Whether acting, reenacting, educating, interpreting or even serving a meal.

People have many ways to engage with our history.

And keep the past alive.

Today, we're at Cottonwood Ranch Ranch with Marla Matkin, who is a native Kansan from south western Kansas.

Bucklin, I think.

Yes.

Is a native and she currently lives in Hill City, but she has been doing first person performances that were kind of living history throughout the state for many years.

And we know that in education that people learn differently.

And some people learn by reading, some by seeing and some by listening.

So Marla has kind of combined all of those things into various historic characters.

So, Marla, how did you get started?

Well, actually, it's a marriage of two of my loves is theater and history, and my degree is in education.

And so I always try to include education in my presentations.

And it's a way of getting, for those who don't like history, a painless dose of history, because they'll sometimes respond to a first person character.

And I have also found that whether it be children or adults, if you do a good job at this, they'll accept you as who you say you are and they'll come along believing you, who you say you are.

And that's kind of fun.

So for well over 25 years, I've been traveling all over the country and it's been a great experience.

Wouldn't trade it.

What was your first character that you did?

Well, I was I have been known for many years as Elizabeth Custer, but I have a stable of other characters.

How do you go about developing these characters you talk about other than just reading the history?

How do you get inside their psyche or their personalities?

Well, of course it does take a lot of research, and I try to be very careful to be true to both the history and the character.

And you can visit with family members.

In fact, I'm doing that now with a woman who rode the orphan train.

Then you try to find alike people what their lifestyles were like so you can marry all that together because sometimes you don't have a full read on this person, but you want to put them in the right place, the right time and the right atmosphere.

It's a labor of love and it's also one that really takes your time and your concentration and your diligence because it's very important to me to do right by my character.

So with Elizabeth Custer, there was a lot of information on her.

Yes.

For example, and she had a long life.

That might've been where you get a lot of information and there's a lot of profiles from friends and relatives that she had.

And so was that one of the easy ones or not necessarily?

Well, being my first one it really helped to have all that at hand.

She had a story in her own right to tell.

And of course, it's interesting to hear what it was like to travel with Frontier Military.

You hear it from the men's side, but it's very interesting to hear it from the women's side who accompanied these men west.

I'm having a lot of success with a program that has two or three ladies in it.

And then you fill in the gaps with additional information that they can't provide.

Yeah.

You know, and then you tie them all together.

I've done that with women on the Santa Fe Trail.

I did it on the suffrage program and a couple of others.

And it's it's been successful for me and I've enjoyed it.

And then there's also a third person where you go to some places that utilizes... sometimes they have people on staff.

They do it all the time, others do it on special occasions or special programing.

For instance, Fort Larned, you don't always do a specific person, but you're doing an officer's wife.

By doing it that way you can be very inclusive in your material.

We're going to be take a look at some of the small arms, as well as the Howitzer that would have been used here.

Welcome.

Come on.

Being that Fort Larned was established in 1859.

The weapons that would have been used during the Civil War.

Those weapons would have been used here as well, which includes the model 1861 Springfield.

You can go ahead and take it away.

This is the Model 1861 Springfield.

So my name is Carter Atteberry I am 18 years old.

I've been out here for about three years.

I've always loved history.

And then coming out here and realizing how important it was and how we really were kind of a key part of America's history.

There's so many little things that happen in such 30... 20-30 year time span just in Kansas, really.

We're kind of right in the middle of that.

It's like this is kind of cool and I've been able to experience that, which is something that I wouldn't trade off for anything.

My name is Daniel Feeler.

I'm actually an aircraft mechanic.

I've been working about 15 years in the industry.

I've been a re-enactor myself for about seven years.

I actually have my own mountain howitzer, been a part of a few organizations.

So we're trying to preserve our history.

We want to teach the younger generation and and also let everybody know that may not know about this era.

So we want to capture that and we want to give you a feeling of actually being there, actually going back in time and seeing what's actually going on from that time period.

I'm much more of a hands on learner, as a lot of people are.

I can only learn so much from a textbook.

That's why I like going to museums and then these things take that step past a museum.

You can go to reenactment and feel the weight of a gun.

You can try on a uniform.

It's just a whole other level of... what's the word?

Authenticity, of immersion that not many people get to experience.

Going back and seeing how those guys lived, what it was really like back then, actually having to be in these wool uniforms out in the heat all day, really taking... appreciating what we have now and just being appreciative of that.

I mean, I'll spend a weekend out here.

I think the most time I spent was four days out here, the sleeping is the rough part.

That is never fun, but just getting to really step back in time away from the sounds of the highway tucked away, you have Fort Larned and it's a step back in time.

Where you do the the first person profiles and and interpret that there are others that just will I guess be the role of a general interpreter.

Right and.

Not do the first person but maybe be dressed in the clothing and take in all the subjects that's going on for a better understanding of what was going on at the time?

Yes.

You know, they can be a nurse or a storekeeper or a teacher or a politician.

That's just a little different way without having to portray a specific person.

Still very informative and interesting and hopefully educational.

My name is Ross Roberts.

Started reenacting when I was 19.

Um, I got into Fort Hays, the museum there.

Started doing a Frontier Scout impression, and that morphed into Frontier Civilian, and that morphed into being a frontier sutler.

Sutlers were hired by the military to sell the goods that the military doesn't give soldiers.

So they give you your rifle, your uniform, your equipment.

But they don't give you things to repair your uniform, replace missing equipment.

They don't give you your hygiene items.

That's all out of your pay.

So a sutler is the storekeeper and we have a form of this still around today in the modern military that's called the PX or the post exchange, except it's been reformed.

So there's not price gouging.

And some of the bad things that happened in the sutler system.

I like to connect with kids and I like to tell them that they like to do this.

They can get started doing it too.

It starts by reading.

Get interested.

You pick an impression, you start small, save some money, and then you kind of build up from there.

When we were younger, we used to do that experimental archeology.

If we've heard of something that they did or had we tried to do that or we tried to make that.

Even today I'm in this tent, I've got to figure out how to keep this stuff from blowing away.

So you're constantly doing that in a hobby.

I think you're always trying to figure out how they did what they did.

Our ancestors were very clever.

We seem to forget that sometimes.

And so we kind of have to rediscover some of these things.

The more you know, the more you know, you kind of want to be a part of that history that just just the people, the places, the events.

I'm an English teacher by trade in real life, and I love stories.

And that's what history is.

It's just this incredible rich body of stories.

And we're all trying to live those stories in our time, but try to find out what it was like for them in their time.

There's a lot of these groups out there that do the reenactment for their own enjoyment, but they're very historically correct.

There's a Civil War re-enactors that are around.

1970s and early 80s.

there was the Rendezvous.

Mountain men, trappers, Rendezvous that were big, but there's a lot of re-enactors like that that do it as a hobby.

Instead of interpreting their wanting to live the life, at least for that moment, whether it's action shooters or Victorian dancers, or you're hosting a Victorian tea.

You want that flavor for that moment in time.

You don't want to live it all the time.

You can step in and out, step away from it.

So maybe a serious hobby, it could be?

Yes.

Hi, I'm Sandy Sprague.

Member of the Millbrook Wranglers, which is a cowboy action group.

We shoot the old fashioned guns and try to recreate a little bit of the Old West, and that's what we're interested in.

I would think this would appeal to anybody.

interested in the Old West.

Interested in shooting and learning how to shoot properly.

And safely.

On this stage.

We're shooting ten rounds out of a lever action rifle, ten rounds out of five out of each single action pistol and four rounds out of either a double barrel or an 1897 pump shotgun.

And when you complete your course of fire, you leave the line, you go straight to the unloading table.

There's a table to load and there's a table to unload.

You never leave this table with with a live round or spent round.

Everything has to be pointed downrange.

You don't walk down the line with your guns pointed this way.

You walk everything down Range.

One of the main emphasis is safety.

You learn that right away whenever you go to one of these.

And then you can dress as you want and pretend you're in the Old West and I think it's a lot of fun.

And we do have one little boy that is really enjoying himself.

We enjoy having him come.

My grandpa shoots, but I come with my dad.

My grandpa actually got this for Christmas.

I like shooting the target and helping to clean up.

What's your name here?

The Kansas kid.

Nice.

My name's Glen Brethour I live up in Nebraska territory and I go by Mesquite Ranger at these cowboy action shoots.

It's just part of the fun having an alias, you know, There's Dead Eye Jack and Crooked Creek and who knows what you might come up with the alias.

But there's no two aliases in our whole organization that are the same.

Yeah, every every month, a club will have a shoot.

We try to hit a lot of them.

We shoot probably six or seven different clubs every summer.

And usually every weekend we've got a place to go, sometimes Saturday and Sunday both.

It's just a whole lot of fun.

There's no big prize monies.

You're scored on speed and accuracy.

It's your total time plus 5 seconds for each target you miss.

Fastest time for the day is the winner and it pays big money.

Nobody gets anything but bragging rights.

If you go to to a national or international match, regional match, you might win a belt buckle, maybe a trophy or something, a little plaque.

But it's just all for fun.

Everybody involved in the sport is just real friendly and willing to help anybody and loan anybody any equipment if something breaks down, it's a real good place really, to learn to get started.

Yeah, this is the only organization I've been in.

The only place I ever shoot where the champions, the guys that shoot really fast, help out the rest of the people.

Show them how do you stuff?

What maybe their little tricks are.

Everybody else is out to win.

We're not going to win nothing.

We might win bragging rights for a week.

Other than that it's just all for fun.

I think there's differences in that.

There's the historic re-enactors, which is kind of living history, but then it's the definition of living history.

A lot of the sites that are living history is where you go in and visit and see them milking a cow or gathering the eggs or something, playing roles, but also people interpreting.

Right, like.

Blacksmiths or something like that that really aren't playing the role.

They're just giving you the facts on how they did it and.

why.

Or farriers or, you know, just again, a difference in lifestyles and how they did things.

Doc Jones, La Junta, Colorado.

To get started I worked on the trail ride business for 35 years.

Later on, a friend of ours borrowed my chuckwagon to do a chuckwagon competition and I knew almost everybody with the wagon there.

So we decided to put on a Chuckwagon Cookoff competition down at our place.

But we've been getting calls to do different deals, whether it be a chuckwagon competition or basically a catering deal.

Maybe we'd take one wagon and feed 60.

A couple years ago we went to Russell, Kansas, and we fed 300 for supper and 500 for dinner the next day.

We've done anything from take it easy to work your rear off.

Each deal we go to a different menu, venue.

Like this particular deal.

Yes, living history.

And not that we're playing the game.

We live the game.

We've got horses.

We farm with horses, we pull wagons with horses.

So yeah, we're... history is part of our life.

Charles Goodnight designed this basically these church wagons in the late 1850s, early 1860s.

You know if you follow this chuck wagon with a herd of 2000 head of cattle for six months, you're going to eat some bad stuff.

You know, there wasn't a grocery store every ten miles.

You may eat some rancid beans.

You may eat some meat with little green on it.

You know, we don't do that nowadays.

Them guys that lived like that, that was a way of life.

You know, your stomach can't take it nowadays.

Oh, my gosh, It's ten times better now.

It's amazing how many people are just awesomated with the wagon.

They don't care what you're cooking, but it gives the people now a small taste of what it was really like.

You know, how often are you going to go see all this stuff cooked in Dutch ovens out in the dirt with the wind blowing?

And that was part of it.

That was an everyday thing.

And I hope someday we get to feed your people and give them an opportunity to see how it was really done.

Yeah, we've modified it because we're feeding a bunch of people, but nevertheless it's still basically the same thing.

You could get the idea of, you know, here's a pile of Dutch ovens.

We've used almost every one of them today or yesterday, but that's the way it was cooked.

The campfire cook had the Germans in the skillet.

That's it.

So go from there.

No Cuisinart?

No, no.

No microwave, none of that stuff.

I think people are interested in preserving a lot of stuff that has gone behind.

And we're doing that in the 21st century because we're moving so fast and we're looking back and say, what did they do?

How did they do it?

Why do you do this?

Why do you come down to Fort Wallace and and do these things?

Why why do you do this?

In a way, it's keeping our old time culture and ways and beliefs in tact.

So, you know, that's why I, I do this why I dress like this.

I feel like when I do this, it keeps my grandpa alive and me and it keeps all of my ancestors alive in me.

If I let the native way die in me, I won't ever be the same.

And I love being who I am.

I did that in honor of my daughter.

I'm proud of her.

Dennis Rogers (speaking Dene) That's my real tribal name.

(speaking Dene) I couldn't say it neither, so don't try it.

I'm a graduate of Haskell Indian Nation's University here in the great state of Kansas.

I am a full time native educator traveling all across our great nation.

I think all of us here today, we come here together today because we're all connected through our history or a rich history in our state or county or communities.

Just driving in this morning and seeing these lodges set up.

What a powerful sight that is.

My family calls me little bear, which is in my language, Shásh yáázh.

Can I hear you say Shásh yáázh.

Close My name is David White.

My family calls me Little Bear and my language is.

Shásh yáázh.

I'm actually a high school teacher.

I teach woodshop, welding and construction.

I actually do like to live in history, mainly because I really enjoy educating people about the history of different Native American tribes as well as my own tribe.

So my brother and my dad, we've been doing it for, I don't know, over 20 years.

We end up doing documentaries, TV shows, some movies, but sometimes they try to dress us up in things that it's not time, period correct.

We asked them like, "What year are you portraying?"

And we actually go through the history books, look at pictures, read the descriptions.

And so we try to portray the tribes accurately for that time period.

We have to have the knowledge on all the different tribes and their history and the correct dates that they had those items.

We make our own outfits and everything, things that way we could portray everything.

Like my brother, he did all the quill work right here, which took him weeks to do.

But this is my brother Josh.

He made just recently made this one?

Yeah, everything is all handmade.

So this shirt that I'm wearing, it had three hides to go through.

I had to smoke it.

So the smoking process to It helps preserve the hide a little bit better, especially when it gets wet.

Now, I painted this green using a natural powder paint.

I mixed in some egg whites and water.

The egg whites act as a binding agent for the paint.

So if I take my hand, it's nothing's going to come off.

This is like a Cheyenne War shirt.

And then this style's more of a Lakota war shirt.

We're Native American models having all these different types of war shirts and different styles.

We can portray a different tribe for these artists, and they'll take them back and take pictures of them.

They'll do... they'll paint them, they'll draw them.

They'll even do sculptures of them.

We could.

Go to a museum and just by chance, we look over and it's like, Hey, that's my dad right there.

Just like this one right here.

Yeah.

I walked in.

I was like, Wait, I know that guy.

At first, we we didn't know anything.

I mean, like, we were learning the history as we can go.

We we dress up the way we do because we want everybody to understand.

We want to try to go out and and let everybody know how they lived and what they wore.

How did they carry a piece like a tool and what not to use.

Marth Summer Hays, returned to the United States...

I always say there is a a golden thread that each of us have held on to and gone clear back through our families.

We learn from them and by doing some of this, we've become closer to our past and our families and they don't seem so strange and different.

You know, once you've you've participated or watched others.

And the reenactment gives a sense of the culture and they can read about it, but they don't understand unless they see somebody do it.

Right.

If you're not connected with history.

You're lost.

You can learn from the past.

You can also see how it worked back then and see the smarter ways that, or the way things has evolved to work for nowadays.

Some things work better, some things don't.

Pay attention.

You learn what you can.

So we're living history this weekend.

This isn't a reenactment.

For all of us who are here, we're all living it here today, so we're the fortunate ones.

We didn't live in the past.

We're not living in the future, we're living in the now.

Doing this is very special to me because not only do I get to share what I learn, and if I share what I learn and teach other people and they take it and they spread it, then our history stays alive.

But ultimately it comes down to me choosing my way to keep them alive.

So make it so our history, our culture and my ancestors do not die with it.

We're here to tell our stories.

We're here to educate.

We're here to share.

We want to share with you what we know who we are.

And I hope also one of my other goals is to inspire by listening to these people's stories, what they endured, what they went through, how they handled it.

If they did it, hopefully we can do it.

If they endured, if they persevered, if they carried on, and through great adversity, that we can too.

That's another lesson that these people can can teach.

Yeah.