Skills of the Hivernant

If you follow any historical reenacting/trekking message boards, it seems that labels are commonly created for/by reenacting folks to separate out and make fun of/belittle each other. Most of this is self-harming, juvenile non-sense, but it has had me thinking in a constructive fashion (as this post will show). Anyway, a current “division” being assigned is that of “Librarians” and that of...

Deer Calls

Fall is here… almost! Deer season with bow has started here in Wisconsin! In celebration of this fact, this blog will feature a fun project I have been working on… an Ojibwe Deer call. This summer, I was reading through some of the hunting and trapping stuff in Frances Densmore’s Chippewa Customs and came across and image that I have looked past hundreds of times without thinking about it. It was an image...

Papa’s got a new pair of shoes

About a year ago, Michael Galban sent me an image of a pair of souliers de boeuf (oxhide shoes) that are supposed to be early 19th century and are in a collection in Scotland (collected in Quebec). I have seen a lot of oxhide shoes and boots (bottes sauvage), but these were especially interesting. They had a somewhat high-top upper with laces that reminded me of a pair of start-ups/hi-lows/Jefferson bootees. Anyway, I said...