Sunday was a perfect day to learn about shooting a bow and arrow, or carving flint into arrowheads or pounding corn in to a fine dust.

Parents and children learned about these Cherokee Indian activities when they visited the Northeast Georgia History Center Family Day event. Most of the crafts and demonstrations took place outside amid sunny, warm weather.

“We couldn’t have ordered a better weather day for this,” Julie Carson, the center’s developer of educational programs, said.

About 100 kids and parents made beaded necklaces and clan masks, shot a bow and arrow or blow dart, and viewed Cherokee artifacts and reproductions at the event.

“The whole idea of ‘Cherokee’ is such a great interest around here. It’s always a draw,” Carson said.

In front of the blacksmith cabin, artist Doc Johnson showed how the Cherokee’s ancestors made arrowheads out of flint, a type of dark gray rock.

“This is the hardest art I’ve ever tried to learn,” Johnson said while working the flint into a flat shape in a process called “knapping.”

Nathan Legg, an arrowhead collector, stood against the side of the table and watched as Johnson pressed a sharp deer antler into the flint to make a serrated edge.

“I’m interested in finding (flint) and making arrowheads,” the 9-year-old Gainesville resident said. He asked the artist where he’d found his flint.

Johnson said he had to travel 300 miles down a Kentucky river in a canoe to get it.

“Prehistoric people would travel all over to find their flint,” Johnson said. “That’s a real good question, because flint was the basis of a trade economy.”

While Legg learned about the flint, 11-year-old Emily McGarr of Dahlonega was absorbed in corn-pounding.

“Corn became the sacred food of the Indians,” volunteer Brown Wilder said.

With a thin log carved like a large wooden broom handle, he steadily transformed three cups of corn into a grainy dust inside a stump with a bowl carved into it.

Already equipped with some knowledge of Cherokee culture, McGarr chatted with Wilder about the types of corn and all its uses.

“Can’t you also take the corn husks and make corn husk dolls?” she asked.

“Right,” Wilder said as he continued pounding the corn.

“I wonder how long you could spend grinding it all the way down,” McGarr mused, enjoying an authentic Cherokee meal as Wilder toiled away, “Probably a couple of hours.”

Volunteers Jeff and Gayla Pierce prepared and served Cherokee dishes made with corn and other natural ingredients. One dish was hominy, which is corn soaked in lye and sauteed in onions and bacon fat.

“We discovered that the Cherokees weren’t very healthy eaters,” Gayla Pierce said. “They loved to use bacon fat.”

Other dishes the Cherokees enjoyed and the visitors sampled were corn cakes, bean bread and sweet potatoes fried in butter and molasses.

In the middle of the day a special demonstration of Johnson’s Kentucky Long Rifle drew a crowd of 50 to the history center steps. Johnson said the flint-lock weapon was common in the 1700s, but he built his while living in a dorm as a graduate student at West Georgia College.

“I had permission from the president because he recognized it as an art form,” Johnson said as he put black powder into the barrel of the gun, followed by a cork in a piece of cloth. With the ramrod he packed in everything.

Friends Aaron Dickson of Suwanee and Kevin Smith of Buford, both age 9, watched with tension on the stone steps as Johnson prepared the rifle.

“I think it’s going to make a lot of noise,” Dickson said.

“I’m excited,” Smith said.

Smith’s father, Brad, 39 also watched the demonstration and said he, too, was having a good time at the event.

“It’s fun to learn about the Cherokee. But it’s most fun watching the kids,” he said.

Johnson lifted the rifle and pointed it up. There was a delay, and suddenly a loud sound echoed between the history center’s stone steps and wooden blacksmith cabin.This was quickly followed by cries from a few audience members.

As the two puffs of white smoke dissipated, Johnson asked the audience, “You guys want to do it again?”

“Yeah!” the crowd responded.

Carson said that the history center tries to interpret rather than assume an identity with the Cherokee culture.

“We want to be very respectful of their heritage,” she said.

The history center holds a themed family day each month. In April the museum will highlight the 75th anniversary of the tornado that destroyed downtown Gainesville with a weather-themed family day. Other events surrounding the anniversary of the tornado are also planned.