| Dancing
Leaf Wellfleet, NE |
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 We
took the recommendation of the friendly folks at the Nebraska Welcome Center
on I-80, and drove out to what seemed the middle of nowhere to a really
interesting view back in time. The Dancing Leaf Cultural Learning Center
is "an experience in Primitive Native American life." Les and
Jan Hosick have recreated an earth lodge like the ones lived in a thousand
years ago along Medicine Creek by farming families of the Upper Republican
Culture, thought to be ancestors of the Pawnee.
The surrounding beauty of the prairie's rolling hills and the absence other visible signs of modern civilization added to the feeling that we had traveled back a millennium. Before Jan's presentation of music, story telling and instruction of hide tanning in the lodge, Les took us to their small museum of fossils and artifacts. Medicine Creek is the site many animal fossils, such as shovel-tusk mastodons, rhinos, the first and largest saber-toothed cat, the largest mammoth ever discovered (Amanda held a mammoth tooth as big as her head), and 40 species of camel, including the largest ever found. Fossilization in Nebraska is world-class because of all the soil that blew over after the ice ages. |
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Harrison learned that the Native Americans weren't victims of diseases like Europeans were because everything they did was outside, such as cooking, cleaning game, and toileting. The air, sun and earth provided natural sanitation. People of the Upper Republican Culture were good farmers, engineering sunflowers to produce seeds 1000 times larger than the wild varieties. They grew corn, squash and pumpkins as well. They gathered black walnuts and used stones with nut-sized impressions to crack them open without crushing the meat inside. They used the nuts in soups and made dye from the black hulls. |
From the Dover Coloring Book Plains Indian Coloring Book by David Rickman |
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Jan shows us a travois. This ingenious invention was ideal for transporting goods on the prairie. They glided across the ground, much more smoothly than a wagon with wheels. Amanda found out that the first travois were pulled by dogs and were used to carry household goods. Dogs were highly-valued by the Native Americans. Harrison learned that horses were introduced to the natives by the Europeans. The Pawnee word for horse means "magic dog" or "spirit dog". These big animals allowed them to pull heavier loads on their travois, and to catch more buffalo. The increased number of buffalo hides were traded with the white men for cooking pots and other steel items, beads, blankets, etc. |
Daily
Life in a Plains Indian Village 1868 |
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After scraping off the meat, fat and membrane, the hide is soaked in water and ashes (that contain lye) until the hair is loosened. Then the hide is stretched on a rack like this one and the hair is scraped off using bone tools. The hide is still very stiff, so it is soaked in water again and then cooked deer brains (really!) are mashed into it and it is stretched and stretched from all angles for a long time. The protein in the brains breaks down the cells and softens the leather. The hide is now very soft and supple for making clothing. To "Scotch-Guard" the leather (make it water and stain resistant), the hide is laid over the skylight hole of the lodge and a big, smoky fire is started under it. The smoke adheres to the hide, sealing it and turning it a light brown. |
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400 cottonwood trees were used to build this earth lodge. The cottonwood is Nebraska's state tree and is called "the tree with the dancing leaves" by the Pawnee. Jan told us an Indian legend about the "bunny tail fluff" that blows from the trees. The first step in building an earth lodge is digging a shallow, round depression in the ground to a comfortable sitting level. This makes a ring around the central living area that is used for sleeping. After the main poles are buried in holes and length of an arm (can you figure out why they are that depth?), willow branches are arranged on top in a dome shape and then covered with a layer of prairie grass. To finish the home, a thick layer of dirt is packed on top. It is a very weatherproof structure and must have been quite comfortable for the early people of the Nebraska area. |
From the Dover Coloring Book Plains Indian Coloring Book by David Rickman |
) Grandmothers
were the owners of the lodges and their children and grandchildren would
live with them and learn from them. A grandma would gather the girls around
the fire and show them how to sew clothing from tanned hides, using bone
awls to punch holes and dried deer sinew for thread. She would teach her
family how to live off the land, and would pass down legends and stories.
Everything had to be learned by word of mouth, since no written language
existed. |
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An
Unspeakable Sadness : The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians