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Museum follows trail of history with guided tour
Staff writer
sbeveridge@observer-reporter.com
AVELLA - A rural museum's new replication of an Indian village is surrounded by a palisade with pointed fence posts singed black at their tops by fire.
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"Many say, 'I wondered how they lit their villages at night,'" said Beverly Cline, an interpreter at the attraction at Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life in Avella. "There are lots of different assumptions until they get the explanation."
The reason for the burned wood turns out to be rather bland, especially for those expecting a mysterious or romantic story about early 17th-century life in North America.
The Indians used fire to help them chop the posts into 13-foot lengths because they didn't have metal tools, Cline said.
"This is a time period before Europeans made their way to Western Pennsylvania," she said.
This part of Meadowcroft grew out of efforts to tell the story of how people arrived and developed in this region, beginning with the rock shelter. Archeological investigations have found evidence that travelers were taking shelter there at least 16,000 years ago, making it the oldest known evidence of human occupation in North America.
The staff at Meadowcroft is crafting a tour that would first take visitors to the shelter, and from there they would visit the Indian village. The next stop would be at a proposed sheep farm similar to those that were common in the area in the early 1800s, said David Scofield, director of the internationally known shelter.
The tour would travel next to a village of relocated and restored buildings from the 1800s before making a final stop at the shelter to discuss how modern science is being used to evaluate the site.
"The land is the common theme," Scofield said.
So far, visitors are loving the Indian village that has been open for two years and remains a "work in progress," Cline said.
"They've never experienced Native American culture beyond what they've seen on TV," she said.
The tour winds its way into one of the round wigwams, 20 feet wide at its base and covered in rattan matting. The originals would have been shelter for a large extended family, she said.
The next stop is at a hunting camp like the ones the adult men used mostly to process white-tailed deer. Cline identifies the other animal pelts, including those of black bears and gray foxes, that the tribe would have traded for flint. She also explains how the hunters used crushed animal brains to tan the hides.
"Every part of every animal was used," Cline said, before heading over to the garden.
There, she points to a cornstalk to begin the story about how the women farmed in the "three sisters" method.
"The sisters are corn, beans and squash," she said.
The corn was planted first. When it began to show a sturdy stalk, the beans were planted and allowed to grow up the corn for support. The squash was planted last to keep the ground moist and develop a web of vines to keep out small animals.
"They were able to survive off the land," she said, ending the tour.
