Get out of the house
You all need to get out of the house now and then. See some Texas sites, then run up to Oklahoma City.
The National Cowboy Museum rivals any down here. Bricktown with its river rivals San Antonio’s Riverwalk. There’s the Myriad Gardens, the National Memorial, Paseo Arts District, the State Capitol, The History Museum and old structures on historic Route 66.
Just north is Guthrie, the original Oklahoma capitol with architectural wonders from the 1800s.
The crowning glory was the annual Red Earth Festival attended by more than 100 Indian tribes from all over North America.
The artwork, jewelry, pottery; bring some home. The colorful regalia can have upper and lower bustles, headdresses on rockers, bells, rattles filled with corn, pheasant feathers, eagle feathers, colorful macaw feathers.
The dances feature competitions ranging from 6- to 12-year-olds, and later 70-year-olds, with children 2 years old dressed as well, accompanying them on the side.
Younger men perform more rapid foot stomping in “grass dances” commemorating earlier years when they would stomp the grass so others could dance.
Women in their “golden years” in more subdued deerskin dress, are judged by how much they swayed the 4-foot leather fringe.
An eagle feather is accidentally dropped; the dancing stops, the drumbeat stops, the chants stop.
Someone comes to pray over it, picks it up, the dancing resumes.
Whatever happened in the past, these are proud tribes and nations; they show it, and rightfully so.
Jim Stodola,
Denton
