If You Lived With the Cherokee
This book reveals what it was like to grow up in a Cherokee family in the Great Smoky Mountains about 200 years ago. The colorful illustrations help to depict life in this Native American culture, as they used the natural, capital, and human resources available to them to produce goods that would satisfy their economic wants—food, clothing, dwellings, medicine, games and toys, and other components of their lives. At the end of the book there is a description of the “Trail of Tears,” when the government took away one of their most valuable natural resources, their land, and forced them to move westward to Oklahoma.
Economic Concepts
- Natural Resource
- Human Resource
- Capital Resources
- Human Capital
- Production
Grade Levels
- Intermediate (4-6)
Related Subjects
- U.S. History
- Geography
- Multicultural
Description of Lesson 3, Indian Producers and Consumers,
From Adventures in Economic and U.S. History, Volume 1
Students read and discuss stories about economic life in three or more Indian tribes. They note the available resources as well as what was produced and how it was produced and used in each tribe.