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Native American Celebration: Selugadu
November 20, 2021@10:00 am-4:00 pm
$5
On Friday evening, November 19th we will have a special presenation by local historian Dennis Chastain. He will present “Cherokee Villages Before and After the Lakes.” Admission is FREE at the Heritage Pavilion.
Saturday’s events kickoff at 10 AM. This very popular annual event celebrates Native American history and influences in the Upcountry. A number of tribal groups will be represented, including some born and raised in the Upcountry, as well as those who have made South Carolina their home. The Cherokee Museum of South Carolina will have an info booth set up, so be sure to visit them!!
Visitors and guest performers will participate in the festivities of the day which will include: traditional drumming, singing, dancing, Native American flute playing, storytelling, Cherokee hymns in the Cherokee language, and traditional crafts. Performers include storyteller and basket maker Nancy Basket, from Walhalla, SC; Cherokee singer Amy Sindersine of the Reedy River Inter-tribal Association; The Kau-Ta-Noh-Jrs Society Singers of the Tuscarora Nation, NC with On’yas Locklear, Raniya Locklear and Nawayla Locklear; and Keepers of the Word from South Carolina. Demonstrations will be going on all day throughout the Mill Site including traditional Cherokee blow-gun demonstrations, traditional Catawba pottery making, bead work, basket making, flint-napping, finger-weaving, bow and arrow shooting and more. Many of the participants will have traditional handmade crafts for sale as well.
Demonstrations of food-way traditions such as stone grinding of cornmeal, cooking fry-bread, and roasting corn will take place throughout the day. Barry Crawford’s prehistoric cooking demonstration using ancient soapstone bowls is too artful to be missed. Members from the Foothills Archaeology Society will be on site to identify Native American stone tools and artifacts. Be sure to bring your treasure to be identified!
Don’t forget to explore “Our Native Roots: An Interpretive Trail.” The interpretive trail takes visitors along the Old Indian Path, which is an ancient trading path that took the Native Americans from the Mississippi coast and up and through the continental divide to Virginia. The interpretive trail includes a dugout out canoe which will be burned during the Native American Celebration, a river cane restoration area, a sacred fire circle, a medicine wheel garden, a corn garden, a mortar and pestle for grinding corn, a prehistoric stone mortar, an archaeology adventure for kids, the Paul West artifact collection and the petroglyphs that were made in prehistoric times. We are especially grateful to Paul West, who donated his personal collection of Native American artifacts, art and books to the Hagood Mill Foundation and are now housed in the Hagood Creek Petroglyph Site. Also housed in the Petroglyph Site are the Native American artifact collections of Michael Bramlett and the Crawfords.
There will be a cherry-picked selection of craft vendors with priority given to Native crafters. If you are interested in vending at the event send us an email! There will be much more to see and do on November 20th as we host a variety of folk life and traditional arts demonstrations. There will be blacksmiths, bowl-digging, flint napping, chair-caning, basket-making, pottery, quilting, spinning, knitting, weaving, woodcarving, hearth cooking, and metal-smithing, to name a few. You can ask questions of the artists and make a purchase of their traditional arts to take home.
The centerpiece of the Hagood Mill historic site is the water-powered 1845 gristmill. It is one of the finest examples of nineteenth century technology in the Upcountry and operates just as it has for the last century and a half. The mill will be running throughout the day. In the old mill, fresh stone ground cornmeal and grits will be available. We also have a variety of specialty grains and flours ground on site that may be available: whole wheat flour, rye flour, Basmati rice flour and grits, oat flour, oatmeal, oat grits, popping corn meal, buckwheat flour, barley flour and spelt flour. Hagood Mill cookbooks and a variety of other mill related items are also on sale.
Admission to Saturday’s event is $5 per person aged 13 and up. All children aged 12 and under receive free admission and there is no charge for parking. Primitive camping will be available Friday and Saturday nights– $10 per tent for one or two nights (tent/car camping) or $20 per RV space. Limit 6 people per site. Car and RV spaces are limited, so register online soon. Folks with loud generators will be asked not to use them during special events.