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mainewildrose posted an update Tuesday, Sep 10, 2013, 11:39am EDT, 10 years, 8 months ago
I see the post by Shelly wondering if her warm weather is Indian Summer, so thought I would write a bit about the meaning of the term and where it came from.
First of all, it is still SUMMER !.. And will be until Sept. 22. The most common method of determining when Indian Summer occurs is that there has to be a killing frost first, and the atmosphere has to be a bit hazy. There are many stories as to how this kind of weather got the name.. Indian Summer. This is the story I learned growing up.
When early settlers encountered this kind of weather, ( not common in Europe ) they also noted that there was an abundance of Natives in the area at that time. The settlers were already battened down in their cabins for the winter, but the area seemed to have an abundance of Natives roaming around the woods. The Natives along the eastern shore raised crops of beans, corn, squash, etc. and after the first cold weather came along, the crops were harvested and stored for winter eating. The same with hunting. Natives hunted all the time, but increased their hunting and dried and stored the meat for the winter. After all was prepared and ready for the winter, along came that period of warm weather. And the various villages of the tribes came together at a designated village for days of feasting and games and story telling...knowing that once the heavy snows and bitter cold came along, it would be months before they would be able to visit and see each other. The settlers were baffled by this behavior having never known this type of weather phenomenon and basically thought that the Natives were acting as if it were still summer !
That is the story I learned as I grew up in NE and it does make sense... That really was the behavior and routines of the Native tribes at that time of year along the Northeast coast. And not to take anything away from the story of the First Thanksgiving, but the feast does mirror the Natives tradition. They came to the pilgrims feast.. brought food ( harvested corn and squash, etc. and meat from hunting) and stayed and played games and visited with the Pilgrims. Original writings and accounts of that “First Thanksgiving” state that the feast lasted several days. To the Natives, the settlers were just doing what they had been doing forever. Celebrating the harvest and visiting and feasting in preparation for the coming winter.
I just did a Google search of the Term Indian Summer and came up with this definition and story. Not quite the same as the one I grew up knowing, but there is a similarity.
http://www.almanac.com/content/indian-summer-what-why-and-when
Sue