Native American Celebration

Every November the Hagood Mill Historic Site observes Native American Heritage Month by holding the Native American Celebration. This beloved third weekend event is also called Selugadu. Selugadu translates into cornbread (Selu, meaning corn and gadu, meaning bread) in the Tsalagi Gawonihisdi (Cherokee) language. This celebration of cornbread is a Harvest Festival. November is the time of year when Native Americans reaped the harvest of corn. Across the Americas the first people developed over 250 varieties of corn. Corn was an essential crop in Native American life and came to be in colonial life as well.

At this time of year Americans give thanks. Hagood Mill will give thanks to, and honor the first peoples of these lands, for the food traditions and customs that have influenced southern Appalachian life for hundreds of years. On Saturday, Nov. 18 many people from various tribal groups will come together to share the customs and traditions that have been practiced since ancient times and continue through present day at the picturesque Hagood Mill Historic Site in Pickens.

Saturday’s event kicks off at 10 a.m. and runs until 4 p.m. The typical third Saturday activities, including the operation of the 1845 Hagood Grist Mill, living history demonstrations and a cherry-picked group of vendors will be taking place. Visitors and guest performers will participate in the festivities of the day which will include Native American traditional drumming, singing, dancing, flute playing, storytelling, Cherokee hymns in the Tsalagi Gawonihisdi language and traditional crafts and demonstrations. Performers include storyteller and basket maker Nancy Basket, from Walhalla; Edisto River Singers; Keepers of the Word; Paul Snowcloud, flute player; Michael Hartje, flint knapping demonstrator and many more.

This year, the Hagood Mill Foundation received funding from the South Carolina Humanities for The Cherokee Language Reclamation Project. The public’s first opportunity to find out more about this project and its offerings will be during the annual Native American Celebration where there will be a booth setup with Cherokee language speakers and writers teaching about the Syllabary, playing learning games, doing activities and reading Cherokee language books to anyone free of charge. Sadly, there are very few Cherokee language speakers and writers now and so this would give both Native Americans (particularly Cherokee) and others the opportunity to learn. There will also be registration available for individuals, school groups, youth organizations, teachersand more to sign up to take classes (some online) or attend workshops or participate in field trips at Hagood Mill Historic Site during the next year. Cherokee language books and t-shirts (with the Syllabary on the back) will be sold and given away during the Celebration.

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 Archaeological Society of SC will be on site to identify Native American stone tools and artifacts. Be sure to bring your treasures to be identified!

While on site check out “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 traveled up through the Eastern Continental Divide to Virginia. The interpretive trail features a dugout canoe demonstration which uses fire as a tool along with stone chisels to burn and shape a tree into a useful floating vessel, a river cane restoration area, a sacred fire circle for all to experience on this special day, 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. All these things and more will be on display during this year’s Native American Celebration.