Almost 16 years ago, I visited this place. I started writing a blog entry about it, but never finished it. It has sat as a draft for over 15 years. I might as well post it. I don't know if the links still work. It will be obvious where I stopped work on it.On a cave tour of southern Ohio, we stopped off at the Zane Shawnee Caverns, an odd little place owned by a group calling itself the *United Remnant Band of the Shawnee Nation.* They have set up their pseudo-reservation on about 300 acres, and they have 45 people of varying degrees of Shawnee blood living there. As you enter there's a sign that reads *Welcome to Indian Country.* They might just as well have put up a *Welcome to the Country of the People Who Got Fucked Over by Both the White and Red Man* sign, for it appears from the tangled account outlined in their badly written little history *book* (an unstapled digest sized 16 pager that sells for $3 in the gift shop and which is summarized online here) that neither group wants them. The land was thick with the stink of the cast-off.
Even in caverns these misfits got the short end of the stick. Only 10, 12 miles away is the storied Ohio Caverns—bigger, richer in crystals and far more lucrative. The parking lot at the Ohio Caverns was packed with cars and tour buses. At Shawnee, only a solitary rusty pick-up was sitting in the small gravel lot.
Ha, looking at that old Chevy truck while getting out of our ’97 Honda Civic, I felt like a 1%er. There were a couple old chiefs playing a board game on the covered porch to the entrance. They didn't answer our hellos as we went past. Inside, a fat old squaw was tending the gift shop. She told us we were the first visitors of the day—it was 4 pm, and they closed at 5. The squaw had to make a phone call to get an injun to come down and give us a tour. While we waited, we browsed the gift shop, a dusty mix of dream catchers, deerskin pouches and assorted bric-a-brac like this:
And this:
And in a forlornly failed attempt to add *tourist value,* the natives had patched together a little *nature annex*—a sad menagerie of stuffed owls, shabby pelts, a tank housing a decrepit turtle with a cricket hopping crazily around it, two small *aquariums* with blue gill barely visible through dirty water, and this angry turkey:
Maybe this bizarre collection had some meaning according to Shawnee lore, but to me it just seemed sad and peculiar.
While shuffling around from one oddity to the next, I tried to comprehend the weird faux reservation vibe. It seemed to be made of equal parts shame and pride—schizoid.
The mood brightened considerably when our guide finally showed up, a little injun named Black Land. He gave a tour like he had a group filled with Geronimo, Tecumseh, Cochise and twenty other red heroes, instead of four nobody mud people.
Black Land told us the all usual scientific mumbo-jumbo about how the cave and the cave pearls and the stalactites and all that were formed, but he also spun a lot of Shawnee tall tales to keep the kids entertained. Then, when we came to the middle of the cave, where the distance between the walls narrowed to almost nothing, and I asked him if any fat people ever got stuck, Black Land told a tragicomic story about a fat white woman who couldn’t squeeze through the narrow passageway and got left behind her tour group. Black Land said even though it took less than a minute for everyone to realize what had happened, the fat woman became hysterical and started screaming and lumbering back toward the entrance. In the process, as she was flailing her *buffalo butt-sized* arms, she knocked loose a couple of thousands of years old soda straws. “I’m sorry for the fat white lady,” my youngest said. Black Land nodded. “There’s fat in every race,” I said. Black Land nodded.
After the tour, I wandered around outside, careful not to disturb the two old chiefs, who were s
Even in caverns these misfits got the short end of the stick. Only 10, 12 miles away is the storied Ohio Caverns—bigger, richer in crystals and far more lucrative. The parking lot at the Ohio Caverns was packed with cars and tour buses. At Shawnee, only a solitary rusty pick-up was sitting in the small gravel lot.
Ha, looking at that old Chevy truck while getting out of our ’97 Honda Civic, I felt like a 1%er. There were a couple old chiefs playing a board game on the covered porch to the entrance. They didn't answer our hellos as we went past. Inside, a fat old squaw was tending the gift shop. She told us we were the first visitors of the day—it was 4 pm, and they closed at 5. The squaw had to make a phone call to get an injun to come down and give us a tour. While we waited, we browsed the gift shop, a dusty mix of dream catchers, deerskin pouches and assorted bric-a-brac like this:
And this:
And in a forlornly failed attempt to add *tourist value,* the natives had patched together a little *nature annex*—a sad menagerie of stuffed owls, shabby pelts, a tank housing a decrepit turtle with a cricket hopping crazily around it, two small *aquariums* with blue gill barely visible through dirty water, and this angry turkey:
Maybe this bizarre collection had some meaning according to Shawnee lore, but to me it just seemed sad and peculiar.While shuffling around from one oddity to the next, I tried to comprehend the weird faux reservation vibe. It seemed to be made of equal parts shame and pride—schizoid.
The mood brightened considerably when our guide finally showed up, a little injun named Black Land. He gave a tour like he had a group filled with Geronimo, Tecumseh, Cochise and twenty other red heroes, instead of four nobody mud people.Black Land told us the all usual scientific mumbo-jumbo about how the cave and the cave pearls and the stalactites and all that were formed, but he also spun a lot of Shawnee tall tales to keep the kids entertained. Then, when we came to the middle of the cave, where the distance between the walls narrowed to almost nothing, and I asked him if any fat people ever got stuck, Black Land told a tragicomic story about a fat white woman who couldn’t squeeze through the narrow passageway and got left behind her tour group. Black Land said even though it took less than a minute for everyone to realize what had happened, the fat woman became hysterical and started screaming and lumbering back toward the entrance. In the process, as she was flailing her *buffalo butt-sized* arms, she knocked loose a couple of thousands of years old soda straws. “I’m sorry for the fat white lady,” my youngest said. Black Land nodded. “There’s fat in every race,” I said. Black Land nodded.
After the tour, I wandered around outside, careful not to disturb the two old chiefs, who were s
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