Post 521 - May 30, 2023
Last night, I slept in a cement teepee. It was part of Wigwam Village No. 2 in Cave City, Kentucky. Cave City is to Mammoth Cave National Park what Gatlinburg, TN is to the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s all fantastically tacky souvenir stores, dubious attractions, and places to eat that run from the expected national chains to local places that have been there for decades and look it.
Wigwam Village No. 2 was built in 1937. I had guessed 1936 when the owner asked me to guess as he was checking me in. It consists of a big central teepee that was once a café and the place’s reception and fifteen individual teepees that serve as the rooms. They are arranged in a wide circle with an open common area in the middle.
The owners, a couple from Larchmont, NY, discovered the property during the pandemic and decided to buy it. It was love at first sight. Within a very short time, they’d quit their jobs and started renovating the place.
“We did wonder about the cultural-appropriation aspect,” the owner said, “but we figured that its mimetic nature coupled with its history kind of balanced it out.” Mimetic architecture is what it sounds like. It is building something that mimics something else. A donut store in the shape of a donut is a perfect example.
In the thirties, as more and more people got their own cars, tourism surged. Kitschy places sprung up everywhere, most notably on the fabled Route 66. A man named Frank Redford got a patent on the cement and steel design of his teepees and built several around the country including two on Route 66. His aim was to create a completely immersive environment to entice travelers to stay. The rooms were decorated with Navajo rugs, the furniture was suggestive of Western culture and even the menus in the restaurant were in the shape of teepees. Redford named his creation Wigwam Village only because he didn’t like the sound of Teepee Village.
No tribal people who lived in Kentucky ever lived in teepees. Teepees were used by nomadic people further west on the Great Plains. They were designed to be portable. There were some who had lived in wigwam-like houses in the Kentucky area, but mostly they were built in the Northeast where people had settled more permanently. Redford wasn’t setting out to recreate an actual culture, he was just inspired by it. He did hire some Native Americans to work at the Village, though, to give it an air of authenticity. Of course, when the motel opened, Native Americans would probably not have been allowed to stay there. Neither would African Americans or Jewish people
.With over 400 miles of passages, Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest cave system. There has been a human presence in them for thousands of years which ended about two millennia ago. Starting before the War of 1812, the caves became the main source of saltpeter, a major component of gunpowder. Like most all soul-crushing work in that era, the back-breaking effort to get it out was done by enslaved Africans.
I took a tour of the cave last night by lanternlight. Rather than seeing the caves under incandescent bulbs, we were given oil-burning lanterns to carry so we could experience the trip as visitors did a hundred years ago. White visitors, of course. During her talk, our guide brought up Francis Scott Key’s The Star-Spangled Banner. Key wrote the words after watching the attack by the British on Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. The guide said that she liked to think that the American retaliatory explosions were made possible by Mammoth Cave’s saltpeter so that every time the song is sung, it does the cave proud. Key, a pro-slavery white supremacist, wrote some additional verses to what we commonly sing that should probably make us reconsider that unsingable song as our national anthem. I don’t know about feelings of pride, but perhaps when we hear that tune it should make us think a bit
After the war in 1838, seeing the tourist potential in the area, a man bought Mammoth Cave and brought in enslaved men to act as guides. Ownership of both the real estate and the people working there, changed hands as time went on. Thousands of people, using the black soot from candles made from animal fat, left their names on the white gypsum ceiling.
Time passed.
In 1925, a cave explorer named Floyd Collins got trapped underground trying to open a new entrance. His plight ignited the imagination of the entire country and made him famous. Just as that fame had almost extinguished, a musical was written about him, keeping his name and his story alive for another generation.
Walking through the cave in relative darkness with the heat from the lantern flame warming my hand and the shadows of the people I was walking with playing along the rough stone walls, I could almost imagine what it must have been like a century ago walking through there a century ago. We all tried to take pictures in the relative darkness with our smartphones. The three young Chinese people in the group who didn’t understand English never stopped talking until a Black lady shushed them. Almost being the operative word.
Breakfast, this morning, was in a local place called the Farmwald Restaurant and Bakery. The area is heavily Amish, and this was an Amish-run place. The Amish settled in the area in the late 1700s. Like everyone else’s belief structures, Amish people pick and choose which traditions they are going to follow and which they are going to ignore. Strictly speaking, they don’t use any technology that was developed after they arrived. They choose to dress in the style of clothing their ancestors wore when they made the trek over the Cumberland Gap into the fertile Bluegrass regions of what would become the state of Kentucky. Practically, however, that hasn’t been quite as simple a system to follow as you might think.
As in any other religion, there are those who adhere more strictly to certain tenets and those who stray a bit. I followed behind a horse and buggy for a while that had electric safety lights on it to protect it from cars. At the restaurant this morning, while the staff were dressed in recognizably Amish attire, I still tapped my credit card on an electronic pad, my breakfast came in Styrofoam containers, and the coffee came out of a contemporary coffee maker.
Why dress as if you’re in the 1700s but do business with all the trappings and convenient technology of 2023? The answer to that is none of my business. Clearly the people working there have accepted some parts of contemporary life while eschewing others.
The new owners of Wigwam Village No. 2 are trying their best to rationalize being in operation in 2023. Something about the whole setup drew them in. I get it. It was the same thing that inspired me to stay there. As soon as I started in on TripAdvisor to look for a place to stay, that’s the one that jumped out. Of course, that is where I was going to stay. It’s a slice of roadside Americana.
I’m white and male. Traveling Route 66 is part of what my white relatives were allowed to do. There’s a nostalgic pull for me in all that kitschy Americana. Would my Native American friends want to stay in a cement teepee in Cave City, Kentucky?
These days, anybody can stay at Wigwam Village No. 2. There are no restrictions. Some people of color alive today and in the position to take day trips to Mammoth Cave National Park have experienced being denied entrance to a place like Wigwam Village No. 2. I would venture, however, that all their parents have at one time or another. I have no doubt that even today people have showed up at places where, even though they were allowed to be there, it was clear from the reactions of everybody there that they weren’t welcome.
My sexual orientation stays strictly under wraps in most rural places I visit. I can usually hide it behind my whiteness. Not everyone can do that. I am extremely careful about using phrases like, “My husband.” Instead, I try to be personable and friendly and do my damnedest to avoid any mention of politics. Unlike many places I’ve been recently, the good people of Kentucky don’t really make a show of their political beliefs. I drove around a lot, and I was looking. Andy Beshear is their Democratic Governor. Not a lot of signs, but there are a lot of American flags.
In my experience, and I am speaking generally, the people who feel the need to advertise their “Americanness” by flying a flag are usually the people least in tune with what the country is meant to stand for. The Amish might be cherry-picking their beliefs to run a restaurant for outsiders, but the Christian Evangelical Right is doing the same thing by throwing their support behind a man that is the living embodiment of almost all the sins forbidden by the Ten Commandments. People tend to defy easy characterization. We are rarely consistent.
Should I have stayed in a cement teepee at Wigwam Village No. 2? Is there a place for it in 2023? Its history, indeed, the history of the entire area, is clouded with injustice. In the evenings, though, the owner lights a fire in the center of the communal area between the units. It’s for everyone who’s staying there to gather around. It’s not 1812 and it’s not 1937, everyone is welcome to come together and sit in warmth and comfort. Surely that means something
As for the structures themselves? They were inspired by Native American dwellings, but they aren’t Native American dwellings. Frank Lloyd Wright was inspired by Japanese designs and borrowed much from their culture. He didn’t build Japanese houses.
Frank Redford counted on two things when he designed his Village: people’s fascination with Native American life and our universal need to come together. There is an old sign, a very old sign, leaning against the reception building depicting a beaming cartoon Indian welcoming guests to Wigwam Village No. 2. It has dried dirt splattered up against it from several seasons of rainstorms. Some old yard tools are stacked in front of it. The current sign posted out on the road being used to lure people in doesn’t have anything but writing on it. It says, “Sleep outside the box!”
By the way, the road running past the buildings is called Old Dixie Highway. It might be time to think about a new name for that. I don’t think that the road should be shut down, it should just be given something else for us all to call it. It’s a perfectly good road.
Sitting around the fire with a ring of cement teepees at our backs should make us think. And talk. At the end of the night, we may not all agree on much of anything, but we can all share the space. We should also accept that a night of chat around a campfire may not leave us with any definitive answers.
Just a word of advice for anyone who stays there. Be careful in the tiny bathrooms. Us tall folk need keep an eye on the sloped walls lest we bang our heads. Sleeping outside the box means we must take a little extra care.
In the morning, I would wholeheartedly recommend the Farmwald Restaurant and Bakery. I have questions, but the food was delicious.
Thanks for taking me along on your trip and for the history and thoughtful insights. You’ve enriched my day.