Indian Fires

While we were wandering around Feast of the Hunters' Moon this year, we came across this Indian encampment.   I didn't have a chance to talk to the owners or to ask questions, but we were able to get some good pics.

  

I wish I had made a point of asking what kind of dwelling this is and which tribes made them.   It was covered with overlapped layers of woven mats of dried reeds or cattails or something like that.


Here's a look at what's cooking over the fire.   The fish is attached in a very interesting way.   I think the other meat is squirrel.  

Here's a better look at the meat over the fire. 

Pawpaws in a basket.   I thought the bark carrier was really interesting. 















Next to the big fire was this smaller fire surrounded by bark.  Clearly designed for smoking and sure enough when we got closer, we saw that it was in use for just that purpose.  

Some sort of meat was laid out above the smoking fire and drying for jerky. 

These squash rings were also being smoked and dried over the big fire.   Dried food didn't spoil and was easier to transport.

Feast of the Hunters' Moon - Beer

We always learn amazing things at the Feast and we never know ahead of time what that will be.  This year we learned all about making beer.

It was fascinating!  [And we don't even drink... or perhaps it was extra interesting because we don't drink?]

This is the brewmaster and his daughter from the Lafayette Brewing Company.  He explained the process and answered all of our questions.

Beer starts with malted barley.   To malt the barley, it is first wetted down enough to begin germination.  That converts the starches to sugars.   Then it is quick dried in a kiln.

Once the barley is malted, it is mixed with good water and brought to about 170 degrees.
  This is 'mash'.   The liquid is called 'sweet wort' and it must be drained off the cooked barley.

In 1750, the draining proceeded carefully from this barrel through a hole in the bottom stopped up with a sharpened stick that was wiggled just enough to let the sweet wort out and keep the barley mash in.   The sweet wort was collected in the bucket beneath and then carried to another fire.  

Once the liquid was drained off, it was heated again and mixed with dried hops.  Hops acts as both a flavoring and a preservative.  It was added at different times in the process for different purposes. 

The Children of the Feast of the Hunters' Moon

Every year I see so many amazing people at the Feast of the Hunters' Moon  that it's hard to choose who [whom] to highlight.  This year was no different but the warmer weather brought out more children than ever and I decided to highlight them this year.

These are just a few of the amazing kids and families doing amazing things at this reenactment. 

The basket above was full of this cute little guy here.    He and his sister provided a lot of entertainment for the folks encamped around them.

This young man was marching with his mom in one of the regiments.

There were many children who marched with the regiments.  Some were fifers, some carried fake wood musket cutouts in formation with their parents, who were carrying the real things with bayonets. 

My favorite of all was this family of at least 4 children [one was on Mom's knee in the back] who had set up camp.  This interaction involved protecting the apples from young sister who wanted to taste them all.  

There were a lot of Indians again this year and I was excited to see a number of children performing also.  

It's a big show and there is a lot of walking.  We often see kiddos being pulled in various types of wagons.   This is one of the most traditional wagons we saw.   She's got a sheepskin under her. 

This is not a child, but one of the coolest things we saw this year.   A giant Newfoundland dog with a sled. 

Read my previous posts from past years for more adorable children.  2011 posts are here and here. 2012 posts are  here and here.

Furs

We saw so much cool stuff at Feast of the Hunters' Moon this year that I have enough for several posts.  

This year, I took a longer look at the booths full of furs.  They were amazing.   This is a huge buffalo skin.   

There were plenty of cow skins and leather of all kinds. 

One of the most interesting things we saw was this coat made out of coyote skins.   I thought that was a pretty good use of coyotes.   

The man with the coyote coat had a great little display of skins.  Fox, skunk, mink, rabbit, groundhog, etc.  

Traditionally skins were cleaned well of all tissue and debris, then cured and later softened with the brains of the animal.   Each animal has just enough brains to use to tan its hide.  

Gross, but kind of interesting. 

Later, we found a booth full of all kinds of skins.  This was a stack of coyote skins so we could make our own coat if we wanted to.   [We didn't.]   They also had deer, cow, rabbit, sheep and all sorts of others, too.   

Feast of the Hunters' Moon

A couple of weeks ago we spent a morning at this year's Feast of the Hunters' Moon in Lafayette, Indiana at Ft. Ouiatenon.

It was splendid.

Splendid, I tell you!

I always take a ton of pictures and we talk to amazing people doing really interesting things.  The food is terrific.  There are loads and loads of people in costume walking around and as usual, I came home with enough material for acres of blog posts.  

Blow these pics for some terrific details.

Never fear!  I've split them up into topics and you'll see them appear over the next few weeks.

Here are a few pics that wouldn't fit elsewhere.  This is one of the regiments.   Someone was heard to say, 'Look!  Officers! If you drop your handkerchief...'  [Name that movie.]

 

Musket balls.   I thought they were marbles.  Nope.  Get a load of those lead ingots at the bottom.  In case you want to make your own balls.   And those are real powder horns made out of real horns.

While we were talking to the naval explosives guy, I caught this pic of a man in the back of the Navy encampment.   Look at what he's writing with.    There, in front of the river, it was one of those magic Feast moments. 

Some of the young people who come dressed in costume.  A little boy walking by said, "Look!  A lady pirate!".

Feast of the Hunter's Moon - Canoe Races

The Feast is held at Ft. Ouiatenon on the banks of the Wabash River.   It's beautiful there.  Large old trees.   Quiet river.    The voyageurs hold a canoe race.   Each canoe is marked and often has a flag so it's easy to identify who is in the lead.  

We didn't watch the race itself but we were around when they were putting the canoes in the water.   

 Both men and women helped move the canoes.

Down to the water.   You can tell how heavy they are. 

They get out from under the canoes slowly and then put them on the ground upside down.










Then they flip it over. 

And put it into the water.














Here's another canoe already in the water.

 Six in the water at once.    It was a good day for a canoe race.

Feast of the Hunter's Moon: The food

Churning butter

One of the things I liked best about the Feast is .... the feast.    I love the smell of wood fires and cooking food.   Love it.

We cook over our firepit a lot and everything tastes extra good flavored with a bit of woodsmoke.   Except eggplant.   But that's another post.

There is no electricity at the feast.  If it was cooked, it was cooked over a fire.    Food was kept cold in coolers and off site in refrigerator trucks.  

Here are just a few of the food vendors we saw at the Feast and some of the ways they were set up to cook the food there.    [There were a lot more that I didn't get photos of.   Too busy eating!]

Here's the setup used by the guys making buffalo stew.   Notice that gorgeous cauldron.    I want one.   They run about $500.  [Yes, five hundred.]   That's cheap because it's not a really big one.   Notice the knobs on the sides where you can rig it to chains to hang it over the fire.  

These guys put their cauldrons on triangular iron frames stuck deep into the ground and then they build the fire underneath.   The iron plates around the fire are used to control the temperature and block the wind.   Very smart.

Here's a pic of the buffalo stew.   They boil the vegetables for an hour and then put the meat in and cook it for another hour.   They did a brisk business. 

Here's another fire set up.    Notice the frame stuck into the ground on either side. 

Then there's a hanging unit with the rack on the bottom to hold the pots.   See how the hanger has knobs at different levels so you can raise and lower the rack to the height you want?    Cool!  The copper pot in the pic isn't on the rack, it's hanging from its own hook.   There were a few blacksmiths at the show that made hooks of different lengths so you can have different options when you're cooking.  Just move the pot from one hook to another as need be.

Notice the big cauldrons behind the copper pot set up!  They're on tripods.   Nice set up!

One of my favorite set ups was at the croquignolles booth.   Croquignolles are fried bread sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, served hot with a French accent.    They were very tasty!  

I loved their set up.


 

They had a huge wooden frame with a long fire pit dug underneath and they hung their fry pots and coffee pots from chains wrapped around the frame. 

Here's a closer view of the fry pots and fire pit.   I ate one of those croquignolles.  It was delicious.

I heart sauerkraut!   I had mine on a venison brat, not in stew, but I had to show you this booth because it illustrated a great solution to the big question of How do you stir a big pot of something when it's cooking over an open fire?

You take a long narrow board, drill it full of holes, attach a long handle to it and give it to a kid.   This little guy stirred and stirred and stirred, back and forth.   Very practical!

The guy behind him has his board out of the stew and you can see the holes in it.   The holes are gauged to let the stew through so that the unit doesn't slosh things around.   They keep the pots full because they do a good business.

The last thing I want to show you is the difference in how the re-enactors set up their dining areas.  Here is a pic of one of the voyageur camp set ups.  They had a fire out back, but did all their eating on tables with china.   No sitting around a campfire for these nobles.

This is another camp set up from a significantly less noble camp.   They use the straw bales to sit on and protect the fire from wind.   

Small, but effective.   I love the hanging rack set up.

Rural Indiana - circa 1750

This year's Feast of the Hunter's Moon was at the end of September.   It's held at Fort Ouiatenon [we-aht-non] just outside Lafayette, Indiana, every year - sometimes at the end of September, sometimes the first weekend in October.  Check the site for dates.

This gathering is a recreation of the annual gathering of fur traders and native Americans at Fort Ouiatenon during the middle of the 18th century.   It's a wonderful combination of wood smoke, food, musket fire, bagpipes, role playing and education all rolled into one weekend.

Yes, people do dress up.   No, not everyone.   It's fun if you do and it's fun if you don't.

There is so much to see there and the experience is so rich on so many levels, that I'm going to do a series of posts, just so I can break it down into [sort of] manageable topics. 

The event prides itself on being as authentic as is practical.   All food is cooked on fires.   All vendors are in costume.  All tents are canvas and any tricks used to keep things up and dry are well camouflaged.

Tents and camps at the voyageur camp.  These often had tables and chairs and china.  

We arrived in the morning at opening - it was cloudy and misty and the air was full of woodsmoke.  The vast majority of people there at that hour are in costume.  Our kids were in costume, too.  Visually, it was amazing.  [Amazing is a completely inadequate word, but I can't think of anything else that remotely comes close.]   

[Photo: In the center of the voyageur camp was a large campfire, where a lot of the traders and children gathered.  It was chilly, so the fires were larger to provide some much needed heat.   These participants sleep in these tents, on site.   The fires are necessary.]


I can't tell you how much fun this event was.   The sights, the smells, the meals, the set up, the costumes, the wonderful demonstrations - I haven't had that much fun in ages.

There were HUNDREDS of people in costume.   Here are a few:

One of the things that caught my eye right away was the fact that people of all ages dressed up and participated.   This was a family event.  


How cute is this?  Notice her wooden shoes.

Another family, there for the day to play.  

















There was an abundance of soldiers.  If I were a great blogger, I'd tell you what each of these companies was, but I wasn't paying attention and don't know the costumes well enough to tell you.    My apologies.

 Soldiers with blue and red uniforms.














 Soldiers with fur uniforms












Soldiers with grey and green uniforms.














Soldiers with blue and white uniforms.









Each group of soldiers had its follwers - the women and families who cook and follow the camps.  [This was true historically, as well.]

We saw some great characters in these groups.  Look at her!

I wish I had gotten a better picture of the families in these groups.   Little ones in homemade wagons, toddlers led by the hand - everyone in costume. 

Part of the Indian encampment. 

K2 saw this and said it looked like a turkey exploded on his head.   You can't see the red and black face paint on this Indian.   Or the bare, tattooed legs and loin cloth.

Some of the Indian costumes were very elaborate.

So were some of the ladies' costumes.  There were fine ladies out and about, walking in groups, visiting the shops and food vendors.

These girls spent most of a year making their own costumes. 

More ladies in the encampments

There were fur traders.  A lot of these were in the voyageur camps.   [More on these and the canoes in the next post.]







We thought this guy's furs were pretty spectacular.  

















I want to emphasize the family nature of the event.    Families participated at every level of the event - participants and visitors. 

Historically, boys as young as 11 years old enlisted with the soldiers.

You'll note here the number of women dressed up as soldiers.  This, of course, was NOT done historically, except in rare cases.  One famous case of a woman impersonating a male soldier during the Revolutionary war was Deborah Sampson.   She worked hard to not get caught.  [Forgive the split infinite.  It's a rural Indiana thing.]

Part of a teen drum and fife corp

As we watched one fine drum and fife corp in the drum and fife competition, I thought about the teens who formed their own corp, got costumes, learned the pieces, learned the formations, found others to be in the group and then took the time to practice for the event.  That's a lot of time and effort.  How often do you see that?  My husband said, 'There is a world of kids out there that you never see on TV.'     Very true.

There is a whole world of all sorts of things out there that you never see on TV.