All over the midwest, in states such as Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois, part of the curriculum for intermediate grades involves teaching 3rd, 4th and 5th graders about the Native American tribes that lived in this part of the country before the Europeans arrived. There is nothing strange about this. All over the country it is standard for states to require children in this age range to learn the history of their own state. In the midwest states that is all wrapped up in the history and culture of the tribes that inhabited this area in the centuries before settlers began arriving from the eastern colonies of the early United States.