Cultural history flourishes at Shawnee Indian Mission’s fall festival

The boys spent Saturday night in a tepee at the Shawnee Indian Mission in Fairway watching shadows dance on the tall sides and looking up through the hole at the top, searching for stars in an overcast sky.

Perhaps that’s what American Indians did, too, when they slept in tepees on the great open plains. But here’s one thing they surely never did: watch scary YouTube videos on their cellphones.

Boy Scouts of Troop 192 from Old Mission United Methodist Church in Fairway camped in a tepee between the first and second day of the mission’s annual fall festival. Scouts from the troop have been staples at the festival since its beginning 28 years ago.

Gwen Brown spent the weekend learning her way around the event. The historic site’s new administrator has been on the job for just two weeks. The mission closed on Aug. 6 for about six weeks when her predecessor retired.

Brown’s goal is to expand the mission’s attraction beyond the school groups that visit regularly. “This place is a gem,” she said. “There’s so much history that happened here.”

A gloomy autumn Sunday started out with a sparse crowd; officials hoped to host as many as 3,000 for the weekend. The event felt like a neighborhood gathering with people from nearby homes pushing strollers and walking dogs across grounds covered with wet leaves. One neighbor who attends every year said she couldn’t beat the admission price; the festival is free.

A sweet, melodic sound floated through the air as a young boy played a handmade American Indian flute. Every now and then the driver from Pioneer Trails Adventures of Independence, giving rides in a covered carriage pulled by two Missouri mules, yelled out: “Yee haw! California or bust!”

The warmth of the campfire tended by Mike Baker of Lee’s Summit, a living history re-enactor with the Missouri Free Trappers, was irresistible in the cool morning. Baker and two of his colleagues spent the night on the grounds in the two tepees owned by their group. But the Boy Scouts enjoyed their overnight stay courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

In case you hadn’t noticed, tepees have been popping up all over Kansas City lately. Last month three stood at the corner of 27th and Main streets on First Friday weekend. One stood for a couple of days in green space on the Country Club Plaza.

The Nelson placed them all to promote its new exhibit, “Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky.” Ranging in size from 14 feet to 26 feet in diameter, the eight tepees will stand on the south side of the museum’s lawn through the end of the show, Jan. 11.

Made by an Oregon company, Nomadics Tipis, they are near-exact replicas of those used by American Indians with one exception: They’re made of canvas instead of animal hide. Wherever they have stood around town they have faced east. The Plains people did the same to avoid winds and to capture the warmth of the rising sun.

Historians and art experts consider the tepee to be one of the finest portable dwellings ever created. Some, decorated with paintings and designs, were works of art.

The one the Boy Scouts slept in, 22 feet in diameter, charmed fitness trainer/author Justin Woltering of Overland Park, who crouched inside and took photos. He’s been reading a lot lately about American Indian culture as he prepares to take part in a Western movie being shot in Kansas next spring.

As Ami Logan of Roeland Park pushed her 16-month-old daughter’s stroller into the structure, she told her friends that “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a tepee.”

She was taken aback at its spaciousness but still marveled that “this would be my only home.”

Like the Free Trappers, Troop 192 owns its own, smaller, tepee, so the boys knew what to expect. They slept on the ground along the inside perimeter, as American Indians would have done to accommodate a campfire in the middle. The boys skipped the fire part, but “it was pretty warm,” said Bryant Johnson, 14, of Fairway.

Aaron Berlau, 13, of Fairway, noted how “really dark” it got. Except, of course, for the glow of everyone’s cellphone.

“You get really good service in here,” Aaron said.

This story was originally published October 12, 2014 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Cultural history flourishes at Shawnee Indian Mission’s fall festival."