Croton Arboretum's Native American Crafts & Culture

The following is a news release from the Croton Arboretum.

Native American crafts expert Barry Keegan will build an authentic wigwam in the Arboretum and use it—along with his replicas of bows, arrows, axes, buckskin, fire-making tools and pottery—to recreate the daily life of the Leni Lenape people, who lived in the Croton area at the time of Henry Hudson’s voyage.

The event will take place from October 12-15 at the Jane E. Lytle Memorial Arboretum in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. The first three days will be exclusively for the 4th grade students at the Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School and the last day, Saturday, October 15, will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Due to limited parking, visitors must park on Fox Road and take a shuttlebus into the Arboretum. The wigwam will be located a short walk from the drop-off point.

Barry Keegan was the supervisor of Native American Programs for the New York State Historical Association and Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, NY. He is currently a museum consultant and gives classes and demonstrations of historic and prehistoric crafts at a variety of events. He created numerous replica Lenape artifacts for an exhibit at Ellis Island, and was filmed by the History Channel, for “Mystery Quest: the Stonehenge Archer,” making a bow and arrows which he shot at bones to compare impact-marks to those on archaeological remains. He is also a contributor to Wilderness Way and the Bulletin of Primitive Technology magazines.