Venture Bound

ETOWAH INDIAN MOUNDS

2012-01-12T10:44:00.002-06:00

ETOWAH INDIAN MOUNDS

My first knowledgeof Indians came mostly from the cowboy movies of the 1930s and 40s of the plainsIndians on horseback surviving by hunting the buffalo. It was only as an adult I learned that beforethe white man came some earlier Indians had developed villages and an agriculturalway of life. Representatives of thismore advanced way of life were the mounds Indians widely spread across the Midwest and Southeastern parts of the country.

My mostrecent visit was in Cartersville, Georgia, to the Etowah Indians Mounds, the mostintact Mississippian Culture site in the Southeastern US. Several thousand Native Americans had lived onthis 54-acre site between 1000 A.D. to 1550 A.D. cultivating corn, beans andsquash in the loamy soil flooded regularly by the Etowah River. Theartifacts discovered here showed it to be an artistically and technicallyadvanced culture much like the ones that existed in

Mexico

at the time.

Mound A at the Etowah Indian Mounds in Cartersville, Georgia

Unfortunately the Spaniard HernandoDeSoto came this way in his explorations to find gold and left behind smallpoxand measles for which the natives had no natural immunity. It wasn’t long before the town’s populationwas drastically reduced and the survivors left the area and eventually becomeknown as the Creeks. Having no oraltradition, they forgot that their ancestors had built the large mounds alongthe river.

Outside thevisitors center is a model of the buildings that once crowded the area, awattle and daub hut made of branches filled with wet red clay that soon wasbaked hard by the sun. The logs set upfor fire in the middle of the room with no smoke hole in the roof make me thinkthis could be an unhealthy living area. A display in the center’s museum gives a morecomplete picture of what the village once looked like.

We crossed a bridge over a 10-foot-deepditch that had been a source of dirt for the mounds and then became part of thedefensive structure. A sign explainedthat inside the moat a 12-foot-high wall of upright logs had once effectivelykept enemies at bay.

Used as a fish trap, a V-shaped stonebarrier crossing the river has been kept intact. Woven river cane baskets were placed at thepoint of the V to catch catfish, drum and gar an important part of the diet ofthe villagers.

Mound A is 63-feet high and isexceeded in size only by the large mound at Cahokia near St. Louis. Mound A with its earthen platform housed thegreat temple of the chief from which he presided over ceremonies on the plazabelow. During the 1800s the mound was cultivatedfor farming causing some loss of the top layer.

The first well-documentedarchaeological dig was done in 1925 by Warren K. Moorehead who was known as thedean of American archeology. He spentfour winters excavating the site mostly focusing on Mound C. Further work was done later by archeologistsfrom the Georgia State Parks and Historical Sites andthen rebuilt. Only nine percent of thesite has been excavated, a difficult task since the area is one vast graveyardthe Indians having buried many of their dead in the soil and covered them withriver cane beds.

Mound C had been a burial mound,and the artifacts excavated with the 350 bodies found there indicated they wereof high status. One piece of evidence as to the high status ofthe bodies was the brightly colored cloth with ornate patterns buried withthem.

Two marble figures found inthe burial mound

In this mound were two almost life-sizemarble figures of such complexity that it is difficult to understand how theycould have been carved without the use of metal tools other than the copperthey used in breast plates and copper ear ornaments. These figures are now on display in themuseum along with artifacts showing how the people decorated themselves withshell beads, tattoos, and feathers. Wewere told the images had been found broken and hastily buried, one theory beingthat successful attackers had broken them and buried them to destroy theirpower.

Other displays give a rather goodpicture of what life must have been like during that period of history. A movieat the visitor’s center gives a history of the Southeast Mounds Indians, andthe park ranger gives an introductory lecture on the area. The site was designated a National HistoricLandmark in 1964.

A reconstruction of what the Etowah Indians looked like.

A V-shaped stone barrier crossing the river was used as a fish trap.

LINCOLN'S SPRINGFIELD HOME

2011-11-13T19:17:00.001-06:00

LINCOLN’S SPRINGFIELD HOME

Touristswill find out very quickly that Springfield, Illinois, was Abraham Lincoln’shometown. Not only does it have the Lincoln Museum and Library withmind-blowing displays and striking holographic movies that we have previouslywritten about, but it also has a four-block area restored to resemble thepre-1860s during the time Abe lived here.

Theonly home he ever owned has been restored along with the neighboring houses. Gaslights have been added, sidewalks replacedwith wood planks and several wagons of the time are standing in the streets.

Itwas a pleasant step back into time especially since we were able to have twoconversations with a Lincolnimpersonator. Our first meeting was asthis 6-foot-4 actor paused in raking the lawn of the home where Lincoln andMary lived for 15 years, 1884-1861, and where their four sons were born. The actor stayed expertly in role, forexample, asked about the instrument I was pointing at him since he had heard thatthe French had invented something that could capture a person’s image.

Thehome tour is self guided, but so popular that visitors need a card from the nearbyvisitor’s center allotting an entrance time. We were impressed with the number of park rangers stationed in thebuilding to answer questions. The house,furnished as it was when Lincoln lived there,has 50 of the home’s original items including Lincoln’s desk.

He had made a comfortable living as a lawyer. The house had a maid’s room--one of very fewjobs a woman could hold in that day and seen as an opportunity for a young girlto learn how to be a wife and mother.

Atthe visitor’s center four movies on Lincolnwere playing throughout the day, one featuring Raymond Massey. When we watched another movie about Abe’syears in Springfield, the impersonator in theyard was the actor playing Lincoln. Later we again talked with him. He looked very much as I expected Abe to lookat the time he lived here. He lookedmore like Lincolnthan Massey did. When I told theimpersonator that I was impressed with his capturing Lincoln’s vocal tone, he said he had workedhard to integrate the vocal patterns into his performance.

Abefell in love with Mary Todd, a Southern belle from a family of higher social status,which complicated his courtship. He wentinto a deep depression when his first proposal of marriage to her was notaccepted. I was reminded of similarproblems that Presidents Grant and Truman had in their courtships. All three were noted for being firmly in lovewith their wives throughout their marriages. Mary was a great help to his political careerusing her family connections to get him national recognition. Some of the material in the Lincoln movies about his children was new tome. One son died early from tuberculosisand two others were known for their wild behavior.

Ourvisit to the area was brought to a pleasant close by the performance of a groupof costumed students singing songs of the period, particularly songs that werefavorites of Lincoln.

We meet with Abe Lincoln in Springfield,Illinois

Harry Truman's Birthplace

2011-11-06T14:44:00.000-06:00

Truman’s early years come tolife in Lamar

A tree planted to honor Harry Truman’s birth grows outside the house hewas born in.

When I gave a talk in LamarMissouri, I took the opportunity to visit Harry S Truman’s birthplace, now astate historical site with a small visitors center. As he is one of ourfavorite presidents, Carla and I present an overview of his contributions whenwe teach in the Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Truman was born May 8, 1884, to afather who was a mule trader and farmer. His father announced the sale of somemules in the Lamar Democrat but did not mention his son had just been born.However, in honor of Harry’s birth, he did plant a tree that is still standingnext to the house.

John Anderson Truman and his newwife, Martha Ellen Truman, had bought the Lamar house in 1882 for $685. Signsof its age are apparent. It is 20 by 28 feet — I am sure many readers haverooms in their homes that are as large. When I stepped inside, I was impressedwith how many rooms had been carved out of that small space. On the first floorare a living room, a kitchen with a dining area and two bedrooms. A double bedfills half the bedroom in which Truman was born. A steep, narrow stairway, likethe one I climbed to my bedroom as a child, leads to two upstairs bedrooms.

When the Trumans came, all oftheir furniture was on a wagon, and when they left, all of the furniture was ona wagon, so the home has been furnished with period pieces. Young people mightbe particularly interested in the more primitive equipment of the times: kerosenelamps, pots under the bed instead of a toilet, corn cake bakers on a blackwood-fired stove in the kitchen.

The home has no electricity andhas an outdoor toilet of the period and a hand-dug well next to the building. Asmokehouse stands beside the well. Most homes had them because, withoutrefrigeration, meat had to be smoked to keep it from spoiling. The lot acrossthe way that held the barn for John Truman’s mules is now an empty lot.

When Harry was 11 months old, thefamily moved about 100 miles north to the Independencearea. The United Auto Workers donated the Lamar home to the state in 1959 forpreservation, and it is now also listed on the National Register of HistoricPlaces. A guide gives brief tours to visitors when they arrive and spends sometime on the collection of family pictures showing Truman as a child and at someof the major turning points in his life. The visitors center has threemannequins dressed in women’s dresses of the era.

Lamar was preparing for the 127thbirthday celebration of Harry Truman, but I was a day too early to take part inthis annual celebration, held on the nearest Saturday to May 8, Truman’sbirthday.

The major historical sites forTruman are in Independence,and if you go, they have the bright-red Truman Trolleys that visit the Independence Squareand circle past major tourism attractions during spring, summer and early fall.The fare is only $1 for all day, and you can visit both the Truman Homeand the Truman Library and Museum.

EISENHOWER PRESIDENTIAL MUSEUM

2011-10-30T10:18:00.000-05:00

Eisenhower museum details one of history’s shakers andmovers

Eisenhower Presidential Museum in Abilene, Kansas

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, or "Ike," was atthe center of world events in the middle of the 20th century as the generalleading the greatest invasion in history during World War II and as a two-termpresident during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. In both roles hewas respected for his ability to get disparate personalities to work togetherfor common goals.

The story of these major contributions is told atthe Eisenhower Museumin Abilene, Kan. The museum includes a complex ofbuildings such as the original Eisenhower home, a visitors center, amagnificent library and a contemplation center.

The exhibits begin in a low-key fashion. First weare given the family history with the emphasis on the six brothers being raisedin an atmosphere of love coupled with religious training and discipline. Thatthere must have been something exceptional happening in the home is shown bylater pictures of five highly successful Eisenhower brothers.

In Eisenhower’s early life, he was an averagestudent mostly interested in sports. At West Pointhe was in the middle of the class, but as his career developed he began to showhis potential to become distinctive. By the time he went to the advancedofficer-training program at Leavenworth, Kan., he was at the top of hisclass.

He took the opportunity to work under and learnfrom the best officers available: Fox Conner in the tank corps and DouglasMacArthur in a wide range of situations. Chief of Staff George Marshall wasimpressed with his work. Although Ike was a major for 16 years, with World WarII his promotions came fast, and he was jumped in rank over many officerssenior to him.

When we visited the museum, a special exhibit ofEisenhower’s paintings was featured. He started painting late in his life,mainly as a form of relaxation, and destroyed or gave away most of his work tofriends. He and Winston Churchill, who also painted for relaxation, encouragedeach other, and Ike arranged for Churchill’s first large exhibition ofpaintings.

In another area, a television documentary focusedon the life of Ike’s wife, Mamie, including an interview with Barbara Walters.Mamie’s dresses and pictures portraying her lifestyle were on display.

A history of Ike’s contributions to our success inWorld War II followed, with copious photos, uniforms, videos, pictures anddioramas of the action he saw during the war. Some pieces of war equipment areon display to enhance the atmosphere, including the car he used during the war.

General Eisenhower

Up to this point the whole atmosphere had been rathersedate, almost reverent. Then, sound and moving pictures suddenly assailed usas we entered the area that covers his years as president.

From overhead came recordings of Eisenhower on thecampaign trail, and then a brief history of his life after the war as presidentof Columbia University and later commander of NATO.The period is covered by television shows from the era, room décor and storiesof his being a reluctant candidate sought by both parties.

Cold War problems are represented by displayscovering the U2 spy plane incident, problems with Fidel Castro and Cuba, and theending of the Korean War. We are reminded he governed in a period when it wasfelt an atomic bomb attack could come at any time. To emphasize that point,there are videos of children learning to hide under their desks and cover theirheads in case of an attack.

The negative events during his tenure are covered.This includes his role in establishing the shah in control in Iran, his lackof confrontation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his weak stand on civil rights.

At the reproduction of his office, recordings ofevents that happened there are played. He had a heart attack in 1955 but ranfor a second term anyway. He had a stroke in 1957, partly caused by the fact hesmoked, had a diet with too much fat and was overworked. Some recordings afterhe left the presidency feature his talks with John F. Kennedy and LyndonJohnson about problems they were having.

One of Ike’s definitions seen hanging a wall tellsmuch about how he worked: "Leadership: The art of getting someone else todo something you want done because he wants to do it."

I am fond of presidential museums and believe theyshould be a must see for high school students to immerse them in our history,its important people and the decisions they made that affect our lives. Our ownTruman Library and Museum in Independence doesan excellent job of this, and many students in Columbia have been introduced to historicallysignificant events there.

CHRISTINA CONFRONTS INDIANS

2011-10-22T11:28:00.002-05:00

The following chapter is from my novel Christina's Saga: From Norway to Dakota Territory. The fictionalized story of my Norwegian Grandmother who came to America at 19 alone, and homesteaded in South Dakota. In this chapter she is still single and living in a sod shanty.

THE INDIANS

Christina's neighbors amile and half due east were Meyer and Olga Pearson and their twodaughters. It was Olga Pearson's woodenhouse that Emma Efrainson felt indicated too much wealth for them to behomesteaders. The Pearsons had come to Dakota Territory in 1879 and built one of the firstwooden houses in that part of the county.

In the spring of 1883 just after plantingtime, Meyer Pearson got an offer of a job in Michigan to earn money so they could keepthe homestead going. Olga stayed behindwith the two little girls to work the farm.

Christina was feedingthe chickens when Olga and her two daughters came hurrying across theprairie. She had a girl's hand in each ofhers and was practically dragging them along. They stopped, out of breath infront of Christina. The dust on Olga's cheeks had pathways that were still dampfrom tears.

The five-year-old's headwas lightly covered with wispy white hair. Ella’s large soulful blue eyes made even the most reserved want to pickher up and take care of her. Her need toelicit protection was in part related to her seven-year-old sister Anna'sability to cause accidents to happen. The older girl with her freckles and reddish cast to her blond hair hada look of potential mischief about her.

Under calm conditionsOlga was high strung. When things wentless than well, she reacted with panic. The girls seldom saw strangers and had picked up some of their mother'stendency to overreact. Now they stayedsilently behind their mother, the littler one hanging on to her skirt andpeeking out from behind her mother at Christina.

Olga caught her breath and gasped,"Christina, are the Bakke's home?"

"No, they and the boys have gone offto Brookings. They won't be back for twoor three days." Christina waitedfor Olga to explain the emergency. Sheknew Olga had trouble in knowing what was a real crisis. There were times she had been very fearfulone day, and on the next couldn't have told you what she was so worriedabout.

Still out of breath from the exertion,Olga said, “We're all alone out here then?"

"I guess. Why?"

"A man rode by our farm thismorning. He said we should all pack upand go into town. Some of the Indiansleft the reservation and have gone on the warpath again. He said they're likely to come here killingand burning."

"I never heard of Indians aroundhere giving us any trouble," Christina cautioned.

"Christina, it's only a few yearsago that they rose up in Minnesotaand killed all those poor settlers. Those awful savages are born to raise hell and kill. They don't want us around these parts. This was their hunting grounds. They're still mad at us for coming and usingit like God intended, to grow food and raise God fearing folks like my girlshere." The thought gave herstrength; she squared her shoulders and a look of pride appeared on her face.

"You think we should go to townthen?" Christina asked as shescattered the last grains of corn to the chickens.

"No, I don't want to leave my newhome. Meyer and I worked too hard tobuild it for some beasts to burn it down and steal everything. I don't know what to do, but I'm not leaving!"

Christina thought a moment. "I think we should go to town. If they burn the house, you can always makeanother one."

"If we try to walk to town, theycould catch us in the open, and we'd be worse off,” Olga protested. "I won't go. If I can't find nobody to help me, I'll juststay at the house with the girls."

Christina looked at her soddy. “Well, if the Indians want my sod shanty,they can have it. If it was a nice housebuilt of wood, maybe I wouldn't leave either."

Thefour took off across the wind swept grass for the Pearson farm. The light breeze carried vestiges of theland it passed over, a light smell of skunk, dry grasses, newly turnedsod. If they had stopped and let theodors envelop them, they would have found traces of the smoke of a far offgrass fire.

Christina turned and saw the Pearsonsfalling behind. Olga's face was flushedwith the exertion of trying to match Christina's pace. Christina had to slow down her long stride sothat the Pearson girls could keep up. The little girl's eyes were still wide with fright. Silently they trotted in their bare feetattempting to stay close to their mother.

It only took thirty minutes to get to thePearson house. Fifty yards from thehouse Olga stopped and examined the buildings and the yard for anything thatwas out of the ordinary. From thatdistance all appeared normal. The womenstill approached the house cautiously. When they were in the yard, Olga jerked her head toward the house. “Might be Indians in there."

Christina walked up to around the houseand cupped her hands against the glass. "It's all quiet in there. There's no sign of any movement."

Olga pulled the children closer to herside and picked up Ella. "Christina,you go in first."

Pushing the door open with her foot,Christina stepped in. All was quiet inthe room. Her eyes checked everycorner. Against the wall next to thehearth was a long, heavy looking rifle. She went to the door, "Olga, do you have bullets for Meyer'sgun?"

"I don't know. He hides them somewhere so the girls can'tfind them." She cautiously enteredthe room. "Let me think. Maybe he's got them in his box he calls hisuseful this and thats." She wentinto a bedroom, pulled a large box out from under the bed and began to searchin it. "I don't know how he everfinds anything in this box. Look at thismess, nails, hammers, pinchers, steel spikes, tongs and all kinds ofjunk jumbled together."

She took pieces out until she found a boxcontaining the large bullets labeled, “Springfield rifle." She handed the box to Christina who tore it open and puta handful of the large cartridges into her apron pocket and picked up therifle and stepped outside.

Olga followed her and in a voice filledwith awe asked, "Can you really shoot that?"

"I seen Bjorklund do it. I can figure it." She set the gun against the wall andstraightened her dress. The respiteallowed her to become aware that her hair had come loose and was getting in hereyes. First she took a deep breath tocollect her thoughts, and she took a moment to readjust her hair. Finally she said, "We're not going tosee any Indians, but I got to know how to use the gun anyway."

She pointed to the open area south of thehouse. "Get all the animals out ofthe way down that way, and I'll see if I figure how to shoot thisthing."

Olga pushed the children away from her andtoward the small fenced in area where the shed was, in which the fowl were keptat night to keep them safe from coyotes and weasels. With a whoop the two children began chasingthe chickens and the two ducks into their small coop. The running cheered them up and the littleone began laughing with pleasure as she sprinted after the rooster who wasinsisting on keeping his freedom to hunt worms in the manure pile.

With the animals out of the way Christinalooked over the ground for a target. The coming and goings of animals and people kept the yard clear ofgrass, and the roughly plowed ground with its large clods began just a shortdistance away. Christina thought,"We are changing the land. In justthe few years since I came, it is different, but is it really different?" She stood a few moments longer admiring thevast distance to the horizon where the deep blue sky with a touch of cottonyclouds began.

A yelp from Ella, who had just gotten therooster in the coop, broke her reverie, and she refocused on the landimmediately in front of her. Shesettled on a rock about the size of a loaf of bread 25 yards away. "I'll shoot at that white rock overyonder."

She picked up the gun to load it, tryingto look as if she knew what she was doing, but the gun didn't cooperate. It acted as if it were developing a will ofits own. It tipped out of her hands,hit the ground nose first shoving dirt into the barrel. Christina casually dug the dirt out with herlittle finger. Placing her left handmidway up the barrel and holding the stock on her hip, she brought the gun intoa position where she could flip open the trapdoor and insert a bullet. Then she snapped the trap door shut,struggled to pull the heavy hammer back and raised the gun to her shoulder.

Questions bounced around in herhead. "Why didn't I get someone toshow me how to do this? How tight do Ihold it? Will it hurt when it shoots? Why doesn't it hold steady? It keeps moving. I didn't know it was so heavy."

To be safe she kept a light hold on it. She pulled the trigger. Her head jerked back from the shock of theexplosion. Smoke vomited from thebarrel. Dust billowed up from where thegun hit the ground ten feet away.

Olga rushed over to her. "Christina, Christina, are you allright?" she cried.

Christina looked herself up and down tomake sure all of her pieces were still in place. She flexed her arms, shook her hands to bringback feeling. "I think so. It was a bigger bang than Iexpected." Picking up the gun, shebrushed off the dust, flipped open the trapdoor, shook the spent cartridgeout. It fell at her feet in thedust.

She took another precious bullet out ofher apron pocket and clicked it into the chamber. A part of her apron caught in the mechanism,and it refused to close. Opening thetrap door, she ripped the apron bringing an, "Oof da," from herlips. Finally ready, she cautionedherself, "Tight, remember hold it tight." Following her instructions she pulled thegun tight against her shoulder. Pointing it in the general direction of therock, she pulled the trigger.

With the explosion a heavy jolt hither. She was thrown backward, sprawlingon the ground. This time it was herbottom and not the gun that raised the cloud of dust.

Shesat for a moment, breathless and stunned by the impact. When she found her voice, she shouted at Olgain delight, "This time I held the gun. Now if I can find how to stay on my feet, maybe I'll shootgood."

Still sitting on the ground she took outthe spent cartridge and reloaded the chamber. She was developing a new respectfor what the gun could do to her but also what it might do to anything thatthe bullet might hit. Setting her legsapart, holding the gun tight against her shoulder and leaning into the comingshock, she pulled the trigger. This timeboth she and the gun stayed in place. She had closed her eyes at the noise andthe impact against her shoulder and didn't see where the bullet landed. There was elation in her voice when sheasked, "Did I hit it?"

Olga shook herhead. "No, you missed. It went way off there to the side." She pointed out a spot way to the side andsome 50 yards in back of the rock.

"These bullets cost," Christinasaid, "I'll shoot just twomore. I need to keep some for when theIndians come." The last twopractice shots fell closer to the rock. She thought, "If I aimed at an Indian, he would have still beenstanding all in one piece. Well, I can'thit nothing. Maybe the noise and smokewill scare the savages off."

The gunfire reassured Olga that they werenow prepared for the Indians. The worrylines in her face disappeared, and for the first time she smiled. "It's hot out here with no shade. Let's go inside, and I'll make us somecoffee."

The rest of the day passeduneventfully. Ella and Anna played inthe yard, and Olga checked for Indians only three or four times an hour. At bedtime she said, "I think we cansleep good. Meyer told me that Indianswon't attack at night. If they arekilled in battle, their spirit can't find its way to the happy hunting groundsin the dark."

Olga got up at the first sign of sun andbegan pacing nervously from one window to another. It was late morning when she suddenly frozein her tracks and cried, “Christina, get the gun--the savages are coming!"

Christina stepped out on the porch,squinted trying to make out the figures. Given the flatness of the land and lack of trees, they were still a fairdistance off and neither their sex or race could be made out. "There's only two of them and they'reafoot. Maybe they ain't Indians."

"They're probably just thescouts. The others will be rightbehind." Olga said in a reassuringvoice. Christina and the girls were notcomforted.

Christina chest became tighter and herbreathing more difficult as the two figures approached. They were coming across the grassland fromthe direction of her farm. No othersappeared in back of them. "Christina, they may just be testing us. Watch them carefully."

"Well, they do look like Indians allright, and they are coming right for the house."

Olga wrung her hands and got tears in hereyes. Christina's heart was beating soloudly she was sure Olga could hear it. The sweat on her palms was making it difficult to keep the gun in aready position. Thoughts fought eachother, "They don't look dangerous. You really can't tell. Theycould be trying to fool us. If I shootI'll miss. The smoke and noise might scare them away."

Olga pushed the children toward thehouse. "Girls, go in the house and stay under the bed. Don't come out until I come in to getyou. Now scoot." She came back to stand 20 feet behindChristina, lending moral but not physical support. "Maybe you should shoot a warning shotto let them know we got a gun."

"No, the way I shot yesterday Imight hit one of them by mistake. Thenthey'll get really mad. We'll let themcome closer. They may not bedangerous."

"Savagesare always dangerous. We can't trustthem. Please, Christina, shoot atthem."

"No."

The Indians stopped 20 yards away. It was a male and a female. They looked at the rifle that Christina heldin her arms and showed no fear of it. They seemed to expect white pioneerwomen to stand around their yards with a gun in their hands. In a loud whisper Olga said, "They'rewearing Christian folk's clothes. Maybethey've already killed somebody."

Christina snorted, “If they killedsomebody for those clothes, it was some time ago. They're awfully dirty and torn to berecent. That coat he's wearing wouldn'tflatter a scarecrow."

Christina could see that the couple wereneither old nor young. But she didn'tknow how fast Indians aged. She wouldhave to ask someone about that. The man was barefoot but the woman hadmoccasins on her feet. Both of them hadhair that was long and black and shiny with grease. The woman had a red band around her head andthe man had on an old felt hat. Theywere, even by the loose standards of the two pioneer women, unbelievablydirty.

The man held his hand up in greeting. There was no sign of a weapon on either ofthem. The man pointed to his stomach,then moved his hand to his mouth and chewed.

Olga asked, "What's he doing?"

"He's asking for food." Christina stepped closer to the Indians. They looked frail. They were not at all like the vicious bloodthirstysavages she had expected. Reassured bytheir appearance, she moved within five feet of them and looked into the man'seyes. He stared back passively. There was no fear or hate. Then she looked into the woman's eyes andwas surprised by the look of pleading. The woman's large eyes brought back memories of Bossy as she laydying. These people were hungry. Hunger she could understand. Her nervousness had disappeared, but she stillfelt a need to be cautious. Not takingher eyes off them, she shouted to Olga, "I think if we give them some food,they will move on."

"No, I will not feed savages,"Olga protested.

"Olga, look at them. Look at their eyes. They're harmless, hungry people. Feed them; let them move on. You have extra bread and there's meat. Please, I don't want to see them go onhungry. It will be a long way beforethey find anyone with food to give them again."

Olga hesitated. Finally she decided that Christina wasdetermined to feed them. She felt a needto keep her contented. After all, ifmore Indians came, Christina with her gun was her only protection. She gave up her opposition with a, "Allright, but I don't think it's a good idea."

Olga went into her kitchen and brought outbread and cold meat. She indicated tothe Indians that they could not eat near the house. As they ate, she watched them carefully andindicated to Christina by her facial expression her disgust at the way theIndians wolfed down the food using their hands.

Christina watched, thankful that she nolonger had to go days without a good meal. She was pleased to be able to help them. For her the message in their eyes had turnedthem into two hungry people like herself. She no longer saw the two savagesthat Olga saw. "Olga, just think;they've had their old life taken away by us coming here."

Olga looked at her as if Christina werelosing her mind. She was treating thesewild people as if they were as good as Christians. She locked her jaw and held back from saying,"I'll be glad when Meyer gets back. He talks sense about Indians."

The next day two more figures moved on thehorizon. Christina quickly recognizedby their hats that it was Andrew Bakke and his oldest son, Elmer.

After Christina explained about theirvisitors, Andrew went on, "Well, those weren't the ones you'd been warnedabout. We heard the story about them onour way home. A week ago a couple ofIndians some distance west of here got hold of some firewater and went on atoot. You know liquor makes an Indiancrazy. Well, those two stole somecattle and burned down one settler's shack. Wasn't no one home when they did it, so no one got hurt. The sheriff got them back on the reservationby now. I don't know where the Indiansyou fed might have come from."

Afterhearing of her adventures with the gun, Andrew said, "If we get more savages visiting us,some might be more than hungry. You'vegot to learn to shoot the gun better. Iwill teach you how to hit the rock."

"No, I don't wantto know more. Someone else will have toshoot at the Indians."

http://akayola.com/author-pages/wayne-anderson

President Harry S. Truman

2011-05-15T17:27:00.000-05:00

Truman’s hometown keeps famous son’s memory alive

"I tried never to forget who I was and where I’d come from and where I was going back to … After nearly eight years in the White House and 10 years in the Senate, I found myself right back where I started in Independence, Missouri."

— Harry Truman

When he left office, President Harry Truman’s approval rating was down to only 30 percent, but with time, estimation of his contributions as president has changed. A recent poll of historians ranked him the fifth-greatest president, behind Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and the two Roosevelts.

Who was this man who came from nowhere, a man who would have been content to be a Missouri farmer married to Bess Wallace?

The people of Independence are prepared and eager to answer that question.

Truman was a product of his life in Independence, and the town played a large role in what he became. Few U.S. cities have so many places associated with one president. It was here he courted and married Bess, had his home, started his career and had a museum and library dedicated to him.

On May 3, 2003 a ceremony opened a walking trail that stops at 44 places in Independence associated with Truman. Before everyone expected presidents to jog to stay healthy, Truman was famous for his fast-paced long walks, so it is fitting that a trail has been developed to commemorate his contributions.

The self-guided Truman Historic Walking Trail travels past his friends’ homes and the major sights Truman would have seen on his daily walks. It includes a couple of trees, one a ginkgo tree he used to talk to on his walks.

He would say to it as he passed, "You’re doing a good job."

Visitors should begin at the Offices for the National Park Services in the old Fire Station No. 1 at Truman Avenue and Main Street. There is a brochure for the self-guided tour. A 12-minute narrated slide show, composed of pictures from the family archives, gives a background of their lives in the Truman House.

Here, tickets are sold for a guided tour of the house five blocks away. The house was declared a national historic site in 1984, two years after Bess’ death.

President Truman’s home in Independence, Missouri

National Park Service personnel conduct the tours of the house; they can answer questions on many aspects of the house’s and the family’s history. Only eight people at a time are allowed into the house for the tours — 32 a day, each 15 minutes long.

The house, which receives 45,000 visitors a year, has been left just as it was when Bess died. Only the first floor is open for tours, but it gives a taste of the lifestyle of a remarkable American. Truman’s hat and coat still hang in the hallway. Of special interest to me was his well-stocked personal library. He had only a high school education but was a voracious reader.

Included on the walking tour is Trinity Episcopal Church, where the Trumans were married in 1919 after a nine-year courtship. He was 35, she 34. In letters, he claimed he had been in love with her since he was 6 and she was 5 when they met in Sunday school.

Bess’ mother, who came from a genteel family, was not enamored of her lovely daughter marrying a man like Harry, who had no prospects. Besides, in the early days of the century, the church you belonged to indicated your social status.

Harry marries the love of his life Bess

Truman was a Baptist, and Bess was Presbyterian, a wide social divide at that time.

Their daughter, Margaret, was married in Trinity Episcopal Church, and Bess’s funeral was there. The couple is buried in the courtyard of the Truman Library-Museum, which is also on the tour. Truman, who died at age 88 in 1972, made the arrangements for his own funeral.

"It’s going to be a mighty fine show," he said."I’m sorry I’m going to miss it."

The Truman family left the farm at Lamar and moved to Independence when Harry was 1 year old. When we went by the house, the owner was out mowing the lawn.

I suspect he gets a bit annoyed with people constantly dropping by and taking pictures.

On the other hand, the lawn and the house were in good condition, so he might be doing something to keep the tourists happy.

We were told the house has been changed since Truman’s parents lived there, and the area surrounding it is no longer filled with the cows, horses and chickens that were the property of his father, who was a dealer in livestock.

A plaque marks the house of a reporter, Sue Gentry from the Independence Examiner, a good friend of the Trumans who often got inside scoops.

The Clinton Pharmacy, where Truman got his first job for $3 a week, still stands in downtown Independence, not far from the courthouse where he worked as a judge. At the courthouse, which houses the Truman Courtroom, a statue of Truman stands on one side and one of Andrew Jackson is on the other. A 35-minute film discusses the events that influenced his thinking and helped shape his character.

Guides at the visitor’s center or the Truman Home can tell many stories about the family. For example, when Truman first campaigned for the Senate, he didn’t have money for hotels and was forced to sleep in his car.

Another story involves a close friend whom Truman asked to bring his shotgun and come over to shoot the pigeons around his house. When the man came over and began to shoot, it alarmed the Secret Service men who had been assigned to protect Truman after his presidency.

The Truman family farm, which he operated from 1906-17, is part of the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site and is 20 miles south of Independence.

Truman’s Presidential Library and Museum

Franklin Rososevelt's Memorial

2011-05-09T15:58:00.000-05:00

Roosevelt’s enduring greatness set in stone

In the third room of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, there is a large sculpture of Roosevelt with his dog Fala. The artist conveyed the president with a tired look meant to convey the demands the war had placed on him.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - As it was a hot day in the nation’s capital, I almost passed up visiting the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial because it was some distance from the other memorials that I wanted to visit on the National Mall. Skipping the memorial would have been a big mistake.

It is unusual for me to visit a site without reading something about it first, but I hadn’t done my homework. I didn’t know what to expect, and I thought the first room was the whole memorial, with its sculpture of Roosevelt sitting in his wheelchair.

When the memorial was erected in 1997, disability activists complained that it didn’t show him confined to a wheelchair, a result of polio in 1921. This illness had been an important factor in who he was and what he had to overcome to serve as our 32nd president from 1933 to 1945.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Franklin’s illness…gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons - infinite patience and never-ending persistence."

As he wanted to project an image of strength in the difficult years of depression and war, he went to great lengths to ensure that in public his wheelchair was never shown. However, as attitudes had changed, the original designers responded to the protesters and added the statue of him in a wheelchair in 2001.

Once I stepped beyond Room 1, my response was, "Well, this is tremendous." The series of waterfalls, massive red granite rocks, striking sculptures, quiet pools and words of wisdom from Roosevelt engraved on the walls combined to form the most impressive memorial for an individual I have ever seen.

What are called rooms are granite-walled, open spaces with lovely waterfalls or fountains and a minimum of objects, making those that are there much more meaningful. The rooms stretch along the Tidal Basin across from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. I had the feeling of walking through several secluded spaces in contrast to standing earlier before an imposing structure such as the Lincoln Memorial.

Designer Lawrence Halprin set up the memorial as a series of five spaces, the first a Prologue Room and four other rooms, one for each of Roosevelt’s terms in office. The room commemorating his second term had the most impact on me. Here in a bread line stand five sad-faced figures obviously embarrassed by their plight. Nearby are an elderly couple who look hungry, and some distance away a man leans toward his radio as he listens to one of Roosevelt’s inspiring fireside chats.

About 30 percent of workers were unemployed in the early 1930s. As a child, I remember pulling my little red wagon as I walked downtown with my mother to pick up food from the relief place. She was embarrassed that we couldn’t produce enough food in our own garden but would deal with the shame if it meant food for my brother and me. My father earned some money that helped us survive working for the Works Progress Administration. Making work and food available for us was credited to Roosevelt. Along with our relatives and neighbors, my parents considered him one of America’s greatest men; and the Social Security program was among his many social and economic reforms.

Sad faced men stand in a bread line during the depression

In a third room is a large seated figure of Roosevelt, his shoulders covered in a robe, and his Scottish terrier Fala at his feet. The artist has captured the tired look that was the result of the demands the war placed on the president. In the fourth room is a magnificent statue of his wife, Eleanor, who did so much for human rights and often pushed Franklin into making decisions that benefited minorities.

One of the 21 quotations inscribed on the walls particularly impressed me. "I have seen war … I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded … I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed … I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war." Having been in trauma zones helping after the devastations caused by war, I am in complete agreement.

Waterfalls add to charm of thee Roosevelt memorial in Washington, DC

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PRESIDENT HERBERT HOOVER

2011-05-01T16:58:00.000-05:00

Hoover museum an eye-opener

A re-creation of the living room in Hoover’s suite at the Waldorf Towers at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum and Library.

Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum and Library in West Branch, Iowa, was an eye-opening delight. Only one other presidential museum, that of Gerald Ford, has done as much to show me aspects of a president I had not known before. Hoover had to have been one of the most talented men to become president, and one with one of the poorest reputations. It is a clear example of how presidents can be blamed for events over which they have little control or disasters that were actually set up by previous administrations.

What is often seen as a failed presidency was only 5 percent of a truly remarkable life; and as you walk past the displays detailing his life, it feels like you are walking through a Horatio Alger novel. This is the remarkable story an orphan’s rise to great heights through a combination of talent, hard work, historical context and a bit of blarney at the right time.

Hoover’s father died when he was 7; his mother when he was 10. The three Hoover children were split up, and he was sent to a stern uncle in Oregon. He later got into Stanford University and studied engineering. When he saw a job listing for a job calling for a much older man, he grew a mustache, bought a fancy suit and passed himself as older. He was sent to Australia, where he discovered he had a talent for finding gold and working with miners. The company sent him to China, where his skills continued to bring him attention and the opportunity to travel widely around the world. His wife, Lou Henry, and he lived in China long enough to speak the language, and they continued to speak it when they didn’t want others to understand what they were saying.

A recreation of Hoover’s White House Office

Hoover became very rich and felt, probably because of his Quaker upbringing, that there was more to life than making money. He wanted to be involved in humanitarian activities. Because of the climate of World War I, Belgian children were starving to death. With the cooperation of the Germans and Allies, he made arrangements to get the facilities to bring in food. After the war, he was placed in charge of the program to prevent massive starvation in Europe, and he showed great organizational skills in getting the job done. In 1928, he won the presidency by a landslide. Nine months later in November, the ax fell, and the market collapsed. He couldn’t dent the problem and was blamed for it continuing.

Franklin Roosevelt beat him in 1932 and he went into forced retirement in disgrace. After World War II, Harry Truman asked him to again help with the recovery in Europe. He was called the Great Humanitarian. In the museum, old people who were survivors of famines after both wars give testimonials on one monitor to what hunger does to people and how important Hoover’s work was.

Herbert Hoover as fisherman, one of his favorite pastimes.

He was the first president to use radio, and one section plays some of his speeches, and another section uses three monitors to give his inauguration. One room of the exhibit is a replica of his office in the New York Waldorf Towers, where he lived for 25 years. In the room is his color TV set playing interviews he had with various newsmen.

Life-sized figures throughout show him as various ages, as a 10 year old, a young engineer, a man of wealth and as president.

Hoover’s father’s blacksmith shop has been restored.

Presdients' Museums--Woodrow Wilson

2011-04-24T16:41:00.000-05:00

Woodrow Wilson Our 28th President

Being a fan of presidential libraries, I decided to visit the Woodrow Wilson Library and Museum in Staunton, Va. Modern presidents spend millions on their library/museum complexes with multimedia presentations. Older presidential libraries such as Wilson’s are done on a shoestring but still prove extremely interesting.

Our 28th president’s complex includes the house where he was born, a museum that tells of his life and times, a small library and book store. Most displays were built around pictures and commentary artfully arranged.

Wilson was born in 1856 in the Presbyterian Manse, but his father, the minister, took another position while Wilson was very young. The home has been renovated and contains items from the family and other donated items from the pre-Civil War period. The family was very musical, and their piano and a guitar were on prominent display.

In the museum, we learned Wilson was dyslexic and didn’t learn to read until he was 11. Despite this handicap, he wrote books, earned a doctorate and became president of Princeton. He became governor of New Jersey and went on to win the presidency against two former presidents, William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. He often took rigid stances on issues and did not compromise well.

Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Axson, with whom he had three daughters, gave up a career as an artist to become a full-time mother. He was devastated when she died early in his presidency. He later married Edith Galt, a powerhouse of a woman who helped run the White House. When he had a series of strokes that left him unable to run the government, she covered for him and made many of the presidential decisions.

At first he kept us out of World War I but eventually was pressured into getting us involved. Later, he pushed for the League of Nations, but the Republicans, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, stopped our involvement. For his efforts to form the League of Nations, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.

I knew he had supported women’s right to vote, but two new facts I learned were that he had vetoed the act that created Prohibition, but Congress overrode his veto. The second fact was a surprise to me. He was a white supremacist and established official segregation in government offices. Wilson and his Cabinet members fired many black Republican-appointed officeholders.

An advocate for funding public highways, he very much enjoyed riding with the top down in his presidential 1919 Pierce Arrow limousine. When he left office, a friend bought it for him. After his death in 1924, the car was unattended for years but recently has been rebuilt and is on display.

President Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 Pierce Arrow limousine was given to him after his presidency.

LINCOLN MUSEUM IN SPRINGFIELD

2011-04-17T17:18:00.000-05:00

Museum captures Lincoln’s spirit

Of the presidential museums we have visited, My wife Carla and I agree that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield, Ill., is the most exciting and entertaining. Although a bit like one of the Orlando, Fla., attractions, it still remains true to the history of our country, making it very palatable to visitors.

We were left with two strong impressions. First, it was like walking into a Madame Tussaud’s wax museum based on a single celebrity and the people in his life. Second, after watching their two major presentations our reaction was: "Wow, how did they do that?"

A dozen tableaus recapture scenes of important moments and people in President Abraham Lincoln’s life. These full-size figures have a startling reality with their animated expressions and life-like eyes. We saw the young Lincoln lying in front of the fireplace embers teaching himself how to read as his snoring dog slept at his feet. He shared the one-room cabin with his father, stepmother and three stepsiblings.

A young thoughtful Abe Lincoln

Later we see the young lawyer in his office reading as his two young sons tear the place apart. Several of the characters from his life surprised me when I first recognized they were not fellow visitors, but were other life-like figures. John Wilkes Booth startled me the most. Also looking very hale and healthy were George McClellan, U.S. Grant, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass.

The most disturbing tableau was that of a family of slaves on the auction block being separated by their new owners.

One room has a display of the dresses of the main ladies of society who were contending with Mary Lincoln for control of social leadership in Washington, D.C. The saddest of a number of scenes with her is the one where she sits in a depression after the death of her second son.

The Lincoln Family greets you as you enter the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois

The "wow" experience came the first time when we watched "Ghosts of Lincoln." After an introduction to the museum from a big television screen in a large room, we thought we had seen the show when suddenly the doors opened to an even larger theater.

I should have guessed something unusual was to happen since a glass wall stood between the audience and the historian introducing us to the library. He said he would explain the ways in which historical material is collected and analyzed. During the presentation, smoke would appear and slowly take the form of Lincoln or others, and voices would speak.

Once, smoke rose from one of his books and took form - sheer visual magic.

All of this did not prepare us for the final act when a wind began to blow a flag on the stage. The presenter stepped to a coat rack, put on a Union army jacket and began to tell us about his experiences in the War Between the States. The solid-looking library became a battlefield scene. As what now had to be an actor on film, he continued to talk to us as his body slowly disappeared and we were left with only his voice.

I still don’t know if the actor was really there for the first half of the program or I had just seen one the best 3-D presentations ever. Later, in an even larger theater, we saw the multimedia presentation of "The Eyes of Lincoln."

At that performance I assumed the solid-looking man moving around on the stage telling us about major events in Lincoln’s life was an illusion. This was confirmed as he moved back and forth between what appeared to be live action on the stage and action on the screen.

The same technique was used as we passed a series of windows with citizens giving their reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation. In the tableau in this room, each of Lincoln’s Cabinet members has been faithfully reproduced so we could observe the room when he puts forward his intention to free the slaves. A man dressed as a secretary walked among the Cabinet members explaining how each of them was reacting. This figure was real. I touched him. The experience does leave the visitor with a question of what is reality.

The architect has been very generous with space. Besides the large theaters and the tableaus there are such rooms as the one with walls full of cartoons attacking Lincoln as a country bumpkin, a clown or a devil; and a separate presentation on questions asked by children with answers given in Lincoln’s own words.

Part of what the museum tries to do is to take some of the myth out of Lincoln’s life and show the real man who suffered, worked hard and questioned what he was doing.

General McClellan chats with General Sherman while John Wilkes Booth hangs out. I was impressed with the life like nature of the manikins in the Lincoln Museum.

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ANDREW JACKSON'S HERMITAGE

2011-04-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

The Hermitage in Nashville, Tenn., has been restored to the condition it was in when President Andrew Jackson and his wife, Rachel, lived there.

HERMITAGE, Tenn. - The first item discussed on the audio tour of the Hermitage mansion near Nashville is a painting of Andrew Jackson, our seventh president who served two terms ending in 1837.

Before I examined the painting, however, my attention was drawn to three large photographs of slaves who lived on the estate with a short history of who they were and what their duties entailed. Between two of the pictures, a giant chart listed by name and type of work as many as could be discovered of the 140 slaves who were the property of the plantation.

The Jacksons gave some of the slaves a great deal of responsibility and allowed them to have money. On the other hand, one of the letters in the visitor center’s museum made it clear that if slaves escaped, Jackson would do everything in his power to see that they were captured and brought back.

Jackson did not come from a slave-holding family, but once he had the money, he had no compunctions about buying and selling them. The records show that many of the slaves had a large number of children, so it was apparent that many of the 140 were born on the land.

Little mention was made of slaves in the early writings about the Hermitage. That attitudes toward slavery have changed dramatically is shown by the efforts now being made to piece together knowledge about the slaves at the Hermitage through a careful analysis of documentary sources and ongoing archaeological investigations.

The goal is to restore the Hermitage slave community to its prominent place in the story of life at this Tennessee plantation. This emphasis on the conditions of slavery was continued in the bookstore, where about two dozen books either written by ex-slaves or other authors reported on slavery in the Old South.

Slave Quarters at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

At a number of places on the audio tour, evidence of this research and details about a number of slaves were given prominence; one in particular was Alfred Jackson. His cabin has been reconstructed, and a brief biography was given. His body is buried in the same graveyard as that of Jackson’s relatives who lived in the mansion. Other slave cabins also have been reconstructed, and descriptions are given of what life might have been like.

Audio tours are getting sophisticated, and this was no exception. At the 33 stopping points within the visitor center and around the 1,120-acre plantation, listeners had choices of when to listen, the ability to stop and restart or cancel. Although there is a main narrator, other experts often elaborate, there are sound effects and for interested visitors optional additional remarks. There also is a children’s edition.

Jackson is usually ranked among the top 10 presidents. He had a remarkable career, starting out as a penniless orphan. The battle of New Orleans against the British in the war of 1812 brought him fame as a general, the title he preferred the rest of his life. I have some negative feeling about him based his treatment of the American Indians and the resulting "Trail of Tears," the forced march west causing hardship and many deaths. I understand that even to this day Cherokee Indians won’t have anything to do with the $20 bill that his picture on it.

At the 1837 mansion, all information was given by knowledgeable guides in period costumes. The rooms of the mansion have mostly original furniture and decorations. A combination of poor management by Jackson’s adopted son and economic conditions at the time forced the plantation to be vacated and the furnishings sold.

In 1887, when the Ladies Hermitage Association took over the management, they were able to retrieve 90 percent of the sold materials. Most of the original 170-year-old wallpaper remains, but it is regularly restored.

Rachel died three months before his inauguration as president, an event that sent him into a deep depression. In his bedroom at the mansion, her picture is placed so that it was the first thing he saw upon waking in the morning. Jackson died here at age 78 after a slow decline. His last years might have been complicated by three bullets that he still carried in his body.

In the visitor center are manikins of him and Rachel. Jackson was 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighed 140 pounds; she was 5 feet, 1 inch tall and looks as if she probably weighed more than he did. Everything I’ve read emphasizes how devoted the two were to each other. His tomb with her beside him is in the garden.

Manikins of Jackson and his wife Rachel at the Hermitage Museum

While I took the walking tour using the audio guides, I passed a wagon tour with a live guide that takes visitors around the farm. For more information, visit http://www.thehermitage.com./

PRESIDENT MONROE ESTATE

2011-04-03T15:52:00.004-05:00

Monroe estate re-creates working farm

James Monroe’s home.

James Monroe’s plantation, Ash Lawn-Highlandre, re-creates the atmosphere of a working farm with weaving and open hearth cooking demonstrations.

President James Monroe’s plantation, Ash Lawn-Highland, is adjacent to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Va. Jefferson, a close friend of Monroe, encouraged him to buy 535 acres and build his home nearby. At one time you could see the Monticello dome from here, but now trees obscure the view.

The Monroe estate recreates the atmosphere of a working farm with weaving and open-hearth cooking demonstrations, but it provides a very different experience from touring at Monticello.

At the small visitors center where I bought tickets, I asked when the next tour was. The cashier explained the guide at the house was waiting and to go out, back down and around the corner to the entrance.

The tour group was smaller than at Monticello, but Ash Lawn-Highland was not built on the same scale. When Monroe’s friends visited, they all threw their pads down in the same bedroom. I can’t imagine modern presidents sharing the same floor space with their wives.

Because most people aren’t knowledgeable about Monroe, the guide gave us a brief history of his life. Monroe held more national offices than any other president in history. He negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with Napoleon, but Jefferson signed off on it, so he gets the credit.

Monroe also negotiated a truce with Britain that might have prevented the War of 1812, but neither Jefferson nor his friend James Madison paid any attention to that possibility. Monroe became so angry with both that he didn’t talk to Jefferson for months or to Madison for two years. Eventually, they were back on friendly terms.
Monroe had slaves but had strong feelings against slavery. Like Jefferson, he felt trapped by the practice. Monroe’s own slaves were treated well, but he did not have particularly good overseers and did not make the money needed to maintain the plantation. After his presidency ended, he had to sell the property.
Monroe’s wife, Elizabeth, was a petite woman. Her wedding dress and one other is on display.

Slave quarters have been reconstructed

The Monroes spent a considerable amount of time in France, and the whole family spoke French at meals. Much of the furniture in the house is original and shows a heavy French influence.

The setting is idyllic, and it is still a working farm. Our guide was delightful, so facile and quick-witted I was surprised to discover that she was an intern and had not been leading tours for years.

A statue of Monroe stands in the garden

Jefferson's Monticello

2011-03-29T18:48:00.005-05:00

Touring Jefferson’s Monticello a Delight

President Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va. is one of the most visited homes in the United States.

Markedly changed from when I visited in the early ’60s, Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia, now has a formal visitor’s center. A movie at the center notes many of our third president’s ideas are still used to motivate people, and President Barack Obama is shown citing him. Interactive television displays recount his history, one showing how he kept modifying the structure of the house, an ongoing project that continued until his death. Jefferson spent lavishly and always seemed in need of money. The display area features a striking history of some of his slaves. He didn’t free them when he died, even those who were reportedly his own children.

The tours at the house start every 10 minutes with 25 people in each group. Having arrived early, I only had to wait an hour and a half. Tour guides were excellent, each modifying their spiels to fit their personality. Visitors to Jefferson’s home were often kept waiting while he was working on one of his many projects. In the entryway, he had objects for visitors to admire and learn from, including mastodon bones, antlers from different kinds of animals and Indian artifacts brought back from Lewis and Clark’s expedition. Jefferson wrote 19,000 letters using a device he either invented or improved upon, which made a copy for him to keep. A great reader and book collector, he sold his collection to start the National Library. His library includes some of his original books and copies of a large number of books he was known to have owned. His study is full of scientific instruments, including the telescope he used to watch the construction on his pride and joy, the University of Virginia.

His bed is in a partition between his office and the bedroom. Rooms have skylights necessary because of the lack of lighting at that time. Jefferson’s daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, used to teach her eight children in one of the rooms on the main floor. Clever touches in the dining area include a dumbwaiter, a special spinning shelf that allowed waiters to serve food without entering the room and interrupting the conversation. In the parlor, there are 48 paintings of famous men, thought to be conversation starters. Jefferson thought the three greatest men in history were Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke.

After the house tour, I explored the extensive gardens. Jefferson saw himself as a farmer and claimed that as his trade. He collected plants, experimented with growing methods and, of course, produced most of what was eaten on the farm. For this, he needed a large number of slaves, who also had to be fed.

Visiting Monticello a second time was time well spent. More information at www.monticello.org/

America's Presidents--Washington

2011-03-22T19:10:00.005-05:00

Magnificent Mount Vernon
Washington’s Virginia mansion reflects the complexity of its owner.

Mount Vernon was designed by George Washington to show its magnificence whether it was approached from the front or the rear.

ALEXANDRIA,Va. - The splendid mansion and great view overlooking the Potomac River are the same as when we visited there 45 years ago, but added features have really changed the experience of visiting Mount Vernon, the plantation President George Washington improved over the 45 years that it was his home.

The most outstanding addition, a delight and well worth the second trip, was the $24 million Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Educational Center, which makes Mount Vernon a rival to the most up-to-date presidential libraries and museums, such as the Clinton and Reagan museums.

Much attention has been paid to reproducing how Washington looked at different ages.
At three scenes in the museum, we saw life-size models of Washington as he looked during three periods of his life: as a surveyor at 19, as a general of 45 astride his horse at Valley Forge and as president at 57 taking the oath of office.

The only portraits of Washington in existence show him after the age of 40. From a film we learned how artists and experts in computers and forensics could use a picture or sculpture of an older person and create reproductions that showed what that person probably looked like when young, mature and middle-aged. They also examined his clothes from different periods to get his underlying shape right at various ages.

The many films are exceptionally good, nine being from The History Channel. One film shows his granddaughter in her old age telling us about the sculpture that was made of Washington and how frightened she was at first, thinking he had died, when she saw him lying still for the fitting of a mask. Glenn Close narrates a film about Martha and his closeness despite the years her husband had to be away. She had burned all their letters to ensure privacy. During one film on famous battles in which he was involved, audience members reacted to the explosion of bombs, flashing lights and lots of sound.

In various interactive displays, we could follow Washington’s life from childhood through the trials after his father’s death left no money for the formal education that his older brothers had received, Washington’s self-education, the learning of manners and becoming a gentleman, his historic moments and, finally, his becoming the most beloved and richest man in America.

Washington’s coach has been carefully restoredThe orientation at the visitor’s center gave us a large-screen presentation on the heroic Washington: his brave acts in the French and Indian War and his capture of almost 1,000 Hessians after crossing the Delaware River in 1776 during the Revolutionary War.

Lines were long at the entrance to the mansion at Mount Vernon. In groups of 20 we entered the different rooms and were met by a guide, who gave us a story of that room plus other information about Washington as an architect and as a host. It seems that homeowners were expected to provide rooms and food for travelers because hotels did not exist at the time. As the most popular man in America, he sometimes had more than 600 overnight visitors a year. All of this attention at times wearied him, and he had separate quarters added to the building with a separate entrance to his and Martha’s bedroom, and his office.

The outbuildings were restored and equipped as they would have been in his last years on the plantation: a head gardener’s house, a salt room for curing fish and meat, a weaving room and 10 or so other buildings. He was a master farmer who studied and experimented to see that he got the most from his soil and his workers.
We took a separate tour of the landscape and gardens. Washington completely redid the gardens, and this included both flower gardens and vegetable gardens. The gardens are still producing, and the produce is given to food banks or to the more than 500 employees on the Mount Vernon staff. Our guide also showed us how manure and human waste were gathered in the past and used to enrich the soil. We did not have time to take the slave tour or the treasures tour.

At lunch on the grounds, we dined on the colonial-style fare George and Martha would have served their guests, including duck pie. The atmosphere was fun with waiters in 18th-century costumes, period furniture and working fireplaces.

We also visited his and Martha’s tomb. As Congressman Henry Lee, father of Gen. Robert E. Lee, eulogized him, Washington was, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
More infor at www.mountvernon.org/.

OFFBEAT TRAVEL, Review

2011-03-19T15:55:00.001-05:00

Where has Wayne Anderson been?
By Aarik Danielsen Columbia Daily Tribune
Sunday, March 13, 2011

Upon presenting his first-ever travel article to the Tribune, Wayne Anderson was met with a breathless question from an editor, duly impressed with his work: “Where have you been?”

Anderson has, in a very real yet wholly other sense, been answering the same question for 13 years, writing a weekly travel column for the Tribune, telling local readers where he has been and taking them along on trips to locations exotic and enlightening, majestic and mysterious, 500 or 600 words at a time. Speaking to his whereabouts in a new medium, Anderson recently published his first anthology, “Offbeat Travel: Exploring the unexpected and mysterious” (AKA-Publishing), a set of 54 columns that represent his most far-out, way-out journeys.

The book is evocative and explanatory. As Anderson has exhaustively explored the United States and visited 64 countries, “Offbeat Travel” takes readers from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy, to Seattle’s underground pathways, a confederate Georgia prison camp to the caves of India, even to the Twilight Zone and back. It features ghost tours, travel tips, dispatches from Civil War- and civil rights-related locales and moving anecdotes about how our journeys can intersect; for example, the tale of how Anderson and his wife learn the fate of historical characters they’ve assumed on a voyage to a Titanic exhibition is somber and suspenseful.

Anderson’s unique ability to capture emotional and historical detail is reflected here and is certainly a significant reason for his loyal following of local readers. Many of Anderson’s faithful fans are older and have long since given up on cross-country or continental adventures, he said recently. Thus, he plays an important role in their illumination and exercise of imagination. “What they say to me, when they talk to me, is ‘You do my traveling for me,’ ” he said.

After writing hundreds of articles for the Tribune, Anderson simply knew the time was right for a book when the right part of his brain activated and decided he was. “That part of my brain said, ‘You’ve got to do this,’ ” he noted. “This is right, this is ready.”

The natural effusive, educational tone to Anderson’s work is a function of both his methodical note-taking and eye for interesting places to pause. No matter how fatigued he might be after a long day of sojourning and sightseeing, he, without fail, makes detailed entries each night on which he builds later, longer articles. Anderson gives readers an insight into that process in his new book with an entry titled “Keeping a Travel Journal.” His wife — and often his co-writer — Carla, serves as a companion and editor, helping him further process the experiences they have shared.

Anderson identified “Unearthing Palermo,” the first episode in the book, as one of his favorites, and it truly is one of the most resonant tales therein. Any travelogue that begins, “The upright, fully dressed bodies came as a shock to me … in Palermo the bodies are there in all their decaying glory: 8,000 of them,” certainly qualifies as a memorable one. Going on, Anderson describes how these catacombs, commonly referred to as the “Museum of Death,” house perfectly preserved, eerily lifelike “bodies dressed in their personal best,” appearing to stare at passersby “from sunken eyes embedded in parchment skin.”

“The drying process has left the skin on the faces but has pulled them into horrifying expressions of terror and pain,” he continued. “Many seemed to be screaming — a massive silent scream.” Despite these terrible, terrific images, the piece is more a meditation on life, spirituality and historic practice than an ode to the macabre.

Another piece that really struck me was “Gumshoes and Trick Shoes: Spy Museum Amuses,” an entry inspired by Washington, D.C.’s International Spy Museum, a location I desperately wanted to visit but failed to get to during a capital summer several years ago. As Anderson describes the space, the fascinating gadgets and interactive experiences within, he’s essentially doing my traveling for me.

As far as the reflexive journey between the book and other readers is concerned, Anderson already has done the going — he now hopes readers come to the work with a subtle sense of awe, the same he experiences as he reads other travel writers, and a quiet hopefulness, musing on “what a wonderful world we have where there’s all of these things to see and do,” he said. “Offbeat Travel” is available via online booksellers like Amazon.com and can be found locally at Barnes and Noble. Want to know more about where Anderson has been? You can access his work on the Tribune’s website, of course, at www.columbiatribune.com and his personal website, www.venturebound.net.

Reach Aarik Danielsen at 573-815-1731 or e-mail ajdanielsen@columbiatribune.com.

Copyright 2011 Columbia Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This article was published on page C2 of the Sunday, March 13, 2011 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune.

Maya Culture

2011-02-27T15:31:00.000-06:00

NEW INSIGHTS INTO MAYA CULTURE
        Who would have thought that someone would have been skilled enough to translate the writings of an extinct culture? As a result of new artifacts being discovered and break through in translating their hieroglyphs archeologists are rewriting the books about the Maya Culture of Middle America. An exciting exhibition of this work has been gathered from eight countries and five Mexican Museums and is drawing large crowds to the St. Louis Art Museum and will be there until May 11, 2011. The crowds are large so visitors must buy a ticket to see the exhibit at a certain time.
        The Maya culture covered what is now the Yucatan Peninsular in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and part of El Salvador. It was a complex culture with writing, a calendar, math and astronomical systems. The culture really came together around 2000 BC with bustling cities, massive pyramids, temples and palaces. For unexplained reasons the culture fell apart a thousand years ago. At the entrance to the exhibit we were greeted by an imposing 10 foot high façade of a temple in Belize with three masks depicting Water Lily Serpent.
        The culture was very water orientated and saw the surrounding water on three sides of culture as alive and filled with sacred objects like turtles and alligators. The objects on display are covered with fish, frogs, birds and legendary beasts. An island, Jaina, off shore to the west was where the sun went down and into the underground from which it reappeared in rebirth from the east every morning. The title of the exhibit the “Fiery Pool” refers to the how the sun looks as it rises out of the sea.
        We were equipped with iPods for an audio tour and in our case had to have the lesson in how to work them twice. Experts, with background sounds for atmosphere, than gave us detailed explanations of 25 of the exhibits the other 65 exhibits were plainly labeled to give a good introduction to the culture that produced them.
        Only one display used a modern digital device. A large round table with a viewing screen on which objects could be moved around. Among the animals on display were waterbirds, conchs, and sting rays. Each was surrounded by icons that when touched gave an explanation of what it meant, what the Maya word for it was, what the implications were, what its icon in their language looked like etc.

A Maya incense burner

Some of the items on display were quite large, like the incense burner that when let made the deity appear as if it were peering out from the smoke. Some of the objects were a bit weird. A number of them were bowls with covers that an animal with its mouth open and deity heads coming out of them. One image had a man smoking a cigar. There was a chocolate container designed for drinking at the same time your nose would be dipping into the foam. There was a carved Taino Vomit spoon used in purification rites. Several hammered sheets of gold, from Chechen Itza, that were almost impossible for me to make out but that they had a clear drawing of so you see how complicated and sophisticated their art could be.

The ten pound piece of jade that appears on Belize’s one dollar pieces

         One amazing piece was a ten pound piece of jade that had been carved into a deity’s head that appears on all one dollar pieces in Belize. It was an agricultural based society so theme of water keep showing up and frogs were important icons because of their connection with water and rain.
          The turtle was considered the base of the universe and several items used that as their theme, especially bowls. Fiery pool was what the sun rose out of each morning from the Caribbean Sea. Sea and water imparted all life. Water was animate and intelligent. Chahk God of Rain and showers. Canoes were important.
          The show was arranged by Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. If you are interested about the complex cultures that existed in the America before the Europeans came Fiery Pool is the show to see.

A bowl cover with a deity emerging from an animal’s mouth

Pictures are from Peabody Essex Museum press release

THE COMANCHE IN TEXAS

2011-02-18T14:02:00.001-06:00

THE COMANCHE

        On our recent trip down the center of Texas we did not find the story of the Comanche, the most powerful tribe at one time in Texas, in any one place. Instead we found pieces of their story in three major museums, The Texas Rangers Museum and Hall of Fame, The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, and The Institute of Texan Cultures with some additional information from our guide at the State Capital in Austin.
        As we visited these museums it became clear that the Comanche played a major role in how the state was settled and its later independence. In the tradition of unexpected consequences having a marked influence many years later it may have been the Comanche getting horses from the Spanish around 1680 that led not only to the independence of Texas from Mexico, but our taking the southwestern part of the US from them.
        Getting the horse turned the Comanche from being hunter-gatherers to warriors who were mainly reliant on hunting buffalo for practically everything they needed. They became excellent horsemen and used their weapons so effectively that the Spanish and later the Mexicans could not cope with them. With the horse Comanche had become major players in the story of the 19th Century Texas. They had separated from the Shoshone in the southern Rockies and become the premier warriors of the plains.
        We were first introduced to their influence in history at the Texas Ranger Museum and Hall of Fame in Waco.
        They fought with other tribes and new Mexican settlers who were taking over their territory. The Mexicans had major problems coping with these warriors and invited American settlers into the part of the country that is now Texas to serve as a buffer between them and the Comanche. Mexico sought help from Americans because they were more effective against the Comanche.

A Texas Ranger, Surveyor stands in the Texas Ranger Museum

        Stephen Austin who had come to Mexico in 1821 to colonize northern Mexico originally organized the Texas Rangers to do two main jobs, one was to protect the frontier from Indian raids, and the other was to survey the land. The Comanche didn’t understand the concept of a private individual claiming to own a particular piece of land, but they did understand that these men with the strange equipment intended to take this land away from them. Therefore the surveyors had to also be armed and ready to defend themselves.
        These surveyors were sometimes not paid in money, but in land for doing the surveying so being a Ranger became a good way to get some of the best land to settle on. The Rangers became a standing army in 1836 working for independence from Mexico and from 1845 to 1860 went back to defending the frontiers, mostly against the Comanche.
        Initially the Comanche had an edge in battle, given their expertise on horse back and the fact that they could shoot six arrows in the time it took a Ranger to load a rifle once. The breakthrough came when Samuel Cole developed the five shot revolver called the Patterson after the city where it was manufactured. In 1842 these handguns became the main weapon of the Texas Rangers giving them fire power against the Comanche that turned the tide of battles. The Texas Ranger Museum highlights the guns importance in the Battle of Bandera Pass. Samuel Walker of the Rangers became a major proponent of the Colt Revolvers and pushed for an improved model that was named after him, the Walker Colt.
        The Comanche called the Texas Rangers “Los Diablo’s Tejanes,” the devil Texans.” In 1861 to 1865 the Rangers served in the Civil War by continuing to protect boarders, but some groups were formed to fight the Union who were called the Texas Rangers because the reputation had an impact. From 1870 to 1874 the Rangers were frontier forces, but with the calming of the Indians they got into Special Forces again criminals.
        The Texans were not sympathetic to Indians owning land in Texas and either killed them or drove them into Oklahoma and New Mexico. The last battle the Rangers had on Texas soil was not with Comanche, but with Mescalero Apaches who were pursued by the Rangers after they raided a stagecoach. The rangers killed eight and sent the rest running.
        At the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum the story of Texans relationship with Native Americans goes back further than the Comanche. The story starts with the Spanish and their problems with dealing with the Indians who recognized that the Spanish were bringing in diseases that were killing them off. The Indians in the area got short shift from the settlers who were brought into the area from the U.S. by the Mexicans to form a barrier against the Indians. Most of the tribes who disappeared had names I didn’t even recognize. In a section given over to the Indians in Texas a TV set up in a Tipi on which the story of the settlement of the area is given from the Comanche’s point of view as to how their way of life was destroyed.
        At the capital we learned that it had been placed so far into what was then wilderness because of the Comanche problem. The capital was to form an outer protective border for the civilized part of the state. This did result in some problems with legislators traveling such long distances to get to the capital so sessions were two months long because some of the representatives took almost two months to make it to the session on horseback and two months to get home.

An exhibit on Comanche life style at the Institute of Texan Cultures

Our last contact with Comanche history came as a surprise to me and was unexpectedly impressive. The Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio is run in association with the Smithsonian and like so much in Texas was in a modern large building with lots of space for it exhibits that had been carefully selected. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The goal is to show the variety of people who contributed to the development of Texas and share their stories and some of the objects they brought to enrich Texas culture. Great sized wall painting introduces us the Native Americans who were here over time starting with the Clovis people. Again the tribes I had not previously heard of are covered.
The Battle of Adobe Walls in June of 1874 was the last major military campaign against Indians. A Kiowa and Comanche war party led by Quanah Parker had attacked buffalo hunters who were camped in the abandoned trading post. At the end of the battle three hunters were dead and thirteen Indians. This encounter provoked the military action of 1875 that forced the last Indians living east of the Pecos River into Oklahoma territory.

Comanche (right) trying to lance Osage warrior. Painting by George Catlin 1834.

For more information go to www.thestoryoftexas.com/.

http://akayola.com/author-pages/wayne-anderson

Cherokee Strip Land Rush of 1893

2011-02-07T14:46:00.002-06:00

THE CHEROKEE STRIP LAND RUSH

        One of the great moments in American History was the opening of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma Territory, which had been purchased from the Cherokees’ in Indian Territory. The strip was 226 miles east to west and 58 miles north to south. Parts of the strip were opened for settlers at different times and the biggest event was the race for land in 1893 where the contestants for the were allowed to claim a quarter section (160 acres).
        On the day of the run there were 100,000 people in Arkansas City the main starting point; three days later only 5,000 were still there. A hundred and fifteen thousand individuals registered for the run, but friends and relatives came along so as many as 150,000 made the run racing for the 42,000 claims. The land parcels were handled like homesteads and the winner had to be a citizen to get a patent for the land. Since Native Americans were not citizens they were not allowed in the race.
        The name Sooners for Oklahomans comes from people who found ways to get claims before the official race began. Many cities and towns grew out of this the largest competitive event in history.
         Our first stop in exploring the Cherokee Strip was Arkansas City, Kansas where the Cherokee Strip Run began for most people, others started at smaller starting gates including one in Perry, Oklahoma that also has a museum. The museum in Arkansas City is small, and the building it is in was originally a bowling alley. It is obvious they need money and are working to make improvements in their displays. The staff has hopes of making the museum a major tourist stop and they are running various programs to raise the necessary money.
        At the time of the land rush the United States was in an economic depression with 18 percent unemployment. Pressure was on the government to do something to provide opportunities for those who were unemployed. The open land was seen as a chance for many people to start over and for others to get rich.
        Contestants set off to claim land on horse back, in buggies, in covered wagons, on bicycles and some even on foot. Many were not well prepared and water and food was often in short supply. At the museum in Perry the story is told of Truman Daily of the Otoe-Missouria tribe who provided water and food for the rushers who seemingly had not taken into account their need for either in their haste to claim the land.

Preparation for the starting gun

        People died in the rush, no numbers are given, but the indications are that some killed others in arguments over who had the right to the land.
        Equipment on display in Arkansas City from the run includes buggies, wagons and various kinds of farm equipment.
        Besides covering the Cherokee Strip Run the museum has material on the history of Arkansas City, a stage and dressing rooms for plays, and on the outside of the building a one room school, a small rough looking jail and a Cherokee fort. The fort is made of large branches and the house made of straw. It looked like it would be dangerous if you tried to make a fire in it. Close by was an Indian Industrial School of 8,640 acres that was intended to civilize Indians by training them in white mans’ ways. While at the school Native Americans were not allowed to speak their own language, had to wear white man’s clothes and learn to make a living doing white man’s jobs. Runaways were frequent. On the other hand it did give students some skills for living in the new world that replaced the one they had lost.

A Cherokee straw house at the Arkansas City Cherokee Strip Museum

        Oklahoma’s Cherokee Strip Museum in Perry is a small building constructed from local stone and looks like it was intended to be a museum. Much of its charm of its exhibits is based on the use of old pictures coupled with personal reminiscences. The first panel is mammoth bones and flint points of the early Indians in the area. Then we learn about the Cherokees who always seem to get taken advantage of by the whites. They’re given land; they follow the rules, turn into Americans and then lose their land. We also learned about the Osage and a group I didn’t know about previously the Otoe-Missouria who came from Michigan. A set of their relics, beads and clothes are on display.
        Next we were shown how cattle men used the Cherokee Strip to fatten their cattle before moving them up to the railroads in Kansas. There is a display of tools of the period. This museum does a lot with little by making good choices and presenting background to let the visitor know what was happening.
        In the run of 93 there were Sooners who managed to get on the land early and claim choice spots. Towns grew up overnight because besides claiming homesteads people could claim plots in the future towns.

In the Cherokee Strip Museum in Perry Oklahoma forth grade students

experience a day of 1905 school.

        Rooms of the period have been created and furnished. A back porch, dental office, living room with musical instruments, general store, dress shop, doctor’s office, kitchen, sheriff’s weapons, and in the reception room various samples of furniture—desks, book cases of the period.
        The big treat of the day for us was the fourth grade children who were bused in. They came wearing clothes like those in 1910, and carrying old fashion lunch pails with simple foods of the time. Their teachers were also dressed in period clothes. Next to the museum is a one room school house that regularly brings fourth graders in to experience a day in a one room school as it was run in 1910. The teacher had the discipline of the period down to its fine points. The boys and girls stood in separate lines, and marched into the room in order. They stowed their food and coats in the anti room, carefully seated two to a desk, given instructions on their behavior: including how to get permission to use the outdoor toilet.
        We watched their penmanship class that included instructions on to use the inkwell, the old fashioned pen. Many were having trouble managing it. Later they were to get instruction from the McDuffie Reader and have a spelling bee. We were told by the docent that the children really like this experience.
        We also stopped in Guthrie to visit their history museum that has many original objects, lots of personal accounts of life in the pioneer days and many items from the actual land rush. The museum also spends time on the five different occasions when land was made available. On the second floor is an account of more recent history especially the story of how the capital was stolen from Guthrie, the original capital and taken to Oklahoma City. Despite the professional layout and presentations we found the displays difficult to read and see because they kept everything so dark.

At the Perry Museum old farming equipment of the period is on display.

For more information visit www.cherokee-strip-museum.org/NobleCounty/Perry.htm.

http://akayola.com/author-pages/wayne-anderson

Petroglyphs

2011-01-15T14:10:00.002-06:00

Petroglyphs in the desert highlight ancient artists

        As my wife, Carla, and I were leaving Albuquerque, N.M., we saw signs for the Petroglyph National Monument, located a few miles off Interstate 40. This started me on a short course learning about petroglyphs, or Indian pictures, chipped on the sides of big stones or on canyon walls.
        I had several of these short courses going at the time because so many tourist attractions in the Southwest revolve around a few topics such as pueblos current and ancient and the Indians who lived in them, local dinosaur digs and the ancient geology of this area.
        At the entrance to the petroglyph monument, the National Park Service offers a visitors center, and three miles farther on are three short walking trails to view the petroglyphs.
        Climbing the first trail took us to an overlook where we could view the area, which is largely desert. But where it isn’t desert there are closely packed houses in the Spanish style. You can tell it is a rain-challenged area by the limited plant life and number of flat roofs.
        The question left unanswered for me was, with so much desert to build on, why do they crowd the houses so close together?
        Some petroglyphs had signs, but they didn’t give the meaning of the drawings. For example, one said: "Pecking makes petroglyphs by percussion - hitting the rock surface with a tool. Some pecked glyphs were made by positioning a chisel-like tool against the rock and striking it with a hammer stone. A pecked petroglyph will have a rough, pitted surface in the worked area."
        Another sign noted that if the figure was painted on, it was called a pictograph.
        The images have spiritual meanings, but the Native Americans aren’t about to share that information. That aside, we understand that the different pueblos disagree on the meanings. The earliest artists were probably Anasazi, but Hohokam and Mogollon also made them and later people continued the practice. Even today, modern Native American artists incorporate these designs into their work.

A variety of objects and designs are pecked into the rocks

        Besides the animals and certain standard shapes, one figure appears again and again. Usually playing a flute, Kokopelli is a stick man with a hunched back or perhaps a pack on his back. He was considered a symbol of fertility, a seducer of women and a trickster.
         Shortly after he would visit a village, many of the women would become pregnant. Consistent with that characteristic, in some of the petroglyphs he is dancing, and sometimes he has an exaggerated phallus.
         But there are other interpretations. That backpack might indicate that he was a traveling peddler, since trading was evidently done over a wide area.

It is now a federal crime to vandalize a petroglyph.

Seashells, feathers and other objects not from the area are found in the ruins, and pots from this area are found in Mexico and other places around the Southwest. One of our informants said the stories about him might be similar to those jokes told about the sexual behavior of traveling salesmen.
Sometimes Kokopelli has a feather on his head or rabbit ears, and occasionally he takes the form of an insect. Besides being used as an object in petroglyphs, he shows up on pottery.

Kokopelli

        One problem is that petroglyphs were unprotected for many years and graffiti artists had a chance to work the area.
        The first were the sheepherders whose markings are simple things such as crosses. The later work by tourists and locals isn’t as deep into the surface as the original work and lacks character - that is, it’s mostly initials or scratches. Since some tourists took broken off petroglyphs, it is now a federal crime to vandalize a petroglyph.
        The finest petroglyphs I saw on this trip were in the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest at Newspaper Rock, just across the border in Arizona. At first I couldn’t see them clearly from the viewing station, but with binoculars they stood out sharply. Many other places in the Southwest have good displays. In Phoenix, reproductions of common petroglyph forms are used as decorations on walls, bridges, overpasses and even on the sides of parking garages.
        Like many travelers, we were so taken with Kokopelli that we had to add shirts with his image to our wardrobes.

The mystical meaning of many of the objects is unknown.

We suspect these are pictures of Kokopelli

http://www.nps.gov/petr/historyculture/why.htmfor more information

Navajo Code Talkers

2010-12-15T12:46:00.001-06:00

Travels in Phoenix give insight into Navajo story

        During World War II, the Navajos in the Marines created an oral code using their language, a code the Japanese were never able to break. Their contribution was kept secret for 40 years after the war, during which time they were not allowed to discuss what they had done. A room at the Arizona Capital Museum in Phoenix is devoted to the history of these Navajo "code talkers."
        Two communications bunkers allow visitors to practice the code that had been used in most of the major battles for the Japanese-held islands in the Pacific.
        Pictures of the code talkers as old men are displayed with their comments about their experiences. Noteworthy is the fact that all were assigned body guards, as it was vital that they not fall into enemy hands. Many came back with post-traumatic stress disorder reactions and found a cure in the traditional cleansing ceremonies of their shamans.
        In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded gold medals to the 29 code talkers who developed the code and silver medals to 300 Navajos who followed them in the South Pacific. A somewhat uneven view of their contributions to the war effort was given in the movie "Windtalkers" starring Nicholas Cage.
        The Hopi, who are longtime rivals, were irritated by the attention the Navajo received, because they had also been Marine code talkers. Other tribes had also worked for the Army and Navy, but the Navajos got all the awards. The Kiowa declared war, and a group of aged warriors raided the offices of the Navajo Code Talkers Association and stole the medals. I presume they were returned.
        One evening at the Elderhostel I was attending in Phoenix, a young Navajo man who makes traditional flutes played for us and told us religious stories of his people. He also enlightened us about John Wayne and director John Ford, who are appreciated by the Navajo because they made movies with the Navajos playing the Indians.
        These movies introduced the public to Monument Valley and brought tourists to their reservation, where they proceeded to buy souvenirs, thus helping the Navajos build an industry on their rugs and silver items.
        Only after 1980 did movies come onto the reservation, allowing many Navajos to see these old westerns for the first time. Because locals had been extras, the audience became very emotional when they saw themselves or their parents as young people. On first viewing these movies, people often cried.
        Several of our presenters emphasized that the Navajos have a strong sense of humor. During the making of the westerns, Ford would tell the Indian actors to talk to each other in Navajo. This they did, and what they talked about was how silly white men’s ways were and what a strange person this John Ford was. Watching the movies and understanding the language the Navajos would break out in raucous laughter, to the bewilderment of the whites in the audience.
        Another person much appreciated by the Navajos is Tony Hillerman, who writes mystery novels set on the Navajo reservation with two Navajo police officers as his heroes. His books are written from the point of view of the Navajo and treat the white man as an outsider. He makes much of the fact that the FBI and the government have little understanding of the Navajo way of life and how they often make things worse when they get involved. Hillerman’s characters, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, give insight into the way Navajos look at the world. The author spends time with the tribe, and they have awarded him status as an honored person because of his friendly interpretation of their beliefs.
        The 21 federally recognized tribes in Arizona have different worldviews, and one of the problems has been the ignorance of the government about these differences. For example, 63 percent of the Navajo men and 35 percent of the women have problems with alcohol, but only 3 percent of the men and 1 percent of the women of the Hopi have drinking problems. As a result, the Navajo have many more problems with fetal alcohol syndrome.
        Both groups seem genetically predisposed to alcoholism, but the Hopi live close to each other with much immediate control of social behavior. The Navajo live more independently and are widely separated, so there is less social control.
        At the Heard Museum of Native Cultures and Art in Phoenix, a section is devoted to the time when Indian children were removed from their families and sent away to white schools in order to civilize them. The government had figured out how much it cost to kill an Indian and decided educating them was cheaper.
        Museum films indicate that the schools were run like the military. The children wore uniforms, marched to class and drilled regularly. Indian children were taken from their parents at 5 years old and returned at 14, supposedly with skills to make a living in a white man’s world.
        The strongest impact of this history of imposed education was the recordings of people who had been at the schools. They shared what it was like to be ripped from their homes and forbidden to visit with their families. They were force-fed Christianity, beaten when they resisted the Word, forbidden to speak Navajo and fed poorly.
        Dressed in cast-off white man’s clothes, when they returned to the reservation, they were strangers who couldn’t fit in. Many turned to drink. I understand that it is not unusual for visitors to leave that presentation at the museum in tears.
        Despite this treatment, the Navajos were good Marines and made a major contribution to winning the war in the Pacific.
        Navajos as a group did not take to the white man’s ways because our value system was so different from their own. Thus, most have chosen to remain on the reservation.

________________________________________

On July 26, 2001, the original 29 Code Talkers were presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush. This long awaited recognition occurred 56 years after World War II despite the fact that the Code saved thousands of lives. The Code had been de-classified in 1968.

Navaho code talkers have their own web site at www.navajocodetalkers.org/. http://akayola.com/author-pages/wayne-anderson

Venture Bound Native Americans

2010-12-07T10:03:00.000-06:00

FORT GIBSON, OKLAHOMA

One of the disasters in our treatment of the Native Americans was called the Trail of Tears when 46,000 members of the Five Civilized Tribes, which included the Cherokee, Creek and Seminole, over a number of years were removed from the southern US and marched to reserves in Oklahoma. Of the 13,000 Cherokee forced on the Trail of Tears 5000 died. Indian Territory did not have the welcome mat out as the Osage had gotten there first and they were not happy with the interlopers.
Fort Smith in Arkansas was considered too far away to control the fighting between Indian tribes that was likely to take place. Fort Gibson was established in 1824 in preparation for the Civilized Tribes’ move into Indian Territory, and the Seventh Cavalry was charged with keeping the Osage and Cherokee from fighting with each other.

Fort Gibson’s role to referee between warring tribes

        The Fort Gibson in Oklahoma I visited was largely reconstructed during the depression by the Works Projects Administration and was intended to be as close as possible to an authentic reproduction Rooms have furniture, cots, desks and other objects to give visitors some idea of what the original was like.
        It would have been hard to find a worse place to build a fort. Colonel Matthew Arbuckle built it on the east bank of the Grand River just above where the Verdigris and Arkansas Rivers come together. The fort served as a supply point for materials intended for the Indians who arrived often at the point of starvation. The area was a bad one for disease, especially malaria, because it flooded regularly. In one period over 500 men of the troops stationed there died of various diseases.
        The problem was more than just Cherokee and Osage conflicts because the Indians in the area were from various tribes that did not get along partly because of different lifestyles, some being hunter-gatherers and some being farmers. Other forts took over the duties of controlling the Indian conflicts.
        Confederate troops captured the fort in 1861, but evacuated the post when a stronger unit of Union soldiers approached. This gave the Union Army control of the shipping of supplies on the three-river complex. The South was never successful in winning the fort back despite attempts. This is one place where they were outgeneraled.
        Fort Gibson was a base for troops moving south during the Mexican-American War in which the US gained much additional territory from Mexico. Later it became a jumping off point for gold seekers during the California Gold Rush. It was vacated in 1890, rebuilt in the 1930s and made a national historic landmark in 1960. It is now a museum that interprets its role in the history of the development of the American West.
        Because of the unhealthy conditions of the first fort, a second fort was constructed on a hill nearby, and here a barracks, magazine, hospital and bake house have been constructed along with a commanding officer’s quarters.
        Although I did not visit the fort during a Living History event, re-enactors do occasionally put on demonstrations involving camp life, the last one being a Mexican War Encampment in early October.

The rooms at the fort have period furniture.

Clovis hunters

2010-11-30T10:36:00.000-06:00

When Clovis Indians hunted giant animals

The Clovis were and early people who left campsites and artifacts showing they were here as early as 12,000 years ago. That means that they overlapped with a very rich collection of marvelous animals that are now extinct. Their hunting parties must have been extraordinary adventures. For a brief period at the end of the Pleistocene ice age, the lives of humans and mastodons, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, horses and camels intertwined.
Some years ago, I was introduced to the fact that huge mammals once resided in North America. It was only recently, however, when I visited the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, that I began to fully appreciate that my home state of Missouri was also once home to some of these same giants.

A reproduction of a Mastodon

        Several thousand years ago the giant sloth in Missouri could reach 20 feet in height standing on its hind legs. That made the eight-foot sloth in California small by comparison. When hungry, the giant sloth could push over a tree to get its lunch. Can you image what it must have been like to hunt such a creature? In addition, Missouri had animals not found in the California tar pits: giant armadillos, mush oxen, tapirs and peccaries (pig-like animals).
        The best nearby site for seeing a full-sized replica of a mastodon is at the Mastodon State Historical Site, 20 miles south of St. Louis on Interstate 55. The museum holds a large collection of bones, tusks and human artifacts from the Kimmswick Bone Beds, which are located a brief walk from the museum.
        On occasion the museum hosts special events such as a flint knapping demonstration on when artisans will create stone tools and skin deer hides. Visitors also get a chance to throw spears and engage in other activities of early humans.
        Not only did Native Americans kill and butcher mastodons at the Kimmswick Site, they also crafted stone weapons and tools there. These Paleolithic people, we now call the Clovis people, were excellent artisans and skilled big-game hunters.
        Some years ago at an Elderhostel called "Clan of the Cave Bear" at Colorado State University, I visited a site where early hunters had killed a mammoth. Our instructor explained that they would have used throwing sticks to launch their spears hard enough to penetrate the great beast’s thick skin. Clearly, it would have taken many spears to bring down such a giant.
        Thirteen thousand years ago, the Missouri area was much cooler and wetter than it is today, with many swamps and ponds. The forests were made up of evergreens, providing an ideal diet for mastodons.
        Mastodons were a bit smaller than mammoths. They had straighter tusks, longer bodies and were covered with coarse, reddish-brown hair. They preferred woodlands, while mammoths preferred grasslands.
        In 1799, the French anatomist Cuvier realized that bones that had been discovered earlier were those of an elephant-like animal he named "mastodon." Thomas Jefferson asked Lewis and Clark to find out if mastodons still existed in the West.
        In 1840, a Dr. Albert Koch collected enough bones to build a skeleton that he displayed in a museum near the present site of the St. Louis Arch. The phrase "I saw the elephant," which means "I saw something amazing," was perhaps coined by pioneers who visited Koch’s museum as they passed through St. Louis on their way west.
        Visitors can see a life-scene depicting a Clovis campsite as it may have appeared at Mastodon State Park 11,000 years ago. The Indians, who moved about in search of game, are shown performing common tasks associated with the prehistoric culture.

La Brea Tar Pits

2010-11-23T17:26:00.000-06:00

La Brea Tar Pits Amazing Animals

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Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my! When you enter the Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits in central Los Angeles, you know you’re no longer in Kansas, and you’re surely not in the Land of Oz. But you are definitely seeing the remains of a world that was very different from the one we now live in. This is a world that the early Indians would have been quite familiar with. Some even accuse the early Indians of causing the extinction of these remarkable beasts.
At the Page Museum, one of the most famous fossil repositories in the world, you can take in the well-preserved skeletal remains of beasts and birds that inhabited this part of the world during the late Pleistocene Epoch, from 8,000 to 40,000 years ago. Here, their blackened skeletons rest on pedestals and majestically overlook fascinated audiences. Tourists and school children stand engrossed as guides describe life and death during the last Ice Age.

A mammoth with 15 feet of tusk

GIANTS ON THE EARTH

The La Brea tar pits have produced one of the world’s best-preserved collections of Pleistocene vertebrates, including 59 mammal species and more than 135 bird species. The animals that lived here then were different from the animals in modern America in a number of ways.
First, there were large camels and a western horse, both of which originated on the American continent some 45 million years ago. Both eventually migrated to Asia, Africa and Europe, but they became extinct here about 10,000 years ago.

A saber-toothed cat attacks an eight foot high giant sloth

        The second astonishing fact is that the saber-toothed cats, lions, bears and many other now-extinct mammals were king-size models of their species. For example, the short-faced bear was a foot taller and twice as heavy as a grizzly bear. The saber-toothed cat and the American lion were both bigger than any modern cat. Giant sloths stood eight feet high and weighed 1,500 pounds.
        This was a world in which a normal human would have seemed diminutive. Despite their lack of size in this world of giants, Native Americans hunted even the largest animals: the 15,000-plus-pound, 12-foot-tall Columbian mammoth and its slightly smaller relative, the American mastodon.

HOW THEY BECAME TRAPPED

        Crude oil seeping through fissures in the Earth’s crust created sticky pools of heavy tar or asphalt. Native Americans used the tar for waterproofing baskets and canoes, and later Westerners used it for roofing.

The great bear was bigger than a grizzly

         In 1901, scientists from the University of California at Berkeley realized that the bones they were finding in the tar pits were not those of unlucky cattle. The unusual circumstances at the pits provides a time capsule from which to study life as it existed in North America during the last Ice Age.
        Strangely, about 90 percent of the bones are those of predators rather than of prey. When a prey animal found itself stuck in the viscous tar, a variety of predators would descend upon it and in turn would find themselves trapped. Over thousands of years, many species became victims, and thousands of intact skeletons have been recovered.
        The bones of 1,600 dire wolves have been recovered from the tar, the largest number of skeletons of any animal. These wolves had a larger head but smaller brain than do present-day wolves, and teeth that could crush bones. They were probably scavengers like modern-day hyenas.
        The second most-abundant skeleton is that of smilodon, the most famous of the giant saber-toothed cats. There are also hundreds of skeletons of condors, giant eagles and other birds of prey.
        Native Americans were present in the area toward the end of the Pleistocene, but researchers have so far recovered only one human skeleton from the tar, that of a small woman in her early 20s. Her 9,000-year-old skull is fractured in several places, leading some scientists to believe she may have been killed and deliberately placed in one of the pits.
        Some researchers believe that humans were responsible for the mass extinction of the giant animals, probably by overhunting. Another theory holds that humans carried fatal diseases as they spread through territory where megafauna lived.
         Despite the considerable evidence presented by these scientists, I find the overhunting theory unlikely because extinction was so widespread and covered so many species. It is just as likely in my mind that these huge hunting animals became so efficient that they killed off their food supply and starved to death.

WATCHING PALEONTOLOGISTS AT WORK

        The museum’s scientists work behind glass windows in the Fossil Preparation Laboratory. Here, visitors can observe every step of the careful reconstruction process as bones are cleaned, repaired and then fitted together and displayed in large, high-ceilinged rooms. For some displays, fur and feathers get reproduced so you can see what paleontologists think the animals looked like in life.
         At Pit 91, an observation station allows a close-up examination of work in the field. Through Sept. 9, visitors can watch paleontologists recover bones from the tar.
         An atrium contains plants that existed in the area during the Pleistocene.
         A 23-acre park with life-sized replicas of extinct animals surrounds the museum. The most exciting replica is of a male mammoth struggling in tar as a female mammoth and a young mammoth look on. The park landscape also includes plants present during the last Ice Age.

A mammoth sinks into the tar pit

The Page Museum is located at 5801 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, in the "Miracle Mile" district. It is open seven days a week.

My daughter Debra admires a giant ground sloth.

My wife Carla examines a early version of the Bison. http://akayola.com/author-pages/wayne-anderson

ABORIGINES OF THE RAINFOREST

2010-09-08T13:52:00.000-05:00

ABORIGINES OF THE RAINFOREST

        At Tjapukai, outside Cairns, the North Queensland coastal Aborigines have a center they own, dedicated to educating visitors about their social organization and culture. The tribe appeared to have Maori blood since they are lighter skinned, and have smaller noses than the Aborigines we saw elsewhere.
        When I was at the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park in northeast Australia with a group an Elderhostel group, we saw a movie about the British treatment of the native population that hit me like a punch in the gut. They were hunted like animals, starved, given poisoned bread, introduced to diseases and generally mistreated. Their sacred places were defiled, and the countryside was ruined by the introduction of cattle and the cutting of trees. This malice reduced the population of aborigines in Australia to about 30,000 individuals.
        We started our day at the center learning to throw spears at kangaroo targets using a spear thrower. Everyone in our party was somewhat short of inadequate. Our instructors in natural lap-laps - loincloths - with appropriate body paint spoke with a distinct Aussie accent. After years of having their native language repressed they are now relearning it and speaking it as a matter of pride.
        Our group also practiced throwing boomerangs. When others were throwing, the rest of us were wisely ordered to stand in an enclosure covered with netting to protect us. Some of the group, including my wife, Carla, showed some talent, but she decided it was too dangerous to bring one back for our 11-year-old grandson. Boomerangs sell for up to $200 if they are handmade by an artist who goes into the woods to cut the special trees needed. Chinese-made plastic ones go for $10.

Our group took lessons in spear and boomerang throwing.

         At one of Tjapukai’s four theaters, besides the movie I mentioned above about how they were mistreated by the British, we saw a marvelous performance combining actors with projected visual effects. I was impressed with how smoothly the actors interacted with the multi-media surrounding them.
         At an outside theater, we saw native dancers and heard their music, mostly banging and blowing on tuneless didgeridoos. Their dances were preparations to hunting animals such as the emu, cassowary and kangaroo.
        The dances the aborigines at Tjapukai demonstrated had elements of the Maori dances we had seen in New Zealand and their aggressive way of greeting strangers to their territory was similar.

Native dancers demonstrate preparation to hunt animals.

In this area having the opportunity to create museums, relearn their native language, and educate visitors has increased the Aborigines self esteem and the people appear to be doing well. This is in contrast to the borderline adjustment of many of the individuals we saw in the Alice Springs area.

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES

2010-09-01T10:27:00.000-05:00

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES RECLAIMING THEIR CULTURE

        When the British came to Australia, the number of Aborigines was approximately 300,000, with one estimate as high as 700,000. At that time, the English functioned on the principle of terra nullius - that the lands in Australia belonged to no one. Aborigines had no evidence of ownership and no permanent settlements, therefore settlers felt they could take whatever they wanted.
        When I was at the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park in northeast Australia with a group an Elderhostel group, we saw a movie about the British treatment of the native population that hit me like a punch in the gut. They were hunted like animals, starved, given poisoned bread, introduced to diseases and generally mistreated. Their sacred places were defiled, and the countryside was ruined by the introduction of cattle and the cutting of trees. This malice reduced the population to about 30,000 individuals.
        In recent years, the Australians have admitted their crimes against the aborigines and have been changing their treatment of the native people. This has allowed Aboriginal numbers to grow, and at 460,000, they make up 2.5 percent of Australia’s population - 29 percent in the Northern Territory. With government help, the natives are in the process of rebuilding and rediscovering their culture. Museums and cultural parks introduce tourists to their way of life, arts and myths.

ABORIGINES IN THE OUTBACK
        Alice Springs sits in the middle of the great Outback desert the Australians call the Land of Never-Never. What appeared to us from the air to be thousands of small lakes turned out to be dry saltwater holes. Because this was the driest year in a while, the rivers also were just dry beds.   Little sign of human habitation existed outside the city.
        As I stepped off the plane in February, the 104-degree heat hit with the force of a furnace. My traveling companions from northern states did considerable complaining about the scorching sun, but coming from Missouri, I adjusted quickly.
        I was soon introduced to the Aussie Salute, the constant flipping of hands in front of the face. Soon I was doing the same thing to brush away the flies attempting to get in my nose, eyes and ears. Many of my companions started wearing green netting over their heads.
        Although about 27,000 people live in Alice Springs, the downtown area seemed quite small. The major business is souvenirs, made by the Aborigines and the Chinese to sell to the 300,000 tourists who drop in each year to visit Ayers Rock.
        This was our first contact with Aborigines since getting to Australia. A fair number of them were just hanging around town: They live in communities at the edge of town, but now dress up like Aussies. There are many shops in town; mostly for tourists and their main product is Aborigines art.
        The original telegraph station has been restored as a museum and our guide was an Aborigine who had been taken from his family and raised at the station, which had been the government school for Aborigine children. When we asked him about the experience he seemed quite content with what had happened.
        To get to Ayers Rock from Alice Springs, we drove six hours over land where, if you observed it from high ground, you could see a lot more of nothing. A-bomb tests were conducted there years ago because it was believed nothing could be harmed in the area.
        Since 1995, Ayers Rock, the most famous natural landmark and the most visited site in Australia, has been called by its Aboriginal name, Uluru. The world’s largest monolith, it rises 1,100 feet high and is six miles in circumference. It is the tip of a sandstone mountain that extends far below the surface.
        The local Anangu tribe, believed to have lived in the area for 20,000 years, pushed for the site to be returned to them. The caves at the base of the rock contain carvings and paintings sacred to them. The site was returned to the tribe in 1985 after a 10-year battle, and some of the area is now closed to the public. In other areas, photography is not allowed. Aboriginal guides, available for the walking tour around the rock, explain its importance in their legends.

Ayers Rock area was considered sacred by the Aborigines.

With the temperature at 104 degrees, no climbers were allowed on the rock when we visited. Aboriginals don’t like people climbing it, but they will not actively resist if anyone wants to. If you climb, you must come early in the morning. If the temperature is expected to be under 100, you will be permitted to start if you are carrying plenty of water.
As Aborigines are concerned about sacred places, tourists cannot take pictures of the people or of places with religious significance. Our bus driver indicated if we took forbidden pictures, the people might take revenge by breaking the windows of our bus.

At Ayers Rock, we saw 30,000-year-old rock carvings and rock art made by painting figures and outlining hands with ocher. Aborigines also paint on bark and make totemic poles. Body painting has developed into an art form, with the figures based on the individual’s totem.
Their art forms are bringing them positive attention, and sales to tourists in the fancy shops in Alice Springs are enriching the community.

Many art shops in Alice Springs carry Aborigine art.

        A lecturer described how Aborigine artists made paintings using symbols, drawing the scene as it would look from above as if traces were left behind by feet and bottoms. Most of the commercially available paintings are done in that form. Also available in tourist shops are baskets woven from natural materials and the large wooden, two-tone horn called the didgeridoo. The musician in our group found it impossible to get notes out of the one he bought.
        After the drive around Uluru, we toured the culture center, where Aborigine art covers the walls. Photos again were not allowed, but reproductions were available in the shop. When artists die, all pictures of them are removed from the center, and black strips are put wherever their names appeared.
        That evening we watched sundown on the rock, the view was impressive. However, 20 buses were in the parking lot, and about 800 people were picnicking and drinking champagne - quite a contrast to the earlier treatment of this as a revered place.
         Another evening we watched a movie on how the Aborigines without training could do mechanical repairs on cars and keep them running. They were very creative is finding substitutes for what they lacked.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE CULTURE
        When Aborigines lived in a natural state, the separation of women’s work from men’s was complete. Women dug for roots and gathered grubs and seeds, and men confined themselves to hunting. The community was based on sharing, with definite rules as to who got what. The man who killed a kangaroo got the thighs, and other relatives were assigned parts based on relationship. Because everyone was related, everyone got something.
        When the British arrived, Aborigines lived in small tribes with 500 to 600 languages spoken, some of which seemed only vaguely related. That number is down to 200 languages, some of which are mutually understandable. After many years of having their language repressed, they are relearning it and speaking it as a matter of pride.
         Their languages are different from English in what they allow you to think about. They have no specific words for many things, including numbers above two. Instead, they say there was a mob.
         Self-sufficiency was stressed, and the young men had to do a walkabout to prove they could live off the land. Many Australians still know little about their native people, but several movies have drawn attention to them, including "Walkabout," "Quigley Down Under" and "Rabbit-Proof Fence."