While many U.S. residents like listening to African stories, hearing African stories is difficult because designing effective curricula and teaching about African contexts appear to be a major challenge in U.S. social studies education. Drawing on postcolonial theory, we analyzed the discourses of two contemporaneous historical documents to demonstrate the complexities in meaning-making processes inherent in the indigenous Yoruba social practices in the southwestern part of Nigeria. Differential complex perspectives on Yoruba social practices are evident in both colonialist- and nativeauthored historical documents from the same time period, when colonialist authority had been established but indigenous cultural practices were evident and continuing. The colonialist-authored historical document indicates misunderstanding of the meaning of some Yoruba social practices. The native-authored historical document provides underlying meanings for social practices and ties portrayal of social practices to indigenous ways of being. The discussion calls attention to how colonial legacies influence meaning-making, meaning made from and knowledge made available by historical documents, as well as ways forward in addressing contemporary discourse on Africa in U.S. social studies curricula.