Pioneer/plains playthings

Kay Grant has been educating students on life of the early pioneers and the Plains Indians culture for 13 years. She does this in a variety of ways, from using actual stone instruments used in day-to-day life to games and toys the children played with. She has a buffalo hide that has been on display for its tenth year and she has students scrape off a little hair with stone tools. About half the hair is left, which is amazing given how many years she has displayed it and allowed the scraping.

She has a large tipi students can enter and see how the Plains Indians lived inside. There are different size parfleches (rawhide envelopes) that hold possessions and food. Grant has toys, such as dolls and stone animals on view which she allows the children to hold and touch.

This year's theme was to compare and contrast Plains Indian children and pioneer children.

Grant has six lesson plans which are formulated for the different ages. By the sixth year of attending, the student has gone through a Plains Indian culture curriculum. This is the sixth year and she said, next year, she will start over.

Last year it was very important to Grant that the students learned the seven virtues of the Plains Indians. The virtues are honesty, truth, humility, love, wisdom, courage and respect. All are necessities in the tribe. To teach trust a student was blindfolded and then guided by the group they were in.

"In an Indian village it is paramount that you trust everybody around you to tell the truth, be courageous, love one another, all the seven virtues," Grant said.

This year, she had half the students dress in Indian garb and the other half in pioneer gear. Then she had the two groups work together in different exercises. One of these different activities was to tie an "Indian and Pioneer" together by one leg. Then they were required to walk jointly from end of the yard and come back. When they completed this, they were given a check on a card that they had on their neck.

Once the children got marked for each activity or game completed, they were allowed to go to the trading post and cash in their points.

The students, whether they were an Indian or pioneer, were instructed by mentors. Grant said these mentors, all home schooled children, were the actual teachers this year and she walked around supervising.

Each mentor chose what they wanted to teach.

The Indian Plains mentors were Ellian Hobbs, Hannah Hobbs, Ethan Hobbs and Ellissa Heck. The pioneer mentors were Iylie Mae Hobbs, Jared Hobbs, Haven Hendricks and Jericho Hendricks. Sadie and Elsie Hobbs were extra hands where needed.

In addition to the mentors teaching different lessons where the children earned marks for the trading post adventure, Grant also had her husband Lynn Grant be the Mountain Man that gave lessons about the outdoors. Mike and Geri Dooley were trading post proprietors.

In the past, Grant taught concepts often taken for granted such as how the Plains Indians used math, language, art, preparing the food and making day to day necessities.

The children learned the word travois, poles used for carrying supplies, the year before by actually transferring their tipis and belongings from one area of the property to another. This year the children had a horse drag the travois with their belongings. In contrast, the pioneer children had a hand cart. The boys that were pioneers learned to pull it from their mentors.

"The pioneer girls did all the washing by hand, using scrub boards and tubs," Grant said, pointing to hanging laundry. "All the kids learned sewing, knot tying and braiding and got points for all that they completed."

Quilts were made by both Indians and pioneers and Grant wanted the students to see the similarity and differences. The pioneer quilt had many stars and the Indian quilt was one big star. The children learned to make the block patterns for each.

She wanted the children to see the common toys that both groups played with such as Indian marbles versus pioneer marbles, spinning tops, jump ropes and tools.

Last year, the kids learned to make tipis. This year they set up a lean-to. The children got to paint a colorful horse's saddle. All told she had 20 activities the children could earn points for when they went to barter at the trading post.

Grant got interested in Native American culture when she adopted her daughter in Alaska. Her daughter had been born with fetal alcohol effects and, by fifth grade, she found school very difficult. Grant decided to home school.

"My son, who is two years younger, saw what we were doing and felt we were having too much fun, so he wanted to join in," Grant said. "When I went to teach American history, I wanted to it be enjoyable for both, so I decide to teach the history from a Native American point of view and that is where I got started."

Grant's Elk Mountain house is on the trails of the pioneers coming through. She said the crossing many used is where her house stands. The building she lives in is one of the oldest in Elk Mountain.

She got interested in the local tribes and started talking to native Americans and learning more and more.

"I was fortunate to run into people that knew people who knew I was interested and I got introduced to a lot of Indians and found the older ones wanted their culture shared," Grant said.

Grant kept learning from all sources and, being a teacher, wanted to impart the knowledge to the younger generation.

This is why she wants the children to be able to use as many senses as they can when they become exposed to the different artifacts she puts on display.

Grant hopes that by every game, toy and chore she is developing life skills in each student.

The students that attend her rendezvous come away knowing more about Native American culture than when they first came is a given and it is why not just schools from Carbon County visit her. Grant said she has schools from all over the state visit in addition to groups that are interested in the Plains Indian culture.

She was happy the weather was good for all the students this year.

"It was nice and warm this year and the kids could do more," Grant said. "We didn't have to rake snow like we have had to do sometimes in the past."

Grant said she loves how the children seem to enjoy their time at what she has set up for them.

"I always hope that the kids learn and have fun because these are skills we are losing in today's society," Grant said. "Just the simple skills of how to live versus them playing video games, which isn't necessarily bad, but they don't do the chores they used to have to do which taught them skills to become adults in the world."

The many students from all the schools turning in their activity cards proved they are leaving not only with something from the trading post, but learned skills they probably hadn't been exposed to before coming to Grant's rendezvous.