The Long Road
Five households, four wagons and nine hundred and thirty-six modelled miles. Before the caravan may leave the meeting ground it has to adopt two clauses — who decides and who bears a loss — and then it lives inside them the whole way. Every stop puts a decision on the table with its cost in days, its cost in provisions and the households it leaves behind written out before you choose. You propose. Whether your proposal carries is up to the clause you adopted. Walk it in 3D or in text mode: same road, same votes, same records.
Nobody dies on this road. The game this one descends from is remembered for dysentery, which is the wrong lesson to inherit: a journey whose teaching is “bad luck happens” teaches nothing about how people govern themselves. Every provision spent here is spent by a decision that was on the table with its price written on it.
About the ground this road crosses. American westward journeys ran across land taken from people who lived there, and the transfer was carried out through law — ratified treaties later broken, statutes of Congress, and decisions of the Supreme Court. That is stated permanently inside the game, in both modes, in a panel with no close button, and it is taught through the record: no Indigenous nation, community or individual appears anywhere here as an encounter, a hazard, a trade or an obstacle. A people is not a game mechanic. Holding that line cost this game a whole class of content it does not have, and the game says so rather than filling the gap with something flattering.
You are on the meeting ground. Nothing goes west until the company adopts its two clauses.
Whose ground this road crosses
Every westward road in American history ran across land that people already lived on, and the transfer of that land was carried out through law: treaties ratified by the Senate and then broken, statutes passed by Congress, and decisions of the Supreme Court. A caravan game that leaves that out is teaching a lie by silence, so it is stated here, permanently, in both modes, and it cannot be dismissed.
It is taught through the record and never through a person. No Indigenous nation, community or individual appears anywhere in this game as an encounter, a hazard, a trade, a random event or an obstacle. Making a people into a game mechanic is the failure this project refuses outright, and refusing it costs the game a whole class of content it will not have. The road, its stops and its five households are invented; the statutes and the cases below are real and are quoted as records with their dates.
- 1823 — The Court held that private individuals could not take good title directly from tribal nations, because the United States claimed the exclusive right to extinguish tribal title. It is the decision the whole American land system is built on top of. Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823)
- 1830 — Congress authorised the President to exchange land west of the Mississippi for tribal land east of it, and funded the removals that followed. Indian Removal Act (1830), 4 Stat. 411 — Statutes at Large, Library of Congress
- 1832 — The Court held that tribal nations are distinct political communities with territory of their own in which state law has no force. The holding was not enforced, which is part of the record and not a footnote to it. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832)
- 1868 — A ratified treaty set aside a reservation and promised that no further cession would be valid without the signatures of three quarters of the adult men of the nation. Two years after this road's year. Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) — National Archives
- 1887 — Congress divided commonly held reservation land into individual allotments and opened the remainder to sale. Twenty-one years after this road's year, and the mechanism by which most of what was left was lost. General Allotment (Dawes) Act (1887), 24 Stat. 388 — National Archives
- 1903 — The Court held that Congress may abrogate a ratified treaty with a tribal nation, and that the question is a political one the courts will not review. It is the answer to 'but there was a treaty'. Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903)
Teachers' mode — a journey number, not a class code
Type the same journey number and everyone walks the identical road: the same households, the same preference orders, the same draw at the ford, the same events on the dry reach. A class can then argue about one journey rather than thirty different ones.
The idea was filed as 'teachers' mode with class codes'. A class code is a value that ties a child to a group and travels off their device, and this project's children's posture is that we do not collect personal information from a child at all — not minimally, not with consent. A code that identifies a child was therefore never buildable here, and building a weaker version of it would have been worse than not building it. A shared seed does every teaching job a class code was wanted for and does it with nothing collected: no roster exists, no account is needed, no result is reported anywhere, and the number is meaningless to us.
- No roster, no class list, no group, no join code.
- No name, no email, no school, and no free-text box anywhere in this game.
- No result leaves the browser — there is no server call in this game at all.
- The journey number is generated in the browser and means nothing to anyone but the people who typed it.
This journey’s number: 1
To argue about
- Which clause did your caravan adopt for deciding, and would you adopt it again after nine hundred miles?
- One vote per wagon looked reasonable at the meeting ground. Name who it silenced and say whether that was the point of it or an accident of it.
- Consensus left nobody out of the vote. Count what it cost in days, and say who paid those days.
- At every stop the option that left nobody behind was on the table and it was never the cheapest. Say plainly who ended up paying for the cheap ones.
- The Suspension Clause guaranteed a writ. Two hundred miles from a courthouse, what exactly did that guarantee get a person?
The road, the four stops, the five households and every number in the model block are invented and labelled MODELED — NOT SOURCED. The year is stated so that the law can be stated correctly against it: this caravan travels in 1866, and every record on the road carries the year it was law. Records from before and after that year are shown as record, dated, never as the law of the road's own day. Nothing here is legal advice.
Teachers’ mode is a journey number
This was filed as “teachers’ mode with class codes”, and the phrasing had to change. A class code is by construction a value that ties a child to a group, and this project’s position is that we do not collect personal information from a child at all — not minimally, not with consent. So a roster was never buildable here, and a weaker version of one would have been worse than none. A shared journey number does every teaching job the code was wanted for: everyone types the same number, everyone walks the identical road, and a class argues about one journey instead of thirty. No roster exists, no account is needed, nothing is reported anywhere, and the number means nothing to us.
Nothing here is scored, sent anywhere, or saved beyond this browser’s own arcade record. The road, the four stops, the five households and every number in the model are invented and labelled as modelled; the statutes and the decided cases are real and each one carries the year it was law. No living person is named or depicted, and no private individual is. This is civic education and not legal advice.