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[First Pa [42], (1 Lines: 0 ——— 2.0pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [42], (1 5 Jones Beach Soon after her father’s death the opportunity arose that brought Rosebud to Jones Beach. The Long Island State Park Commission was building a network of parkways through private lands on Long Island to provide access to the new Jones Beach State Park, which opened on August 4, 1929. The project was controversial, however, and as a public relations gesture the commission sponsored a series of public lectures during 1929–30, offered without charge, to schools, communities, fraternal organizations, and women’s clubs all over New York but particularly on Long Island. Two speakers were chosen: Rosebud, and the director of the Long Island Bird Sanctuary, who usually appeared together. They spoke about their own specialties, and their presentations proved to be very popular.1 In contrast to Coney Island, Jones Beach banned carnival attractions; the park was designed to focus on the beach itself. The elegant architecture of its central pavilion and two bathhouses was reminiscent of the French Riviera. In 1930 Rosebud was hired at the new park as an instructor at the archery range, the assumption being that, as an Indian, she would be familiar with bows and arrows. She admitted she didn’t know much about target shooting, but she learned quickly. “I realized that most visitors to the beach were archery novices,” she told me, “and I just showed them where to stand and how to aim for the target.” The original bows were made of wood – costly Alex Taylor equipment with a strength of twenty to twentyfive pounds – and were of high quality, but they proved inappropriate for the humid beach conditions. At Rosebud’s suggestion they were replaced with metal alloy bows, which would not warp. The archery range became a center of attention. Local newspapers played jones beach 43 [43], (2) Lines: 43 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [43], (2) up the novelty. One headline proclaimed, “Daughter of Sioux Chieftain Attracts Thousands to State Park Archery Range.” The tone of the article matched the headline: “As straight as the arrows she shoots from her bow, Miss Rosebud Yellow Robe attracts the attention of the thousands of people who each weekend and throughout the week stop to watch the archery range at the Jones Beach State Park, where this comely . . . Indian girl teaches archery.”2 As the newspaper went on to recount, Rosebud had also started storytelling sessions. In her beaded deerskin dress, with her long hair neatly braided, she fascinated children and adults alike who came to hear her tell traditional Indian stories, many of which she had learned from her father. She had also prepared by reading tales of the local Long Island tribes at the American Museum of Natural History the winter before. The story hours proved very popular, and soon Rosebud was presenting them at scheduled times both during the week and on weekends. She divided the children by age into two groups, the younger called Eaglets and the older Little Eagles. Toward the end of the summer of 1932, just before the reopening of school, she staged a ceremony characterized as a “peace council fire” that was attended by a crowd estimated at one thousand people, including more than three hundred children.3 When park administrators, reacting to her popularity, asked Rosebud to develop the Indian program further, she suggested establishing a Plains Indian village for children where she could tell stories, teach crafts, and supervise other activities all day long throughout the summer.4 Continuing publicity during the winter attracted even greater numbers of children to the Jones Beach Indian Village the following summer, when three tipis were placed on a large, grassy lawn. Rosebud designated the largest the Council Tipi, which contained museum cases that exhibited artifacts borrowed from the American Museum of Natural History. The other two tipis would serve as clubhouses for the Eaglets and Little Eagles.5 Rosebud understood that most of the children would know very little about Indians, and she wanted to introduce them to the diversity of tribes in North America. To that end, the exhibits in the Council Tipi were rotated to display at different times material representing a variety of culture areas. Storytelling then included tales from the tribe featured in the current exhibit, though Rosebud commented that stories of the Lakotas and the Eastern Woodlands tribes were the most popular. Mabel Powers, an Iroquois elder whom she met through...

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