Early Encounters
This explorer wrote that Indigenous people “had no iron or weapons” and would make “good servants.”
Who is Christopher Columbus?
The Old New York Diorama shows this type of encounter.
What is a meeting between Dutch settlers and the Lenape?
Giovanni da Verrazzano represents which group of people's perspective on the Early Encounters?
Who are the Europeans?
In summer, the Lenape lived in villages near these.
What are their fields?
Who are explorers and colonizers like Columbus or Verrazano?
In this oral tradition, the Taino said they first welcomed Europeans with food and gifts.
What is the Taino perspective?
In the original diorama, Lenape women were stereotyped as only doing this kind of work.
What is physical labor?
The Lenape described the land as this, shared with all living things.
What is their mother?
In winter, the Lenape moved here for food and shelter.
What is the forest?
These Indigenous voices were often left unheard in history.
Who are the Lenape and Taino?
The Taino later realized Europeans wanted to take this.
What is their land and labor?
This Lenape sachem and diplomat was missing from the original diorama label.
Who is Oratamin?
These three crops were planted by the Lenape.
What are corn, beans, and squash?
Lenape families lived in these shared homes.
What are longhouses?
This African writer challenged European stories by describing enslavement.
Who is Olaudah Equiano?
This African man described the cruelty of the Middle Passage in his autobiography.
Who is Olaudah Equiano?
These groups living in New Amsterdam were left out of the diorama.
Who are women, Africans, and Jewish immigrants?
Comparing perspectives shows the Lenape lived this way, not on “empty land.”
What is sustainably and in organized communities?
Community decisions were made in this way, including both men and women.
What is by council?
These oversimplified ideas distort history and erase real experiences.
What are stereotypes?
This is one reason it matters whose perspective is told in history.
What is that it shapes whose voices are heard and whose are silenced?
This is why the diorama should stay visible to the public, but with critique.
What is so people see history’s bias and whose voices were excluded?
Europeans ignored Lenape land use for this reason.
What is to justify taking the land?
One aspect of Lenape life that might have confused Europeans was this.
What is shared land, women in leadership, or seasonal movement?
This is one reason we need multiple perspectives in history.
What is to make history more accurate and fair?