As November deepens, elementary students spend time studying the first Thanksgving and the early Americans who celebrated it — both pilgrims and Indians.
Jefferson Elementary School students got to hear from a local Native American woman as part of those studies recently.
Iolan Kyleigh Leonard, of Otoe and Potawatomie heritage, spoke to the second grade classes of Laura Caillouet and Vickie Tholen on Friday.
She brought with her artifacts of her tribes.
From cedar boxes came a collection of dance regalia: feather fans and belled leg bands, a turtle-shell rattle and beaded mocassins.
“Our fifth great-grandfather, chief Burnett Abrams, was the last Potawatomie war chief,” Leonard told the students. “That makes us princesses,” she said of she and her sister, school secretary Stephanie Bycroft.
At one point, she said, the tribes traveled. Then, “the Otoe set their roots down in the Great Lakes region.” After two leading chiefs had a falling out, the Otoe’s seven clans, each named for Midwestern wildlife, separated and scattered, she said.
Leonard’s family is bear clan, while others are eagle, deer, owl, squirrel, hawk and bison.
“The Otoe named Nebraska,” Leonard said. “Only we called it ‘Nu blaska,’ for flat water.”
The Otoe and Potawatomie were both tribes that lived in Kansas, Leonard said. The Potawatomie are based now out of Oklahoma, she added.
In both tribes, men hunted bison and deer while women took care of families, did bead work and other crafts. The Otoe also were wood carvers, she said.
Leonard displayed her regalia — a bright red dress bedecked in ribbon patterns resembling oak leaves, a breastplate of bone and beads, mandala pendant and a large shawl with waving fringe.
“The women wear the shawl in pow wow dances,” she told students. The fans — hers were made of turkey feathers, some painted to resemble eagle — were also used for dancing, she said.
She noted the ribbon patterns were unique to her tribe.
“Only the Otoe use these patterns,” she said. “Only the Otoe wear this necklace” of many strands of tiny glass beads.
The ribbon work is a dying art, she told students.
