DALTON CITY, Ill. (AP) - Things hit the downward slope for American Indians pretty much as soon as Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492 and made the mistake of calling the people he found there, well, “Indians.”
Lacking GPS, the great explorer thought he had bumped into lands in the Indian Ocean, so the locals must be Indians. Things kind of looked more promising later at the first Thanksgiving when the Wampanoag people helped save the religiously excited Pilgrims from starving to death, but a generation later, the American Indians and settlers were engaged in bloody battle.
Later came more settlement, more battles and a westward wave of settler migration that swept away the first inhabitants and booked them into long-term stays on reservations. Therefore, it’s kind of surprising to be driving along Illinois 121 in the year of our lord 2015 and discover a 19-foot-tall tepee pitched in the backyard of a house.
Its canvas exterior is decorated with painted pictures of a bald eagle, a wolf and a buffalo. Visitors also can’t miss a buffalo skull with painted decorations that adorn an entrance seam, held together with broken arrow pieces pushed through the material like a series of wooden stitches. Inside the tent, we find Dalton City couple Edward Bradbury and Patricia Cloe, who own the nearby house but prefer teepee living. They are heavily armed with welcoming smiles and a crash course in tribal history.
Bradbury, despite his resonant English name, had a great-great-great-grandfather who was Blackfoot and then, later, some Crow and Cherokee was mixed into his bloodlines. His 59-year-old taut and muscular frame sports a T-shirt with a picture of Indian leaders including Sitting Bull and Geronimo and the message: “Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorists Since 1492.”
Bradbury says all his ancestors suffered, and suffered a lot, at the hands of white settlers and their armies. Occasionally, American Indians gave as good as they got, Custer had his Little Bighorn, for example, but that bloody high water mark pretty much also marked the end of effective resistance. The Dalton City man knows all the stories, all the history, but he’s not hung up on it.
“What is in the past is in the past; we can’t change that,” says Bradbury, a construction foreman and iron worker who has that famed American Indian quality of not being afraid of heights. “But you can change the way of the future, so it’s better to work in that direction.”
His partner claims no tribal blood herself but embraces a frontier lifestyle of living off the land and forsaking modern conveniences. The couple attend encampments with other enthusiasts and say the events seek to re-create life as it was lived around the early 1800s; their particular take is looking at that frontier life from the American Indian point of view.
They dress in authentic clothing, pitch the tepee, light the interior with candleholders made from deer horn bound together with sinew and welcome the public in to take questions and talk about the joys of a life where everything was recycled, nothing went to waste. “It’s not a hardship to live like this; it’s a pleasure,” explains Cloe, 45, whose day job is nursing. “I love to be outdoors.”
They’ve also been invited to pitch the tepee at Boy Scouts events and teach about American Indian lifestyle. Bradbury won’t bring up the darker aspects of the history unless he is asked directly, but he won’t shy away from historical reality, either. Yet the crack shot with a bow keeps returning to his central theme of being focused on keeping the wider and peaceful cultural heritage of his ancestors alive. And he also expects the gospel of self-sufficiency practiced by this land’s original inhabitants will come in handy for all Americans one day.
“I believe at some point in time this world is going to be back to the old days,” he says, foreseeing an unknown catastrophe that will strip us of our modern, electric-powered lifestyle. “The people who survive will be the people who know how to survive when that time comes,” he adds.
So participating in the rustic frontier encampments is also good practice in the meantime although Cloe, who also worships at the altar of the great spirit Cleanliness, does admit the occasional 21st-century lapse. When recalling how friends, who playfully call her “Pocahontas,” held out the offer of slipping out of an encampment to visit their nearby house for a long, hot shower, Cloe doesn’t try to rewrite her personal history.
“Oh yeah,” she replies when asked if she succumbed, Eve-like, to the temptation of modern plumbing.
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Source: The (Decatur) Herald & Review, https://bit.ly/1PZs4wp
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Information from: Herald & Review, https://www.herald-review.com
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