Feast of the Hunter's Moon - Indians

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we went to Feast of the Hunter's Moon in September this year.  This pic [top] is a fur trader's set up.    I love the teepee. 

One thing I love about Feast is that I always learn a lot when I go there.

A lot, I tell you. 

As in, it always reminds me how much I don't know.  

I don't know a lot.

But now I know a bit more. 

This year I spent a bit of time focused on some of the Indian activities and tents.

At this fabulous tent, they had a great display of Indian food set up.   

She explained all about the types of corn and beans and squash that the Indians grew.

Every tribe had its own variety.

Bear beans are called bear beans because they are cooked with bear and big animal meats.

As opposed to rabbit beans, which are cooked with rabbit and squirrel and small game. 

I didn't know that. 

Indian corn had only 8 rows of kernels on an ear.  

They dried it and ground it up in a hollowed out tree stump. 

Here's what they had ground up already.

They used tools like these to cultivate their crops.

In addition, they gathered cattail pollen to eat.   I think she said they made bread with it.   [I need to fact check that....]

They harvested basswood fiber and milkweed stalks to make rope with. 

This man was chipping stone to make arrow heads.

And this guy made vessels with gourds.   They were beautiful.

This woman sat silently and shelled beans.  She threw the shells in the fire to keep it going. 

Silently.

Blow the pic up and look at details.   Notice the squash rings drying above the fire.    And notice her hands.   And the stuff in the bowls.  

The Men of the Feast of the Hunter's Moon

Last month we went to the Feast of the Hunter's Moon at Fort Ouiatenon in Lafayette, Indiana.    It's a wonderful gathering of fur traders, voyageurs, tradesmen, natives and soldiers that commemorates a similar gathering in 1749.

We go first thing in the morning.   I love it best with the cold mist and smoke from the fires and most everyone dressed up in time appropriate garb [my kids, too] or cameras [me].   

One of the things that has always struck me is the number of men who participate.   I'm talking full grown men [and a few young men] who are there because they want to be.  And they fully participate - with terrific costumes, amazing knowledge of the time period and the ability to demonstrate all kinds of skills.  

Sometimes they came with their families.    I love that.










[And how cute are these kids!] 

 These men really make the event for me.  

There were the soldiers....

And the fur traders.....

 These guys had amazing costumes and were real characters. 















The craftsmen are some of my favorites.    These guys are talkers and they love to explain what they're doing and why and how.  

The blacksmith.

The Indian making arrow heads.

The Indian who makes gourd baskets and vessels.  


















The guy who uses the foot powered lathe to turn chair legs.   He gave a great explanation of how Windsor chairs go together and why they work.  











The oar maker told us all about the different types of oars used by different peoples.  

The shop owners had great costumes: 
















The man on the left owned this men's clothing shop.   He was very well turned out. 

Love this guy's hat and earrings. 

This is one of the Dutch traders.   [Or maybe English - he's not wearing wooden shoes and most of the Dutch traders did...]

Buckskin breeches and great bag and quivers.    

These guys looked right at home.   

I found these men visiting with the Indian fur trader.    Notice  the powder horn.  

Love that blue!   And the beret!

Don't think it was just old guys, there were a few young men, too.

These boys were from the voyageur camp....














And this one is an early settler.











By far one of my all time favorite Feast moments came this year while we were walking around the voyageur camp.   

This area of the Feast is pretty quiet.   They have their tents and canoes and cooking fires set up along the river edge of the site.   It's peaceful.   They don't get a lot of visitors back there.

These seven men were all gathered in front of the canoe, way back in the quiet and decided to sing a French rowing song...with multiple harmonies.   We just happened to be passing by at exactly the right moment.   Glorious!

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.