Cornell Notes
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Don’t write everything!
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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
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Composed on birch bark
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Walam: painted
Olum: notched stick or engraved piece of wood
Written in pictographs
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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)
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Creation
Floods
Migration
Walam Olum as Authentic Text…
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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
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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
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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
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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:
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Big idea
Support
Conclusion