Buffafo Days

Here is NM's preschool on another field trip. This time to a real Indian tepee. A real Indian and his wife spoke to the kids. It was very interesting, for the little that I heard. First, we were late about fifteen minutes, then EM wanted to leave, he had a hard time listening because we were almost behind the man while he was speaking. He also had a quiet voice. So here is some of the cool stuff that I did hear. They use the female buffalo for her meat because it was more tender. They used her skin for the tepee because the males was too thick and too heavy. Anything that they needed to be tough they used from the male. Of course they would use the males meat if they had too because they never wasted anything. They would tan the leather for the tepee with the brains of the buffalo. Then they would smoke the tepee which would make it waterproof. An average Native American women could put up the whole tepee in 20 minutes by herself. They got good at this because if the rain or snow started to come in from the top they would just turn the tepee. AMAZING! They hunted beaver because it had soft fur and it is the only animal with felt under the fur which they used to make top hats. Which they started after they started trading.

He told a cool story about a fox and how they rid themselves of fleas. They find a dry stick and hold straight up in the air in their mouth. Fleas apparently do not like to be wet, so he slowly backs into the water giving the fleas a chance to move to higher ground until he is all in the water and the fleas jump onto the stick. The fox drops the stick in the water and swims away clean. I guess that be one reason they are called cleaver.

He showed us some of the toys that they made. One was a wind noise maker that you whip around. The other was a toy that hooked to a string that was tied to a stick and you had to catch the bone on top of the stick.

This is the kids standing by a bear statue, when they were suppose to in the tepee listening. EM is saying "I'm freezing." It was very cold. I was surprised at how warm the tepee actully got but they did go through a lot of wood.