Annual feast celebrates ‘Lafayette-area cultures’
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 10/14/2009
Jacob Shreve | Senior Photographer
Participants in the 2009 Feast of the Hunters' Moon celebration dress as French-American traders and chat beside a cooking roast.
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The 42nd annual Feast of the Hunters’ Moon had something to engage all the senses.
From colorful costumes to mouth-watering buffalo burgers, from intermittent gunfire to the scent of burning wood, history was alive at Fort Ouiatenon Park from Saturday morning to Sunday night.
“The Feast is a festival unique to this area,” said Leslie Martin Conwell, event coordinator, putting special emphasis on the last two words. “It combines food, entertainment and history. That’s why people keep coming back year after year, rain or shine – it’s a tradition. When you live here, you just have to come to the Feast.”
Conwell, a Purdue alumna who majored in anthropology, described the Feast of the Hunters’ Moon as “a celebration of the Lafayette-area cultures that were here at the time of Indiana’s first European settlement” back in the 1700s.
“The Feast celebrates the history of the American colonialists: the French, the Europeans and the Natives. Really, it’s exposing you to history, but in a very engaging and unusual way,” she said. “And it is a way that includes the stomach!”
Sol Lee, a second grader at Klondike Elementary School, attended the Feast for the first time with her mom and sister.
“It’s very cold,” she said, “but the battle reenactments make me excited and happy anyway. I like listening to music from the street musicians who all play their instruments together. I also like looking at the animal skins hanging in the hunters’ shops and watching the soldiers march.”
Her sister, Un, was a performer at Sunday’s Feast.
Un’s fourth grade teacher, Carol Goodrich, took her class to the Feast so students could share Native American legends with the crowd. Un picked a book called “The Basket Woman” and even had a story map to show while she told the story.
“Un’s storytelling booth was my favorite,” Sol said, “but everything was terrific. We even bought some roasted corn because we got hungry.”
It’s this sort of student and community involvement that Conwell loves most about her job.
“When I was a high school student, I went to the Feast not knowing what it was,” she said. “The people there encouraged me to keep learning about all the things I saw. This is my way of giving back to those who noticed my interest in history while also helping others discover their own passion.”
And Conwell isn’t the only person who’s discovered a passion or history as a result of a visit to the Feast.
“Each year during the festival, people come up to me and ask, ‘How can I do this?’ They get excited and want to join the Feast. This event becomes so important for so many people. I can’t even tell you how many people’s ashes get scattered here,” she said.