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Native American Heritage Weekend held at Meadowcroft

AVELLA — The Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village hosted the seventh-annual Native American Heritage Weekend Saturday and Sunday, where living historians interpreted Eastern Woodland Indian culture from pre-contact through the 18th-century.

Historic interpreters from around the country attended, sharing their knowledge of pre-historic American Indian culture and how that culture changed for American Indians during the 18th century.

Visitors could learn about pre-contact life for American Indians at the 16th-century Monongahela Indian village, and post-contact life at an 1770s frontier cabin and an 18th-century European trading post. The living historians dressed in cultural- and period-appropriate clothing.

Presentations showed the similarities and differences between the lives of American Indians and European settlers in the Upper Ohio Valley and how American Indians’ lifestyles changed after contact with Europeans.

The village included a re-created wigwam and demonstrations in a variety of skills, including cooking, weaving, and making tools. Re-enactors discussed hunting, fur trading, cooking, weaving, decorative porcupine quill work, hide tanning and tool-making. The living historians also processed a bear, supplied through special arrangement with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and visitors were invited to try using the atlatl, a pre-historical spear thrower.

The 1770s-era Scandinavian-style log cabin was built in the style made popular by settlers in the Philadelphia area. George Washington described in a 1770 journal entry a large American Indian village of such structures in nearby Mingo Junction, Ohio, at that time known as Mingo Bottom in the Northwest Territory.

Rich Baker and his son, Nathan Baker, interpreted life as early frontiersmen, who traded, but primarily hunted and trapped for furs, which they sold in East Coast colonies. Traders often adopted American Indian garb, such as breechclouts and leggings, which were practical.

“(The American Indians) would have been upset about us being here, because we were competing for the same resources they were,” Rich Baker said.

Dan Caldwell demonstrated early American Indian trapping methods, including setting up a bear trap and explaining how a heavy object, such as a log or large stone, would be suspended from a tree and secured to a tripwire which may have been baited.

Justin Meinert, Fort Pitt Museum living historian coordinator, discussed the global trade and fashion trends that drove the fur trade. He also gave hourly musket fire demonstrations.

American Indians traded buckskins and furs for knives, scissors and pots from England; printed cloth and vermilion from India; ostrich feathers from Africa; face paint from China; and glass beads from the Mediterranean. Traders also would have had clothing such as leggings, breech clouts, wrap skirts and knit caps in demand by American Indians, as well as ribbons and beads.

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