About 180 Bartholomew County children were given a taste of what life was like for Indiana’s first settlers.
“You didn’t get to play much in old times, because you had to do chores all day,” said Ogden Crough, 10, during Friday’s “Pioneer Day” at ABC Stewart School on Columbus’ west side. “Then, when you are done, you go to sleep, wake up the next day, and do more chores.”
Although the private school on State Road 46 West has hosted Pioneer Day for almost a half-century, that observance rotates on a three-year cycle with two other historical periods: Olympics Day, which focuses on life in ancient Greece, and Medieval Day, according to event co-organizer Natasha Brockhaus.
While the ABC Stewart children, who range in age from 2 to 12, seemed to enjoy Medieval Day last year, they seemed more excited about Pioneer Day this year because it reflects U.S. and Indiana history, Brockhaus said.
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On Friday, there were about 15 different stations set up behind the school from 8:45 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., co-organizer Ashlee Chodan said. Preparations for Pioneer Day have been in the works ever since the school year began in August, including recruiting community members and other educators with specific talents, she said.
Some stations were more fun for the kids than others. For example, preschool and kindergarten teacher Brianna Cockerham was recruited to teach kids how to do laundry the old-fashioned way. That meant using a washboard in a wooden frame to scrub clothes with soap and water, followed by a rinse and hanging the garments out to dry on a clothes line.
“It’s kind of hard to do because you have to put a lot of work in it,” said 9-year-old student Bhavesh Bhavi.
“We’ve done a lot of talking about being thankful for washers and dryers,” Cockerham said. “Since it took a day for the clothes to dry on the line, doing the family laundry was often a two-day chore.”
But it wasn’t all work. Math teacher Autumn Hileman seemed to be having a good time teaching Native American games with names such as Captive Ball, Crooked Path, Ring-Around — and even an early version of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Two of the historical stations focused on different ways of crushing grain into food. At one site, students used a mortar and pestle to crush corn in order to make a cornmeal flatbread called Johnny Cakes.
But at the other, students had three different tools that included a traditional hand-cranked grinder with metal teeth to grind corn, as well as a quern — a simple hand mill consisting of two circular stones.
“I could keep doing this all day,” said Jackson Floyd, 7, while grinding flour on the quern.
However, 9-year-old Bob O’Brien had different feelings about the exceptionally large and heavy pestle he was using to grind grains in a bucket.
The redundancy of adding grains — and smashing them — gets old real quick, he said.
“In pioneer times, this would have been really hard to keep up all day,” O’Brien said. “Grab and mash. Grab and mash. Grab and mash.”
Returning favorites from past Pioneer Days included encounters with goats and chickens brought in by volunteer Katie Ennis, as well as lessons on rope-making.
Many were drawn to teacher Lorna Clarke as she demonstrated how to operate a weaving loom. Kids enjoy watching the device in action because it is a complicated machine that operates without electricity, Clarke said.
“And they don’t normally get to see how their clothes are made,” she said.
A new activity organized by team leader Jerry Maulin was the construction of a wigwam far back on the school’s property near a wooded area.
“As we were building it, we talked with the students about the homes they live in, and how their families didn’t have to build it themselves,” Maulin said. “We also discussed how they have electricity, which pioneers didn’t have. And since they didn’t have indoor plumbing, they had to dig a hole and make an outhouse.”
There are certain things that organizers hope the kids will take away from Pioneer Days for the long term.
“Of course, we hope they have learned how the life of a pioneer child was,” Brockhaus said. “But we are also hoping we might generate interest in developing a new skill.”
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For more photos of ABC Stewart School’s Pioneer Day, visit therepublic.com.
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