PICKENS — In observance of Native American Heritage Month, the Hagood Mill Historic Site will hold a special day of milling, memories and a Native American celebration on Saturday, Nov. 21.

[cointent_lockedcontent]The mill will be operating, rain or shine, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. The Hagood Creek Petroglyph Site will also be open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.

A Native American celebration is planned at the Hagood Mill Historic Site in Pickens on Nov. 21

There is a $5 parking fee for the day, but admission is free. All proceeds from parking will go to help the Hagood Mill.

The annual event celebrates local Native American history and influences. A number of groups will be represented, including individuals born and raised here, as well as those who have made South Carolina their home.

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 many traditional crafts.

Demonstrations will be going on all day throughout the mill site and will include traditional Cherokee blow-gun demonstrations, traditional pottery making, beadwork, basket making, flint-knapping, finger-weaving and bow and arrow shooting. Many of the participants will have traditional handmade crafts for sale as well.

Featured performers for the event will include the Nu Nu Hi Warriors (Immortal Warriors) representing the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. This group will be led by Cherokee cultural ambassador Sonny Ledford. Ledford has been a longtime member of the “Warriors of AniKituhwa,” a group dedicated to preserving Eastern Cherokee culture and most notable for recreating the traditional War Dance and Eagle Tail Dance of their ancestors.

Other performers include the Keepers of the Word drumming group from St. George. Members of Keepers of the Word are of Ojibwa, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Catawba and Wassamasaw tribal heritage from Colleton, Berkeley, Dorchester, Orangeburg and Sumter counties. Directed by Cathy Nelson, “The Drum” has presented a variety of Native American educational programs, as well as spiritual formation seminars and retreats throughout the Southeastern region.

Visitors and guests will also be delighted by the performance of the Boy Scouts of America’s Order of the Arrow Native American dance team on Nov. 21. Members of the Blue Ridge Council, the Order of the Arrow has been studying and performing Cherokee dances for many years. They perform at Camp Old Indian during the summer, along with camp staff members, each Wednesday night as part of the camp family night program. They also perform Cherokee dances during Order of the Arrow conclaves each spring, as well as at other scouting events throughout the year.

Native American flute music of different styles and tribes will be presented along with songs in Cherokee performed by the Reedy River Intertribal Singers

Dr. Will Goins, chief executive officer of the Eastern Cherokee, Southern Iroquois and United Tribes of South Carolina will be present to interpret Native American culture.

Demonstrations of food-way traditions such as stone grinding of cornmeal, cooking fry-bead and roasting corn will take place throughout the day.

The Crawford collection of local prehistoric stone points, blades and tools will be on display for the day, as well as their popular pre-historic cooking demonstration using soapstone bowls. The mill site’s regular flintknapper, Steve Compton, will be showing how stone tools and weapons were made.

There will be a special “children’s corner,” where visitors can make a beaded necklace and have their face painted in a Native American style. For a special treat, the Dan Buckheister family and the Twelve Mile Indian Horse Association will be on site with their Spanish Colonial horses that are actually descended from the first horses brought to the continent by the Spanish. Children will be allowed to “paint” the horses with their hand prints in the style of the Plains Indians and much more.

There will be lots of other things to see as Hagood Mill hosts a variety of folk life and traditional arts demonstrations. There will be blacksmithing, bowl-digging, flint knapping, chair-caning, moonshining, broom-making, basket-making, pottery, quilting, spinning, knitting, weaving, woodcarving, bee keeping, metal-smithing, leather-working and more. Visitors can ask questions of the artists and make a purchase of their traditional arts to take home.

The Hagood Mill is located at 138 Hagood Mill Road.

For more information, contact the Hagood Mill at (864) 898-2936 or check out visitpickenscounty.com/calendar.

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