CHAPTER FIFTEEN

STORY-TELLING TO INTENSIFY INTEREST IN GEOGRAPHY

In the study of geography the story means as much as in history. The child is keenly interested in what he is doing and in what those around him are doing, and when he discovers that people in China, in South America, in Australia, or in Russia are doing the very things he is attempting to do or sees done, that they are engaged in industrial occupation very much as his father or uncle or neighbor is engaged in it, that distant occupation loses its remote quality, and the country with which it is associated becomes real and near to him. In the larger sense geography is something that must be felt and imagined. It is an interpretation of foreign activities and the regions in which they take place, and because the story can interpret these activities, because it can make situations real and familiar instead of aloof, it is of inestimable value in teaching the subject. Here the myth and fairy tale can be used with excellent results, because through them the child sees something of the struggle of man in his effort to interpret the world and comes to have a broader sympathy for the ideals of people of other regions. Moreover, in many instances it tends to fix definite information concerning a certain locality and to invest distant regions with vivid interest, for to the boy who associates the Rhine or Danube or Himalayas with the tale of a hero or people who once lived and did brave deeds there, those rivers and mountains will be more than black specks on a map. If he hears of the two frogs in Japan who started out to see the world, he will not say that Kioto is somewhere in South America, because the spot has been fixed in his mind by a story. Because it is associated with something he has enjoyed, it stays there, and while the highest aim of the study of geography is not merely to stuff the mind with facts, but to broaden the horizon and bring the world within the child’s own dooryard, the acquisition of certain information tends to give him that broad outlook which makes all people seem creatures of his world and all activities a part of his own experience. Unfortunately, however, teachers sometimes lose sight of this fact, and the larger aim is made subservient to a memorizing of data.

Geography and history are so closely related that it is difficult to separate them, and in making one vivid we must draw constantly from the other. The field is limitless. In fact, there are so many stories to give the geography class that teachers sometimes say, “When are we to have time for formal recitations?”

Too much recitation and not enough story is responsible for the fact that boys and girls sometimes give startling information about the location of places. Shorten the recitation period, if necessary, but do not fail to give the stories that bring far-away places as near as one’s own dooryard, and let tests and examinations prove which method is better. We must possess before we can give, and the pupil who is assigned a number of pages and expected to recite about them often fails miserably, because interest, which must underlie the acquisition of knowledge, has not been aroused. We may tell him to study the course of the Rhine and locate the cities that dot its banks, and one will mean no more to him than the other. But if he hears the tale of the building of the king of German cathedrals and the legend of the architect’s compact with the Evil One, Cologne will have an individuality very different from that of Coblenz with its bridge of boats. If he listens to the tale of Maui fishing up New Zealand from the bottom of the ocean, of the demigod chieftain who was the discoverer of Hawaii and the patriarch of his people, there will pass before his eyes at the mention of places among the Pacific Islands pictures of a dark-skinned, sea-loving race with a history fully as fascinating as that of his own people.

If there is not time for him to recite it all, let him write about it. This will help to solve the composition problem, because the reason for much of the miserable written English work is due to the fact that the child has nothing to give. He is told to elaborate upon a subject that lies far from his interest, one of which he has little knowledge, with results that every English teacher knows. But if he has been interested in it by a story, he can give that story back in oral or written form, even though the construction be far from perfect.

Another value of using stories with a geographical or historical background is that they develop the child’s social instinct and give him something of a realization of the brotherhood of man. Through hearing and reading them he becomes broader and more tolerant. He sees that in every part of the world men have their standards and ideals, which, although they may be greatly at variance with his own, are entitled to respect because they represent deep convictions and desires. Instead of viewing the world through a keyhole, he sees it across unobstructed fields and comes to have a bigger human understanding. In the study of geography there is a finer opportunity than anywhere else in elementary education to divert the child’s feet from a narrow, provincial trail into the broad highway of cosmopolitanism.

As in the study of history, so in geography the story should radiate from local environment to other sections of the world, and every worker with girls and boys, whether mother, teacher, or librarian, should endeavor to give them some idea of the story of their own locality. The child should know something of the legends of the people who built their camp fires on the spots that are his public parks and gardens, and teachers especially should aid the earnest group of men and women that is patiently collecting and preserving our American folklore, by giving some of it to the children. It will not only heighten pride in their own locality, but it will broaden their understanding of other lands and races and their sympathy with the struggles of different peoples. This kind of work belongs to the field of history, but it so greatly increases interest in geography that the teacher should not miss the opportunity of using this material.

There are legends clustering about every section of our country that the people of that locality should know, and it is a matter of regret that the average man or woman has seldom heard of them. Europeans are inclined to say we are a people of no traditions. While the charge is untrue, and our land is rich in legendary lore, it is true that only a small percentage of Americans are familiar with it. One reason for this general ignorance is that much of it has been buried in scientific treatises, which are unavailable to the layman. But within the last few years a large amount has been put within reach of the story-teller. The unceasing work of the American Folklore Society has resulted in unearthing and preserving much that would otherwise have been lost and that is important enough to have a place in our schools. Nothing is more fascinating to the child than stories of his own region, and our young people ought to be privileged to share in that joy with boys and girls of the Old World.

There are peasant lads in France, Italy, and other European countries who can entertain by the hour with tales of their rivers and mountains—not those of some distant province, but the peaks that tower above their native village, the streams along which they trudge on their way to school. California, Washington, and Oregon children should be given legends of the Yosemite, of Lake Tahoe, of Mount Shasta, of the Columbia River, and of Mount Rainier. Boys and girls among Southern bayous should be taught the traditions of their region, of the Indians and Creoles who made history there when that section was a province of France; while along Northern lake and inland river are tales of forest folk, of pathfinder and black-robed message bringer, of knights of the Old World come to seek fortune in the New, that are a part of the heritage of every youth living there. Let us give them to our young people, that they may love their home spots, not just because they are beautiful and are theirs, but as the French child loves the Rhone or the Austrian the Danube, because of the stories that tend to make them enchanted ground.

In using the story in geography the teacher’s work does not end with telling the story. The places mentioned in it should be located on the map, that their exact position may be fixed in the mind of the child. Interest in the story will make this a pleasure rather than a task for the boy, just as it becomes a delight rather than a hardship for him to follow the route taken by his father or uncle when he goes on a journey, or to work out the itinerary of a trip he hopes to take himself. One small boy studied the geography of Virginia with keen interest after reading _Lord Cornwallis’ Silver Buckles_, and more than one man and woman attest to the fact that some book read and loved during their school days did more to fix the location of river, city, and mountain in their minds than hours of classroom recitation spent in bounding states and countries and tracing the courses of rivers.

The following legend of Niagara Falls is illustrative of one type of tale that will greatly add to the child’s interest in geography by investing certain localities with story associations. Much other material is given in the appended bibliography, and the wide-awake teacher will be able to glean much more from libraries and adapt it to her work.

THE GOD OF THE THUNDERING WATER

RETOLD FROM AN IROQUOIS LEGEND

Before the white man sailed westward across the Atlantic, in fact, before Columbus was born or anybody even dreamed about a short route to the Indies, a little Indian girl lived on the shore of Niagara not so very far above the cataract. She was a happy little thing, and as she grew to maidenhood she became the fairest girl of her tribe, and her father, who was a mighty chieftain, promised her in marriage to the most powerful of his braves. This Indian was a swift runner, and around the council fire not another tongue was so nimble or eloquent as his, and never did his arrows fail to pierce the heart of the deer at which he aimed them. But that mattered little to the girl. He was not her ideal of a husband, and she could think of nothing more dreadful than becoming the mistress of his wigwam. Yet her father had spoken and she must obey, and with a sad heart she made ready for the wedding, weaving the handsomest of wampum belts and ornamenting her moccasins with gay beads and bits of woodpecker feather.

The wedding morning dawned, and the Indians began the games and merrymaking that always marked a marriage. The bridegroom and the young braves vied in races and wrestling matches, and the women too had a part in the festivities, singing and chanting weird songs as they tended the fire and roasted venison for the feast. Everybody was happy,—every one but the bride, who did not want to marry, and who sat in her wigwam looking sadly out upon the sport. Suddenly came the decision that she would not be the squaw of the man she detested.

Quickly, softly, she crept from the wigwam and hurried to the river bank. The others were so busy with their merrymaking that they did not see her go, and soon she came to where her canoe was moored to some bushes. She stepped into it, pushed it from shore, and began drifting down the stream. It was good to be there on the water, for, like all Indian girls, she loved to paddle, and in her joy of skimming along with the current she began to sing.

Suddenly a whoop went up from the village of her people. It was not the cry of those victorious in a game, it was a shout of anger, a cry of alarm, for they had seen her and believed she was trying to escape from the marriage every one knew was distasteful to her. The bridegroom started in pursuit, then another Indian and another, until every man in the village was rushing to the river and some had already begun the chase in canoes.

“They shall not take me back,” the girl murmured. “I will not go back to the village and become Kunawa’s squaw.”

With swift, powerful strokes she paddled down the stream. She forgot that the cataract was roaring below her, forgot that her canoe was going rapidly and surely toward the bright foam from which no boat could come back. She thought only that she was fleeing from a wedding, and not until she saw the rapids beneath her did she realize her fate. Then she began her death song, and those in pursuit heard it for a moment, loud, clear, and plaintive as the canoe cut into the cataract, then suddenly silenced as it shot down to the rapids. Some of the women wailed and joined in the funeral dirge, and some of the others cried out in fear to the Great Spirit.

“It is the last of Kunawa’s bride!” they exclaimed. “She is now on her way to the Spirit Land.”

But it was not the last of the girl. Far down in the mist of the cataract, Heno, the Thunder God, had seen her. He held forth his arms, and as the canoe dropped to the rapids, she went into them, and bearing her through the watery depths, he placed her in a cavern behind the fall where he had lived since the beginning of things, and where the girl would live with him henceforth.

Many years passed. She was no longer a young maiden, but a tall, sturdy woman, and Heno gave her to one of his sons to be his squaw. She lived there in happiness with him in the cavern under Niagara, and often she thought of her people and her native village above beside the river. Because she remembered and loved them, Heno was kind to them, and when pestilence came to the region he lifted her to the shore that she might tell them where to go to escape the disease.

Once a great monster, a snake all green and white, came trailing his body through the forest like a river between hills, and made straight for the village by Niagara to feed upon the people there. But through the Indian girl Heno had told them of the coming danger, and they fled before the monster so fast that when it reached the village it found only a place of deserted camps. The great creature hissed with wrath, but Heno saw it from the mists and struck it dead with a thunderbolt. The great mass rolled to the river, floated down the stream, and lodged so tight above the cataract that a fold in its body sent a great volume of water out of its course, forming the Horseshoe Fall. The flood centered there destroyed the home of Heno too, but the Thunder God arose with his children and the Indian girl, and ascending to the heavens, has lived there ever since, where he thunders in the cloud mists as he once did in those of the fall. His voice is so mighty that the echo of it is always sounding above Niagara, and although white men say it is nothing but the noise of falling water, the Indians know better. They know it is the song of the god of the Thundering Water.

SOURCES OF MATERIAL TO USE IN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY

The history and geography references have been combined because each of the books listed here is valuable in both lines of work. This plan also carries out the Play School idea, which is that there is no line of demarcation between the two subjects.

BALDWIN, JAMES: _The Discovery of the Old Northwest_.

BECQUER, GUSTAVO ADOLFO: _Romantic Legends of Spain_.

BRABOURNE, LORD (EDWARD KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN): _River Legends_ (London and England).

CONVERSE, HARRIET CLARKE: _Myths and Legends of New York State Iroquois_.

GRIFFIS, WILLIAM ELLIOT: _The Unmannerly Tiger and Other Tales_ (Korean).

GUERBER, HELÈNE A.: _The Story of the English_; _Legends of the Rhine_; _Legends of Switzerland_.

HARDY, MARY E.: _Indian Legends from Geyser-land_ (Yellowstone).

HEARN, LAFCADIO: _Kwaidan_ (Japan).

JANVIER, THOMAS A.: _Legends of the City of Mexico_.

JOHONNOT, JAMES: _Ten Great Events in History_.

JUDSON, KATHARINE B.: _Myths of California and the Old Southwest_; _Myths and Legends of the Great Plains_; _Myths and Legends of Alaska_; _Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest_.

LANG, ANDREW: _True Story Book_.

MCMURRY, CHARLES A.: _Pioneers of the Mississippi Valley_.

PERRY, F. M., and BEEBE, KATHERINE: _Four American Pioneers_.

PITMAN, LEILA WEBSTER: _Stories of Old France_.

SKINNER, CHARLES M.: _American Myths and Legends_; _Myths and Legends beyond Our Borders_ (Mexico and Peru).

SMITH, BERTHA H.: _Yosemite Legends_.

WARREN, HENRY PITT (Ed.): _Stories from English History_.

WESTERVELT, H. D.: _Legends of Old Honolulu_.