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Archway in the news!!!
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2008: Archway, National Park Service to develop projects at Kearney attraction
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'Corn Sisters' work to revive ancient Pawnee varieties
By LORI POTTER, Hub Staff Writer
09/25/2008
Updated 09/26/2008 01:06:02 PM CDT
KEARNEY — As she searched a small weedy garden near the Great Platte River Road Archway for a few unharvested ears of Pawnee blue corn, Deb Echo-Hawk paused to pick burrs from long black braids hanging almost to her knees.
“This is so precious,” she said, as 8-year-old Skidi Star LeadingFox picked a small ear of corn. The white cob and few dark blue kernels resembled an old man’s toothless grin.
“Look at it,” said Skidi’s mother, Karla KnifeChief, as she pointed to a kernel on the scrawny ear that would be a throw-away for most corn producers. “It looks like a black pearl.”
Echo-Hawk, KnifeChief and other members of the Pawnee Nation in Oklahoma are on a mission to save every kernel of ancient Pawnee varieties — blue, white, red-and-white and eagle corn — that represent their heritage, history and culture.
That hope rests in large part on ties to their “corn sister” Ronnie O’Brien, the archway’s director of educational programs, and a handful of other Nebraska gardeners who tend Pawnee crops.
O’Brien called Echo-Hawk in Oklahoma five years ago for help in planting an authentic Pawnee garden at the archway. That’s when O’Brien learned that several Pawnee corn varieties were almost extinct.
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Echo-Hawk, the Pawnees’ “keeper of the seeds,” entrusted some of the precious few remaining kernels to O’Brien in the hope that seeds failing to sprout in Oklahoma would grow in their native Nebraska soil.
Hundreds of years ago, Nebraska Pawnees planted crops each spring and harvested them after returning from annual buffalo hunts. In 1873 and 1874, 3,000 Pawnees were relocated from Nebraska to Oklahoma. Only about 1,200 survived the journey, partly because the U.S. government had denied them a last buffalo hunt for food.
“You hear about the Cherokee (relocated from North Carolina to Oklahoma) and their Trail of Tears,” O’Brien said in a 2007 Hub interview, “but the Pawnee had their own.”
Nebraska efforts to enhance the Pawnee seed bank have made some progress each year, but there have been mixed results.
This year, O’Brien’s blue corn produced ears on 135 mature plants that avoided damage from heavy rains, hail, and cool spring and late summer weather. “Talk about corn with an incredible desire to live,” she said Wednesday morning as she entered the archway corn plot.
The eagle corn (white kernels with purple splotches) harvest included eight full and 14 half-full ears, but the white corn planted didn’t pollinate. Late-maturing red-and-white corn hasn’t been harvested.
Echo-Hawk, who is executive director of the Pawnee Arts Association, will talk at a special dinner tonight at the archway about Pawnee corn and a new project to build an authentic Pawnee lodge. O’Brien said the lodge project can’t go forward until $300,000 is raised.
Echo-Hawk, KnifeChief and O’Brien had time Wednesday to talk as “corn sisters.”
“It’s almost like an innate homecoming,” Echo-Hawk said about her Nebraska visits. “This is where all our stories originate.”
Star charts at a planetarium were used to confirm some Pawnee history. “We dated some of our stories by rolling the stars back in position over areas where our homelands were in Nebraska,” she explained.
Echo-Hawk and KnifeChief also focus on the future by trying to interest Pawnee youths in traditional arts, gardening and history.
“It’s really exciting when we can work on projects like that,” Echo-Hawk said about recent Pawnee pottery projects. “Anything grass roots is fun. To sustain it is the question.”
Garden projects have been more difficult.
Cultural leader Bill Howell encouraged everyone to plant corn seeds at home, but the 2008 Oklahoma weather didn’t cooperate. KnifeChief has cell phone photos of hailstones the size of baseballs that fell during summer storms.
O’Brien said wet, cool conditions also hurt Nebraska-grown corn yields.
Finding garden sites with good soil at Pawnee, west of Tulsa, has been a struggle. “This season was not a bumper crop for sure,” Echo-Hawk said. “We just need to identify some better places to grow. We’ll try again next year ... maybe even try another place in Oklahoma.”
She sees progress in her mission as keeper of the seeds each time she adds kernels to Mason jars in the Pawnee seed bank. Remembering a seed blessing ceremony in the late 1990s that included just three varieties, she said, “I feel like we have come a long way.”
She enjoys meeting people from other tribes who are on the same mission for their people. “We encourage each other,” Echo-Hawk said. “We have a lot of hopes and dreams.”
The Oklahoma-Nebraska corn sisters still hope for the day when ancient corn returns as a staple in the Pawnees’ diets. KnifeChief said it has more protein than modern varieties.
Success, she said, is “when we have enough (corn) to eat and to decorate. When we have too much.”
“You have to keep in mind that we haven’t eaten this corn yet,” Echo-Hawk added. “I’ve been at it since the 1980s, and I haven’t eaten it yet.”
Reflecting on the patience required, she smiled and said, “I think it’s fun to have a whole lot of little goals along the way.”
Another sign of success is seeing Pawnee corn become a greater part of people’s spiritual lives. The questions she’s asked tell Echo-Hawk that young people are moving in that direction.
Only families with sacred bundles or visions can elaborate on the spiritual tie, Echo-Hawk said. “I just know that it’s alive.”
O’Brien responded emotionally, saying, “I just made a big sigh when she said that.”
e-mail to:
lori.potter@kearneyhub.com
2008 Pawnee Crop Report
Eagle corn — Eight good ears, with 110 to 230 kernels per ear; 14 half-full ears, with 50 to 80 kernels each; scraps and nubbins. The overall harvest is less than hoped for, but acceptable in a rough weather year.
White corn — None of the corn from the Pawnee Group Home (Boys and Girls Home in Kearney) pollinated, but they have two watermelons. It’s hoped seeds to plant in 2009 will be available from Genoa gardens.
Red-and-white striped corn — The crop planted by Roger Woolsey of Mason City was late because of cool weather and was stunted. The harvest won’t be good, but some corn still is in the field.
Blue corn — The best harvest so far produced 135 mature, undamaged plants. There are about 85 ears with 125 to 200 kernels per ear. Three ears in the field’s center were nearly a foot long with 300 to 360 kernels each.
Bush beans — There was concern that the beans were doing well, but were solid color instead of speckled. It’s now known that they speckle just ahead of harvest.
Source: Ronnie O’Brien
©Kearney Hub 2008
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KEARNEY — The Nebraska Firefighters Museum is leasing land and relocating to Archway Parkway, where it will build a new facility east of Kearney near the Great Platte River Road Archway.
Museum board members made the announcement Thursday night before a group of Kearney Volunteer Fire Department firefighters. Board chairman Norman Hoeft of David City confirmed the move this morning.
“It’s finally coming to pass, and I’m very grateful,” said Hoeft, a semiretired firefighter.
BD Construction of Kearney will build the 10,000-square-foot museum on Archway Parkway near the arch’s stagecoach and tepees. The building will include an education center and memorial garden, and it will be designed to be added on to in the future. The museum once planned to build at the former Interstate Structures Inc. site south of Kearney on state Highway 44.
Hoeft said archway officials approached the museum board with the proposal to build on land leased from the arch.
Those involved didn’t say how many acres the museum would lease or the cost of the lease. A museum staff will operate the facility.
The museum board has $1.9 million secured for the museum and hopes the new location and progress toward construction will encourage more donors to come forward.
Some funding could also come from a 1 percent restaurant tax being proposed by the Kearney Visitors Bureau, said Roger Jasnoch, the bureau’s director.
“The firefighters attraction is one of the projects behind the restaurant tax initiative,” Jasnoch said. “When it comes to tourism, we need to turn people making lunch stops into afternoon stops and those afternoon stops into overnight stays.
“Developing the archway campus and allowing complimentary attractions such as the firefighter’s museum to exist helps that cause.”
Hoeft hopes to break ground and have footings in place yet this fall.
“I’d love to see the steel go up now,” Hoeft said, “but I don’t think we can get it up that quick.”
Firefighters museum artifacts have been in storage near the Kearney Regional Airport since 2002, when the museum moved out of Stuhr Museum in Grand Island. Museum memorabilia in storage includes fire engines, equipment, documents, photos and other memorabilia from across the state. Some of the items date back to the 1880s.
In 2004, the museum board bought the former ISI buildings south of Kearney’s Interstate 80 interchange for $450,000. The board had hoped to remodel the ISI buildings and add another 15,000 square feet to the facility. Kearney firefighters gutted the building. However, several issues, including environmental concerns, were proving to be costly.
“It seemed like it was one little problem after another,” Hoeft said.
The museum’s new location west of the arch will be a prime spot once the I-80 Cherry Avenue bypass is built in the next few years, Hoeft said. “It’s a perfect spot for us and a perfect fit. It will help that whole area.”
The museum board will now put the former ISI buildings up for sale. The museum board also is sending letters to donors explaining the move.
Hoeft has worked on the museum concept since the mid-1960s and is anxious to get the project moving.
“It’s going to be exciting once we get rolling here. I’m so happy to have it happen,” he said.
Hub reporter Todd Gottula contributed to this article.
e-mail to:
kim.schmidt@kearneyhub.com
©Kearney Hub 2008
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For more information about this or other educational programming at the Great Platte River Road Archway, contact (308)237-1000.
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