Homemade history
Hidden in the woodlands of Indiana County, a simulated Native American village recalls rural life during the French and Indian War era.
David "Butch" Laney, 53, a former logger, built the village in his back yard off Marshall Heights Road, in Black Lick.
Naeskahoni Town, -- the name means "Black Lick" the Lenape, or Delaware language -- is a complex of longhouses, lean-tos and wigwams that took two frenzied months for Laney to construct.
Yet to be completed is a log-and-mud cabin, reminiscent of the structure an 18th-century trader might have inhabited during poor weather.
The village is "transitional," Laney said, its buildings, furnishings and other details representing the start of an integration between white settlers and Native Americans.
Laney traces his family's roots in the region to 1682. The family has long collected and re-created historical artifacts, he said, and they passed along the know-how required to build the structures.
"It's 300 years of heritage," Laney said of the village, pronounced Ness-ka-HO-nee. Its buildings and artifacts, he explained, represent a blend of Native American culture from the fledgling nation's eastern woodlands and the ways of the earliest "pathfinder" settlers.
Laney credits his younger brother with sharing his extensive knowledge of Early American history. Charles Laney demonstrates blacksmithing at events such as Blairsville's Diamond Days festival, and his wife, Deborah, helps to make intricate, period clothing.
Laney calls the site "100 percent educational," but said it was purely a hobby until daughter Kryssie,18, suggested they make it a business by offering tours.
Recently, Laney greeted visitors wearing a three-cornered hat, Native American leggings and jewelry. He held a rifle that looked well oiled and cared for.
"I'm a white border settler today, just because I didn't feel like shaving my mustache," he said, explaining that he would have to be clean-shaven to represent an Indian.
In a gruff voice thick with a western Pennsylvania accent, Laney led visitors through a reconstructed house, speaking as if the homeowner had merely stepped away for a while.
The village includes a three-sided hunter-fisherman's lean-to, a trader's winter cabin and summer lean-to, Algonquin wigwams and Iroquois longhouses. Various structures demonstrate how a hunter, a gardener and a tanner might have lived. Another building focuses on foods, showing how corn was dried and hominy was made.
The tanner's wife, children and dog all left him because of the smell, Laney explained with a twinkle in his eye.
The odor of tanning hides drove them away, he said. The lonely tanner kept only a tiny cooking pot and single blanket in his wigwam, made of the shoddiest pieces of bark.
Laney described other buildings' decor as he showed off the village.
In the gardener's home, dried flowers hung from the ceiling. The hunter-fisherman's lean-to was equipped with pelts, a fish trap and a fur-covered quiver of arrows. The hunter's longhouse featured a bear's skull -- a souvenir of the kill -- and deer antlers that could be rattled to attract other whitetails.
Many of the items were created by Laney and his family, who transformed a small log into a miniature canoe and built a simple turkey trap using sticks and a bit of food. Another homemade device employs hard hickory wood to drill holes in rocks, for jewelry.
Bows, axes, hoes and other tools all were made by Laney himself.
His family doesn't sit idle while he works. Assisting with tours are daughters Deborah and Kryssie Laney, sister-in-law Angie Smith, and niece Cera Smith, 12.
Deborah Laney also helps to create the tour guides' clothing, stitching hand-dyed blouses from authentic patterns.
The tour guides wear leggings with intricate beading or wool skirts trimmed with silk, which Native Americans could have gotten from the 18th-century traders. The women's hair is worn "clubbed" -- in a ponytail wrapped in cloth -- to keep it from catching fire.
The town is being helped along by Wachtschu Ehachping Director Monica Colberg, whose Allegheny County group helps to provide environmental education. She has worked with Laney in the past and is helping to organize school tours to Naeskahoni, which she called an "exciting spot."
"Butch has this lovely town going. It gives us a beautiful transitional site," Colberg said. "In order to learn, you have to feel it and do it."
Tours of Naeskahoni Town are available Wednesday through Sunday. To make reservations, call 724-248-0114.
