Laura Czarniecki
Sovereignty Lesson
Lesson Title: Mapping “The Great Flood” a story of the Squaxin Island tribal members
Background: This lesson would be one part of a series of lessons to prepare students for
a field trip to Squaxin Island Museum. The story of “The Great Flood” is featured on one
of the five large panels that describe Squaxin culture and history. Hopefully by working
with this story in the classroom prior to the field trip, the students will recognize it as
familiar in the museum.
Learning Goal: 2nd Grade GLE 3.1.1 Understands and applies basic mapping elements
such as symbols, compass rose, labels, and a key to read and construct maps that display
information about neighborhoods or local communities.
Lesson Objective: Given a teacher led read-aloud and introduction to map making,
students will be able to create maps of the Puget Sound including a compass rose, labels
and a key.
Materials:
Stories about “The Great Flood” from Squaxin Island Museum website
Chart Paper and Drawing Paper
Color pencils, Crayons
(Map of Puget Sound)
Procedures:
Phase 1: Introduction
2 minutes
Today during story time I am going to tell you two stories that I heard while visiting the
Squaxin Island Museum. You may notice that the stories are similar in some ways and
different in others. Both stories explain how the ancestors of the American Indians of the
Puget Sound came to live in the South sound.
Phase 2: Read the two stories
10 minutes
Sometimes stories can give us many clues about what the lands or settings of the story
looked like and what types of animals and plants lived there. One way to collect all these
clues into a picture is to make a map of the setting that includes details from the story. As
I tell you the following stories, listen for any clues about what the land looked like and
who or what lived there.
Read the following stories aloud (try to memorize as much of the stories as possible so
that the students have the experience of being told the stories rather than being read to).
Both stories are called The Great Flood, they are remembered and told by two different
Squaxin tribal elders, Jim Krise and Cecil Cheeka. They have been recorded and made
available to non-tribal members by the museum and its website.
Version One Told By Jim Krise
The Great Spirit came and told the people to make some big rafts; that a lot of rain was
going to come and destroy a lot of the earth and its people. The Indians built big rafts of
Laura Czarniecki
Sovereignty Lesson
cedar logs lashed together with cedar root ropes, and were told to drift toward a certain
mountain.
There was a big rock on the mountain, and they tied onto this rock. About the time their
rope was giving out, they didn't have any more length of rope, the rains ceased and the
waters receded.
There were a great number of Indians on this raft, but those chosen by the Great Spirit to
carry on were not selected until after the flood. The animals, who came after people, were
originally people. They were changed into their present form at this time by the Great
Spirit who judged people and changed them. For instance, the Great Spirit, after
observing the people on the raft, said to one young man, "You have a nice, beautifullyformed body and are fleet of foot, but you are overly vain about your running ability, so
you shall become 'Deer' and forever depend upon your fleetness of foot to survive." To
one cross old woman, he said, "You are a grumpy old woman so you shall become 'Bear'
and you will have to walk on all fours and forever scratch around for sustenance." (To
this day Indians will say, "Don't be mean to bears in the woods. Maybe one is your
grandmother.")
All the animals have a similar explanation for being. They were judged at the flood and,
depending upon what they had been as human, they took the same characteristics into the
animal world.
Version Two Told by Cecil Cheeka
Ancient legends tell us of a great flood, not much different than the story in the bible.
The people were told to prepare several canoes and stock them with food supplies for
many days, as it was going to rain and there would be a great flood. It rained and rained
until, pretty soon, the water was so deep it was up to the mountain tops. The people took
out their ropes and tied their canoes to the top of the Olympic Mountains to keep from
drifting away and getting lost.
The rain eventually stopped, and the water started to recede. Some of the canoes broke
loose and floated away. Some to the north, some to the east and some to the west. The
ones that floated south settled in what is now known as the Puget Sound Basin. Thus
creating all the bands of natives that are our ancestors.
The inlets of South Puget Sound were full of our tribal people, until, in the late 1800s,
diseases brought in by Europeans (sometimes intentionally) decimated our populations.
Where once there were multitudes, there were few, if any, survivors of our people.
Phase 3: Gather a brainstorm list
8 minutes
Gather a list of map features on the chart paper by asking the following questions
(essentially you are making a really large key).
What parts of the land were mentioned in the stories? (Olympic Mountains, Puget Sound,
inlets of the South Puget Sound)
What animals? Did bears live there during the time of this story? Do bears live there
now? (deer, bears, people)
Which people lived there? (American Indian people, ancestors of modern day tribal
people)
What types of boats were used? What were the boats or rafts made out of? (rafts, canoes,
cedar trees and cedar roots)
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Sovereignty Lesson
Where did the other canoes go? How could we show those directions on the map? (north,
west, east; use arrows, lines, dots)
As the students provide answers record any questions that you cannot answer. This can
be the start of a list for the museum personnel.
Now, suppose I wanted to include all of this information on my map of the South Puget
Sound. It takes me a really long time to draw one little tiny picture of a deer and I want
the person looking at my map to know there are lots of deer in all over the land. What
could I do? Wait for student responses. Try out their ideas. If none of them decide a
symbol might work than introduce the idea yourself. One idea is to create a symbol for
deer that is easier for me to draw. I can put this picture next to the word “deer” and now
someone knows that every where I draw this symbol there might be deer on the map.
What kind of symbol could I use for the mountains? What about the canoes and the raft?
This list of words and the symbols next to them is called a “key”, because it is the key to
helping me figure out which things I put on my map.
Now how could I draw on my map a way for people to understand which direction the
other canoes went? This question is started to get at the idea of the compass rose,
depending on the students’ familiarity with maps they may or may not discover this. You
can leave it for a more targeted lesson around the compass rose or include it if they
figure it out.
Phase 4: Guided practice
15 minutes
Now each of you will have an opportunity to draw a map of the stories. Make a list of
everything you are including in your map and pick the symbols that you will use for each
thing. There is paper and color pencils at each of your tables.
Walk around as they work and encourage them to label parts that they know or have been
to, label the parts mentioned in the story, indicate the directions the canoes traveled, and
create symbols for the animals and people on the map.
Phase 5: Share our story maps
5 minutes
Tape the maps to the wall and have a gallery walk. Call on students to point to a “key” in
another person’s map. Ask students to compare and contrast their maps.
Assessment:
Formative assessment of student maps using the following rubric.
Learning Goal
Beginning
Emerging Developing
Understands and
Creates an
Creates an Diagrams a
applies basic mapping
illustration of illustration birds’ eye view
elements such as
the story that of the
of the story
symbols, compass rose, includes land story with with several
labels, and a key to read features but
a key for
different
and construct maps that does not
some of
features that
display information
label them or the
are labeled or
about neighborhoods or include other features
symbolized in
local communities.
map features. included.
a key.
Skilled
Produces a
birds’ eye view
map of the story
complete with
labels, a key and
a compass rose
(indicating the
directions of the
canoes.
Laura Czarniecki
Sovereignty Lesson