By Town Crier Report

COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF DEER HOLLOW FARM At a previous Ohlone Day event, children participate in a game created by the Ohlone Indians. Ohlone Day acquaints visitors with the Ohlones’ way of life.

A family festival celebrating the Ohlone, the Bay Area’s American Indians, will be held 1-4 p.m., Oct. 9, at Deer Hollow Farm’s replica Ohlone Village. Deer Hollow Farm is located in Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve at the Los Altos-Cupertino border.

The annual Ohlone Day fund-raiser is sponsored by Friends of Deer Hollow Farm, a non-profit organization that supports funding for Deer Hollow Farm’s environmental educational program. The Ohlone, residents of the Bay Area for thousands of years, lived in villages in the area until about 200 years ago.

Ohlone Day festival activities provide a chance to step back in time and see how these American Indians lived.

Activities will include acorn grinding, fire starting, cooking, flint-napping, shell drilling, rope making, music and games.

Since the first Ohlone Day was held in 1996, the festival highlight has been the fire-starting demonstration by Keith Gutierrez, a former longtime lead teacher at Deer Hollow Farm.

Ohlone Day entrance fees are $5 for adults, $3 for children and $10 for families.

All proceeds go for scholarships to enable Bay Area students to attend the Deer Hollow Farm environmental educational program, in existence for more than 25 years.

Funds also go to operate Deer Hollow Farm, operated by the City of Mountain View, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and Santa Clara County. During the 2003-2004 school year, nearly one-third of the 4,300 students attending Deer Hollow classes did so with scholarships from Friends of Deer Hollow Farm.

The replica village, normally not open to the public, was created by volunteers for children who come for field trips to learn about the American Indians. It contains a sweat house, village community center and sleeping and shade shelters.

These structures are made the same way the Ohlone built them using willow branches embedded in the soil and tied together with cordage made from plant and animal materials. Tule grass covers the willow structure.

The replica Ohlone Village sweat house is an underground structure lined with rocks and covered with tule grass that the Ohlone men used in a purification ritual before they hunted.

A larger community structure in the Ohlone Village was known as the round house where the Ohlone gathered for village celebrations.

In the replica village, that structure is used by school children when they play Ohlone musical instruments such as clappers made from the elderberry tree and rattles from deer hooves. Face-painting, an important custom used in celebrations and to distinguish various tribal families when they gathered, is another activity featured in the classes and in the Ohlone Day event.

Ohlone games will be featured at the event, including a hoop and pole game that helped teach the Ohlone boys how to throw spears to catch game. The hoop is made of a flexible willow branch secured in a hoop with hand-made cordage.

Other games will be featured, including stave throwing, nut rolling, and a guessing game involving hidden bones.

To make reservations, call Friends of Deer Hollow Farm at 965-3276.

For more information, logon to the Friends’ Web site: www.svpal.org/~fodhf.