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Marguerite de Angeli had The Skippack School published in 1939. It is one of the readers in the Sonlight Curriculum’s elementary American history program. I feel it should be removed from the curriculum due to its inaccurate and stereotypical portrayal of American Indians. This reader comes after a series of books told from the white settler’s point of view.

This is unfortunate because if the references to American Indians were edited it would be a nice little story about the Germans who settled in Penn’s Woods in Pennsylvania about 1750 to worship God in their own way. The Indian characters do not advance the story nor enhance the story and are treated as part of the setting.

The Skippack School is the story of the Shrawder family - Pop, Mom, little sisters and Eli. I would guess that Eli is about nine years old, but it is not made clear in the book. The German Shrawder’s settle near German Town and Eli attends Skippack School two to three days a week. He can already speak English though he had just walked off the boat. Eli is a troublemaker, but because of kind, gentle, and patient schoolmaster Christopher Dock, he begins to study and read his verses.

Eli misses school the day he is to read the Scriptures aloud (a big honor) as his mother is away caring for ill neighbors. An American Indian stops by and demands to be fed. He is a Leni-Lenape. He uses words like “Ugh” and eats like a pig. White Eagle makes a comment about Indians owning the land. It is not an accurate portrayal or even semi-realistic.

Eli must sell his handmade bench to replace the glass window he broke at school and Dock takes him to German Town for his first time there. There is a very good description of visiting the printer, if you are also reading about Ben Franklin this description enhances your other readings. There is also a scene of Indian men eating in the village square and being served by village women. Eli is told, “No child need fear the Indians here. They’ve never broken the Penn Treaty.” But the settlers farther west are “having trouble” because the Indians are forming a council to address their issues. Too bad de Angeli couldn’t have recognized it wasn’t the Indians we needed to worry about when it came to honoring a treaty.

Eli learns so much in town, that he arrives home and makes his own little book for Dock complete with a printed wood block design on the cover and colored illustrations. Master Christopher then presents Eli with a beautiful painting with a Scripture and the alphabet. I enjoyed the character of Master Christopher, if only all teachers were like him.

German Town is a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Here is a website where you can go if your ancestors settled in German Town. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~original13/

Marguerite de Angeli http://www.deangeli.lapeer.org/Life/index.html was born in Lapeer, Michigan in 1889 and won the Newberry Award in 1949 for Door in the Wall. In 1902, she moved with her family to Pennsylvania. When I lived in Metamora and took my young sons to the Marguerite de Angeli Library in Lapeer I would always feel sad as I drove a block or two north on M-24 and saw the For Sale sign in front of de Angeli’s Lapeer home. There is a marker denoting the house. I hope someone bought that house and preserved it.

The Leni-Lenapes are called Delaware  http://www.delawareindians.com/   and despite the Penn Treaty, their lands were taken from them and they were forced west to Ohio and continuing westward to Indiana. Some of the Delaware sided with Tecumseh and the British and fought against the encroachments of the Americans. http://www.munseedelawareindiannation-usa.us/page06.html

The Shawnee often lived with the Delaware and it is for this reason, that some of my ancestors may have been Delaware as we will never be able to prove for certain my ancestor’s tribal identity. They married caucasians and assimilated into white society and we are left with oral history only.

The Delaware were forced onto reservations in Oklahoma.

In Noblesville, Indiana (about 45 minutes north of Indianapolis), you can visit the Strawtown Koteewi Park which used to be a Delaware village in the early 1800’s. The village rested against the shores of the White River. We visited this park and met very friendly and informative archaeologists and park rangers.

http://www.co.hamilton.in.us/parks_details.asp?id=2932

Also in Noblesville is the Conner Prairie Living History Museum http://www.connerprairie.org/

This is a wonderful field trip for homeschool families. There are several historic buildings on site and a recreated Delaware Indian village. A Delaware gentleman was on hand and kindly showed me the garden with corn growing from seed passed down through the generations. He explained that they plant the corn in a circle and when the seedlings are several inches high, they plant pole beans in an outer circle. The pole beans then grow around the corn. The corn was at least twelve feet high. He also showed my daughter a Delaware game played with sticks.

On site we also saw a Civil War reenactor and buildings hosted by costumed interpreters. One of my daughter’s favorite stops was a petting barn where many of the farm animals were not in their pens! The young cow simply rested on the barn floor and enjoyed having her muzzle petted.

If you do read The Skippack School, please supplement with trips such as I described above and with readings about the Delaware Indian. Please try to give your children as much of the whole story as possible.