Mississinewa

Couldn't miss the Mississenwa 1812 reenactment this year, where folks drive from three states away to dress up in either wool or grease paint and sleep outside for three nights to celebrate the massacre of some Indians a long time ago. I think that's it, anyway--I didn't read the whole brochure.

Cute little Indians reacting to the noise of the "thundersticks" that went off during the big fake battle.

This guy's funny. His fire eating routine has been pretty much the same for the last three years and he seems tired of it, maybe, and some of the little kids who had seen it before were yelling out spoilers and stuff. He was a good sport about it, though, and I still laugh. He makes fire-eating look temptingly easy, I must say.

Not-real Indian getting a real Indian tattoo, the Indian way, and telling us all about it.

I really love this event. The costumes are amazing and the people are so thorough in their attention to detail. For something so fake, it is very authentic and I believe every minute of it. And plus the weather is always the perfect kind autumn weather, the first weekend of it, it seems like, for a drive down an interstate and then state highways and then of course the rolling two tracks down to the slow river. All the way there you've got yellowing fields and the clouds and they are pretty and then the sun comes out and it is pretty, too.