Field Trip — Learning about the Powhatan Indians

We’ve had Grams and Gramps visiting us for the past several weeks.  Last weekend Grandma and Grandpa also came out to visit us to celebrate DD’s 5th birthday.  Happy Birthday DD!

Then we headed off for a four day holiday.  What is AMAZING to hubby and me is the fact that we can drive a few hours and be someplace completely new! When we lived in central Australia it took us 14-16 hours to drive to the nearest city! We loved the area we lived in with its red rocks and amazing Outback scenery (you can see some of my old pics in the “Where We Live” link in the sidebar to the right), but now America feels beautiful and exotic to us!!

The kids know little about American history (yet) but had a good introduction with a visit to historic Jamestown settlement. Here are a few pictures of the Powhatan Indian village recreation. It was very hands-on which certainly appealed to the kids!

Powhattan Reed Dwelling

Our guide for the day, an old family friend, gave us a detailed and wonderful descriptions of the various tool, hides, herbs and so forth.

The kids were able to work on this deer hide, trying to remove some of the hair with clam shells.  Our guide/family friend told us that the deer hide would have been cured with mashed up deer brains and water.  The brain, she told us, was just large enough to soften the entire deer hide.

Indian tools made from animal bones.

Grinding corn to make corn flour.

This is a Indian dugout canoe made from one tree trunk.  Below the kids saw how the tree trunk was slowly burned and cleaned out layer by layer.  DD was completely covered in soot by the end of this display. Luckily ED wasn’t interested because of the smoke!