“What did you like about last week’s story,” asked guest educator Dr. David Clapsaddle during his second Traveling Trunk program with a class of Macksville sixth grade students.
A couple students liked some of the props like an old pair of glasses, spectacles, buffalo fur, arrowhead and other props, but one young student said she liked “the story, the whole story.”
“You know I’ll have to thank you for that,” Clapsaddle said. “Because I wrote that story.”
Clapsaddle and the young student were talking about “Charlie’s Trunk,” the first story in a series of four children’s stories about the old west that make up Clapsaddle’s educational series “Traveling Trunks.”
Traveling Trunks is sponsored in part through Fort Larned’s National Historic Site, five miles west of the town of Larned. Clapsaddle works with the fort as a volunteer historian.
“With school cutbacks like they are, many of these schools are cutting out field trips, Clapsaddle said. “Traveling Trunks is an opportunity to share history from a child’s point of view and in a way they can relate to.”
Each of the four stories are created by Clapsaddle based on research on actual events during the Indian war times.
The “Trunks” are not only what carries the story book and collection of hands-on items Clapsaddle using in his presentations, but they are also the unifying theme of each of the four stories.
Last night I thought I heard a coyote howl, is a short story about a conflict with the Cheyenne and the “bluecoats” at a site near Ft. Larned. The story centers around a young Indian brave, a parfleche, Native American rawhide bag, used for carrying the braves personal items, his traveling trunk.
Clapsaddle is not only a classroom ambassador for Fort Larned, but he and his wife Alice also volunteer at the camp as re-enactors. He is also very involved in the Wet Dry Route chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association, and Zebulon Pike historian giving tours on both subjects in and around Larned.
“I wish I could get him (David Clapsaddle) with my eight grade social studies class,” said Macksville instructor Bruce Loomis. “They are studying a lot of this stuff right now. I’ve been talking about it, but he knows this so much better than I do.”
To contact Clapsaddle for a classroom visit call 620-285-3295. For more information about Fort Larned National Historic Site go online www.nps.gov/fols/index.htm.
