After we finished at the Firefighters museum we had lunch at some picnic tables on the Archway grounds. The kids skipped rocks and played freeze tag before we headed in for our class.
Next we headed over to the Archway
We headed over to the Earth lodge. This place is so cool! I am not sure which Native American tribes came to build it but a couple of them did. The Earth lodge is made not using one nail or bolt! It is some great craftsman ship. It is very big and as we were talking to or teacher she said that at least 30 plus people would live in this.
Here is the little field that the corn we harvest during our class came from.
The entrance to the Earth lodge
After she talked to us about how the family would live in this Earth lodge and so many fun facts like do you know who was the leader in the family? The mother. Did you know the Pawnee tribe does not give commands? The make subjections on what needs to be done then everyone volunteers to do what is needed to be done. How great is that!
We then started to harvest. What we did at this station was look at a sun flower and everyone got to take some seeds out and we talked about how they would use these as food.
This station was our corn harvesting station. The reason behind the corn harvesting we did is very awesome. Well the Pawnee tribe were farmers different kinds of corn and other veggies but there are some very rare corns that only the Pawnee had. After they were well forced out of the area they planted this corn in different soil and it just didn’t grow the way it did before and as of a few years ago there was only 50 seeds left of a striped corn. So the Archway offered to try and grow this corn back in it native soil and see if they could build up the seed supply. Okay so you have to remember that it has been a long time since this corn was ever planted so these seeds were very old. Most Pawnee do not remember the last time they ate this one corn. So they gave them their last 50 seeds and they planted 25 of them and nothing grew! SO then they talked to a Horticulturalist at the University of Nebraska on what they should do. He gave them an idea and I think it was 12 plants that grew and from those 12 plants each grew 1 ear of corn and there began the seed conservation project for the Pawnee seeds. So what they do is plant the different corns and students harvest and then they ship all the corn back to the Pawnee and they have built up their supplies and they have now been able to start eating some of it for their feast and things. So this is what we did was take the corn off the cobs.
Here is a picture of the one corn that they only had 50 seeds left.
We moved on to our next station. Our teacher told us how to dry and store squash. It was a really cool how they string them up and let them dry. This picture is one of them already dried and strung up and ready to eat. They smelled so yummy. I just loved how they stored their food for the winter. What they would do is dry everything and then they had a area in their earth lodge and they dug a large hole and they would layer their different kinds of food in there. So they would start with like a layer of corn, then meat, then squash, then beans and whatever else they grew. Then they would start over till they filled it up depending on how big your family was made a difference how many holes they had or how big it was.
Our last class in the Earth lodge was harvesting beans. We discussed they benefits of beans for survival. All these beans were dried and ready to harvest. So we broke open the pods and pushed them all out.
This is a picture of their alter.
Next we headed back to the Archway. But first we stopped to feed the fish under the bridge.
Last we went through the museum.
This was a silly picture of them pretending to run from the buffalo and not get trampled.
The Mormon Hand carts.
I hope you enjoyed our little field trip. What a great and awesome group of kids and parents we have in this group. I love them all so much. What a blessing it is to have fellow homeschoolers to go though this adventure with.
God Bless,
Jen
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Have a Blessed day.