SATURDAY, October 12th, 2024
10 AM-4 PM Safety Officers Abe Yoffe, Stan Lapinski, & Kiana Ritter will supervise bow and arrow shooting on Saturday (10 AM to 4 PM) AND Sunday (10AM to 1 PM) for families, adults and children.
10 AM-4 PM Naturalist Mimi Knuth – Clay Coils, Pinch Pots and Fish Prints with Red Ochre – Learn the basics of Indigenous Pottery on Saturday (10 AM to 4 PM) AND Sunday (10 AM to 1 PM), then build your own pot with traditional tools. Print a fish on a shirt (bring your own white shirt), or on our paper using our native pigments.
10 AM-4 PM Indigenous Cooking – Ranger Laura Page – Find out how to make nutritional tortillas using only two ingredients – Corn kernels and Calcium Hydroxide. Learn the ancient process of “Nixtamalization,” and discover why it is important. Laura will be cooking on a traditional Mexican Clay Comal, in clay pots, and on a green stick grill over an open flame.
10:30-11:30AM The Knapping Circle – Nate Salzman will show you how to make large rocks into small sharp tools. Nate is the Education and Exhibit Specialist at Jefferson Patterson Park.
11:30-12:30PM Blow Gun Darts -Ranger F. Kirk Dreier will demonstrate how to make traditional Cherokee blow gun darts. Participants will have the opportunity to try their hand at making a dart for themselves. Demonstrations of traditional river cane blow guns will be part of this program.
1:00 PM “Nick” Spero of the Natural History Society of Maryland will teach us about wild edibles that are all around us, that offer us a variety of health benefits and can add unique flavors to meals. Nick will guide you out into “the wilds” of Cromwell Valley Park to discover these wild treasures.
2:00 PM Guy R. Neal of Primal Knowledge will provide you with his knowledge of traps and snares. Indigenous people used ingenious methods to create devices which could capture animals for food.
3:00 PM Brain Tanning Buckskin – Bill Kaczor of AncientKnowledge.org will walk you through all the steps it takes to turn raw deer skin into buckskin, a very soft leather that can be turned into clothing, bags, and much more.
6:00 PM Nate Salzman, Education and Exhibit Specialist for Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum will present Wigwams: A Modern Look at an Ancient Home. Nate has worked on over a half-dozen wigwams/witchots and in that time he has learned a lot about how to build them, how they function and just how different the pre-contact building process must have been. Join us as Nate discusses the challenges of constructing a pre-contact home with a post-contact perspective.