hero, a hero of songs and stories. The story says he was a Black railroad worker, a steel driver. Steel drivers swung heavy hammers to drive steel drills into rock, so tunnels could be cut through mountains for the railroads. That part is documented: men really did this hard work, and steam-powered drills were starting to do it too. The legend says John Henry raced a steam drill and won, but the work was so hard that he died with his hammer in his hand.

Was John Henry a real man? No one knows for sure. Several places claim the contest happened there. One tradition says it took place in 1887 at a railroad tunnel near Leeds, Alabama. People in West Virginia and Virginia say it happened in their states.

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Day 84: Songs That Tell Our History

Songs carry history too. “Yankee Doodle” is a very old song. Before the American Revolution, British soldiers sang it to make fun of the American colonists, calling them doodles, or silly fellows. British troops even played it as they marched to battle on the first day of the Revolutionary War, in 1775. But the Americans took the song for their own and sang it proudly.

In September 1814, during a war with Great Britain, British ships fired on Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, all through the night. A lawyer named Francis Scott Key watched from a ship. In the morning he saw the American flag still flying over the fort, and he wrote a poem about it. People sang his words to a popular tune, and the song became known as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In 1931, a law made it the national anthem of the United States. The flag Key saw is kept today at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.

Every state has symbols too. Alabama’s state song is called “Alabama.” Families have songs and stories of their own that they pass down. Today you will ask someone in your family about one.

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Day 85: Independent Check: Legends, Stories and Songs

Today you will answer on your own.

Use what you learned this week: documented history, legends, traditional stories and songs.

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