Beware of slippery and unstable stone steps leading into the amphitheater! The grass is safer especially in damp or wet weather. Please do not stray into the owner's yard behind the store.
This cache is on an old Menominee tribal campground where the people would come to hunt and fish and build up their stores for the winter months. It was rediscovered by Chief Roy Oshkosh who left the Keshena Reservation in 1939 to work at the Leathem D. Smith Shipbuilding & Dry Dock in Sturgeon Bay. His grandmother had told him of the site's Door County location "in the middle of the peninsula where a babbling brook flowed through a wooded glen then disappeared into the ground, never to be seen again." After a long search, he discovered this spot at the bottom of the Egg Harbor hill. At the close of World War II, he began to develop the trading post at the old campgrounds and later developed the amphitheater where he and his Owassie Dancers presented weekly powwows featuring Indian customs, lore and dancing. Near the close of every powwow the children were invited down to learn some of the steps and dance with the Owassie Dancers. At the end he would touch each of them on the shoulder with his peace pipe and make them Honorary members of the Menominee Tribe.
Chief Oshkosh was born in 1898 and was descended from a line of chiefs. He was an accomplished man – a skilled wood carver, a lapidarist, a recognized ambassador for Door County, an awarded supporter of the Boy Scouts, and by trade an electrical engineer. He loved man and nature and lived in harmony with both. He died in 1974, the last chief of the Menominee, and is buried in the town cemetery on the other side of the highway.
Oh Great Spirit,
Grant that I may never judge another
Until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.
This has been placed with permission of property owner Coleen Bins of the Oneida Tribe, Turtle Clan.