About a year ago, I was deep into research on the history of slavery in Connecticut, as part of my work on the education committee of a local historic house. I learned how this state was the "Georgia of the North," with more slaves than any other New England colony, and also how slaves continued their West African religious practices such as hiding minkisi under floorboards for protection. I also spent some time looking into pirates and privateers who operated in the waters of Long Island Sound.
Now I'm beginning research on Native Americans in colonial Connecticut, in the 18th-century. It's just the beginning of my research, but with both the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and the Institute for American Indian Studies here in the state, I know I'll turn up some interesting information to share with the fifth graders come April. But one statistic strikes me: there were approximately 30,000 Native Americans here in what is now Connecticut when colonists arrived. By 1762, there were less than 1,000.
We're also going to be including some discussion of archaeology, essentially how we as historians and docents learn about the ordinary people who didn't make it into the written historical record. There have been thousands of artifacts discovered at our site, which should make for wonderful discussion, even if we can't show the classes anything more than pictures of objects or replicas. Of course, when I was in elementary school, Indiana Jones popularized archaeology. I hope our tour will be able to do the same and get the students excited about our local history and how we learn it.
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