When we were children in Indian Camp . . .

We were children living sometimes out at the farm, and sometimes in the Pawhuska Indian Camp. It was summer time and the kids in Indian Camp would play all day long. Many times we would walk over to the dance ground and play I lon shka.

We would be dancers and would sit on the north bench of the arbor. One or two of the group would sing and the rest of us would dance. The singing could have simply been Hey yah hah, but I tend to think it was more than that, but I was not one of the Singers.  We would have Tail Dancers and it seems a Whip Man. Although, it was small and I do not remember who brought it, we always seemed to have a drum.

That was just before the time the Pawhuska Round House, on the west side of the arbor, was torn down.

Every summer we knew that one day it would happen, every summer it happened. Four or five men would show up at the arbor with a truck piled high with willow branches.

Some of the men would stand on the bed of the truck and hand the willow branches to men on top of the arbor. They would lay the branches onto the rafters and cross pieces of the arbor. There was no corrugated metal covering the arbors in those days. 

The willow branches were not tied down, just laid one branch on top of the other, and if there was a pattern to their work I do not remember it. I just remember them laying the branches on the cross pieces of the arbor.

The arbors were not as large as they are today, still, it took several trips to finish the job of gathering the branches and creating the cover needed for shade for the Dancers.

The willow branches meant we were going to have a real dance. Our Mothers were going to get us dressed and we were going to dance to the beat of a real sized drum. It was as exciting then as it is today. 

The men with the truck would come back and unload firewood for the cooks. I remember some of us helping to carry the pieces of firewood from the woodpile and stacking the wood next to the cook’s fireplace.

While the willow branches were being placed on the top of the arbor another man would show up and start raking the earth that was the dance ground. He would rake it and sprinkle water on to the surface of the ground. When the dance started and people danced on the ground, their moccasins made the ground smooth. 

A man, a member of the Pottawatomi Tribe, would use the sharp blade of a garden hoe to shave the dirt from the high points into the low points of the dance ground, making the small uneven places smooth and even. Then, after one or two sessions of dancing, the floor of the dance ground would be smooth.

I think this must have been during World War II. Many of the dancers were away fighting the war. There were few dancers, maybe fifteen or twenty.

When those who were elders at that time addressed the People, when they addressed the I lon shkah, they would use the term, “Generation after Generation.”