MEXICO – Kourtney Korhonen and Jonathan Merchant were busy videotaping everything that was going on at the Mexico Recreation Center Tuesday.
The two and several of their fourth-grade classmates from Meroby Elementary School were creating a film they plan to submit to the Maine International Film Festival, students division, in July.
The subject? The Oxford County bicentennial and the River Valley’s part in the celebration.
About 100 fourth-graders from all schools in Rumford and Mexico, and another 100 local officials, parents and area people turned out for the delivery of the Oxford County charter by horseback.
Sandra Garcia of Woodstock, a member of the Ellis River Riders of Andover, handed the document to MES teacher Rich Plante and fourth-grader Katlyn Burgess. Garcia was one of eight horseback riders who galloped to the recreation center, where scores of people were waiting. The riders were escorted by the Mexico Police Department and the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department.
The arrival of the charter was a long time in coming.
The journey started in late March in Boston, then was carried by foot or by horseback to some of the 27 elementary schools in the county.
When the ride is done, said Oxford County Bicentennial Committee Chairman Larry Glatz, the charter will have traveled 200 miles in the county. The official birthday party and celebration is on June 11 at Paris, the county seat.
But on Thursday, northern Oxford County celebrated.
“This is the biggie,” said Glatz. “No other area has done this.”
The Citizens Advisory Board of Mexico began plans more than a year ago to make the arrival of the charter in their town something special.
Headed up by Louise Arsenault, the committee coordinated participation by each of the fourth grades in Rumford and Mexico, lined up demonstrations of things such as quilting, weaving and spinning, and invited members of the Wabenaki tribes to talk about American Indians’ influence in the area.
Representatives from Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins’ offices read letters of congratulations to the Rumford/Mexico area, and a letter from President Bush was read by CAB member Wesley Raynor.
Students read letters of appreciation for the Indian tribes that once occupied the Oxford County area, something James Francis, historian for the Penobscot Nation, said he enjoyed.
He then led the students in a give-and-take about the “Hollywood” Indian and the real Indian.
“When you knew there would be an Indian here, what did you expect?” he asked. “Different clothing, long hair, feathers?”
Maine Indians lived near rivers and streams, and traveled by foot or in birch bark canoes, not on horses, he told the children. They lived in wigwams, and now they wear regular clothes.
“I left my moccasins in my gym bag,” he said with a smile.
Instead of thinking about the “Hollywood” Indian, he suggested that they think of the landscape of the area, of the rivers and streams, of moose and fish and deer.
“Think of where they were from,” he said.
Plante’s pupils will take the videotape of the day’s activities, edit it, then submit it to the film festival board.
And the charter, which will eventually be delivered to the Oxford County Courthouse in Paris, will be picked up from Plante’s classroom, and taken by horseback to Dixfield, Peru and Canton elementary schools.
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