Creek Indian Descendant Building Authentic Hunting Lodge

By DOUG NURSE / http://www.ajc.com/ Sunday, August 24, 2008
In a couple of weeks, visitors to Autrey Mill Nature Preserve and Heritage Center in Johns Creek will be able to walk down a trail and back into time. About 50 yards down a path into the woods, a Creek Indian hunting lodge is being built by a man of Creek descent using mostly authentic techniques.

“We want it to be like someone just stumbled on it 200 years ago,” said Cheryl Bowlin, an Autrey Mill board member. “We want Autrey Mill to be a ribbon of time, and this is another part of the ribbon.”

The lodge is being constructed by Tom Blue Wolf, also called Tom Goodman. Blue Wolf, 62, grew up on the Poarch Creek Reservation near Atmore, Ala. He said his grandfather named him Blue Wolf. He said he learned how to build lodges from the old men on the reservation. He said he received the blessing of Creek and Cherokee elders before building the lodge at Autrey Mill.
Autrey Mill, about 46 acres, features several buildings from the early 1900s and trails through native forest. The lodge originally was planned to be built near water, but endangered lady-slipper orchids were growing in abundance on the proposed site.

Blue Wolf said there is no set way to construct a hunting lodge, which would have temporarily housed several men in a hunting party. “I was going to use cedar, but we couldn’t find it, so we went to poplar bark,” he said.

Blue Wolf, who has built similar lodges at Georgia botanical gardens and universities in Europe, said he envisions the lodge as a place visitors can learn about natural ways of living.
Creek and Cherokee Indian hunters would range for weeks, collecting barks and herbs for medicine and killing game and preserving meat to bring back to their village, Blue Wolf said.
When finished, the structure will be about 10 feet wide, 12 feet long and 8 feet high. The face of the lodge will be open.

He and his four helpers are using native materials, and occasionally non-native tools, such as power drills or a Japanese handsaw. Blue Wolf said doing it authentically with a small set of people would take a long time. He said he’s compromising with some material, such as modern-day screws, because otherwise the lodge would soon fall into disrepair without his being there to maintain it.

Blue Wolf said he also plans to build a kiln so Autrey Mill volunteers can demonstrate how the Creeks used to smoke meat to preserve it. “We want people to get a sense of what a day in their life would’ve been like,” Blue Wolf said. “We wanted to do something educationally that was visually stimulating.”

The lodge has two rows of four posts with each row topped by a long log. The sides will be made of river cane weave filled in with clay, sand and straw. The roof will be shingled with poplar bark.
On the other side of the path will be a tepee reminiscent of those of the Great Plains Indian tribes. Bowlin said that even though the Creek and Cherokee didn’t live in tepees, mill officials included the tepee to show a contrast between the various ways of Indian life.
The tepee, 24 feet in diameter, will be made of canvas instead of buffalo, but it will get the idea across, Blue Wolf said. People will be able to rent out the tepee for birthday parties to raise money for the mill, Bowlin said. “Some children have no idea there was anything before the subdivisions,” Bowlin said. “We’re hoping we can give them an ‘Aha!’ moment.”