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A Commencement Picnic
NSTEAD of giving the usual banquet and reception to the seniors, the juniors in a small school might well plan an outdoor picnic and supper. It has the possibility of being jollier than the regulation affair, and is certainly less expensive.
Individual invitations may be sent out to the senior class - quite unusual and mysterious invitations - for each one may consist of a colored feather quill with a message written on a slip of paper wrapped about the end. This reads:
Greetings from the Tribe of Twenteequas To the Tribe of Nyneteenwas:
Will the Tribe of Nyneteenwas Smoke the pipe of friendship Round the camp-fire of the Twenteequas On the sixteenth day of the Moon of Roses One hour before waysawi (sunset)?
One of the Twenteequas will act as your guide. [68] As soon as the two classes have gathered at the picnic ground, the juniors, already decked in head bands of ribbon in their own class colors, may present the seniors with similar ribbons. The boys may have feathers stuck in theirs - if they don't object to head bands.
The chief of the Twenteequas may announce the first stunt as a Hunt for Game, and all must hunt in pairs, matching partners by means of selecting, blindfolded, colored beads from a basket. Pasteboard bows and arrows are supplied, and everyone is told to return at the summons of a beaten tomtom.
The couples then scatter into the surrounding woods, and hunt for animal crackers which have previously been hidden by a committee of juniors.
The prize for the couple getting the most game might be an animal toy.
Next, volunteers to "Run the Gauntlet" may be called for. The others form in two parallel lines facing each other, armed with [69] pieces of chalk. The victims must run down between the lines to a goal at the end, while the cruel Indians on each side reach out to put a chalk mark on them. The victim who gets the least chalk marks is permitted to select five of his tormentors to perform a series of stunts, previously planned by the junior entertainment committee.
Appropriate ones are these: 1. Give an Indian war whoop. 2. Do an Indian war dance. 3. Give Indian names to five people here. 4. Make a speech in sign language. 5. Tell an Indian story.
Supper should be eaten around a big campfire, and should consist of coffee cooked over the fire, nut-bread sandwiches, cold chicken and potato chips, and chocolate ice-cream under individual miniature tepees of brown paper.
Paint on each tepee in black some symbol apparently mysterious but in reality characteristic of the owner. Thus, a girl with a beautiful voice and a talent for singing may have a quaint bird on hers; an athlete, a pair [70] of Indian clubs; a domestic science girl, a bowl and spoon or a kettle, and so on.
Redskins and Palefaces complete the menu, Palefaces being cookies with white icing and features marked in candies, and Redskins being apples.
Toasting marshmallows over the fire and singing school ditties and old favorites will end this unique party delightfully. [71]
A plan for a junior class to entertain the senior class out of doors, and it cannot be used as it stands. The food is simple and reproducible; the frame built round it is an extended impersonation of Native Americans, from the invitation verse through to the games.
- The themeThe invitations, the head bands and feathers, the war whoops and war dances, the running of the gauntlet, the cookies called Palefaces and the apples called Redskins are all caricature, and the stunt list asks the guests to perform it. None of it should be reproduced. What survives once it is detached is the shape of the evening: a woodland supper, a hunt in pairs, a campfire, and a favour marked for each guest.
- CommencementThe occasion is graduation. What the picnic replaces is a formal banquet and reception given by the junior class to the seniors, and part of the author’s argument for the change is that it costs less.
- The individual coverStrip the theme away and the one genuinely good idea is the personal emblem. Each guest’s ice cream arrives under a paper cover painted with a symbol of what that person is known for: a bird for a singer, a bowl and spoon for the domestic science girl. A plain cone or a folded card does the same work.
- Ice cream in a fieldThe plan does not say how the ice cream reached the picnic ground, which is the hardest part of it. Carrying frozen ice cream to an outdoor supper without power meant ice, salt and a packed pail. A cooler solves it now, but it still has to be planned for, and the page leaves it out altogether.
- Supper that travelsNut-bread sandwiches, cold chicken, potato chips, coffee made on the fire. Every item either keeps at air temperature or is cooked on the spot, which is the right instinct for food carried to a field. The cold chicken is the one thing that needs care in warm weather.
- Food hidden in woodlandAnimal crackers scattered through the woods for the hunt will not all be found, and what is left is food lying in a wood. Wrap them, or use tokens that can be counted back in at the end.
The two tribe names in the invitation are the two class years written in a code any reader at the time would have cracked at a glance: the Twenteequas are the juniors, the Nyneteenwas the seniors, and the Moon of Roses is June. What the page records is a school custom — one class obliged to entertain the class above it — and a party book supplying a cheaper and jollier alternative to the banquet the custom usually demanded. Playing Indian was a staple of the period’s party books, school entertainments and summer camps, and the plan assumes without a word of explanation that its readers knew the entire vocabulary of it, from the tomtom to the gauntlet. It also shows a hostess expected to make things with her hands: every invitation is a coloured quill with a verse wrapped round the end, and the ribbons, head bands, bows, arrows and painted paper covers were all cut and painted by a committee drawn from the junior class.