This past weekend, for the first time ever, I was able to check out an event I wrote up for The Week in Preview that was not happening in my town. My family and I drove out to Peterborough for Polish Heritage Day at the Mariposa Museum and Cultural Center. The verdict: Why didn't I check this place out sooner? 

The event was scheduled from noon to 4 p.m. In true my-family-in-a-nutshell style, we got there around 3 o'clock and were the last non-performers/employees out of the building. Please do not attempt this with your family - we are trained professionals, and I am not kidding. We close malls and bookstores on a regular basis and once closed the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

When you walk into the Mariposa Museum, you find yourself in their lovely, lovely giftshop. They sell all kinds of multicultural trinkets and handcrafted items, and you could easily spend a half-hour browsing, which I would've done had we not discovered the egg painting demonstration in the next room.

We watched the demonstration and marveled at the finished products while my mother chatted with the artist/reenactor about the Polish workers who had formed a big chunk of the labor force for the Jamestown colony.

Yup, you read that correctly. Jamestown wasn't a completely English settlement - there were also some Polish immigrants in there. Once slavery came into practice and the Polish could no longer get a decent wage, some of them moved in with the native population and the rest went up to the Ohio river valley.

The artist/reenactor told us an anecdote about a Polish boy who fell off his family's wagon while they were driving through the woods. He cried out in Polish for his family to stop. Upon hearing this, a Native American came out of the woods and said, in perfect Polish, "You speak Polish?" History does not record which of them was more surprised.

We also made the acquaintance of a peddler/reenactor. When this particular group of reenactors (the Czarniecki Division) goes to an event, he travels with them and plays the role of a merchant returning from the Far East with all kinds of exotic jewelry and weapons to sell and sells to reenactors as well as to people attending the events. I didn't know retail offered those kinds of opportunities. Very cool.    

We scavenged the food table (which, sadly, had been totally decimated by the time we arrived) and made ourselves little sandwiches with rye bread, kielbasa and mustard before heading upstairs to catch the tail end of the main cultural talk/demonstration.

The main reason I wanted to go to this event was to see the hussar armor up close and personal. In Poland, hussars are the elite cavalry who have wings on the back of their armor. Like so.

Here's a recreation of the armor.

There was good turnout for the event, but it wasn't crowded, so I got to get my picture taken with the armor and one of the reenactors, whom I was also able to corral for a couple of questions.

In summary, the feathers on the wings are eagle feathers because the eagle is the national symbol of Poland. Ostrich feathers were also used on occasion. The feathers were not dyed, but the horses frequently were.

"They dyed their horses?"

"Yup."

"So you could ride into battle on a blue horse?"

"Well, usually they'd be red or white, since those are the Polish colors."

"Ohh. Cool."

Based on the research I had done, I had understood the wings to have two purposes. First, when the hussars charged into battle, the air moving through the feathers made an eerie buzzing sound, which unsettled their opponents and panicked their horses. The hussars' horses were, naturally, used to the sound.

Second, some of Poland's enemies used lassos to try and pull soldiers off their horses. The wings made it harder for them to do that.

According to one of the younger reenactors, whose father makes hussar armor, neither of those reasons really hold a lot of water. In his experience, the buzzing sound comes from the pendants hanging from the end of the lance, not from the wings.

The exact reason for the wings is still shrouded in mystery, but it's still very cool. I am quite pleased to be able to take away something more from my heritage than Polish jokes and really good sausage.

If you're interested in getting hussar armor of your own, check out Polish Hussar Supply Plus in Dublin. They crafted the armor and arms that were on display at Polish Heritage Day.

After the lecture wrapped up and we finished our picture taking (we missed the arms and armor demonstration, consarn it all), we poked around the museum itself for a while.

Each world culture has its own display case full of dolls in traditional clothing and art objects, with related musical instruments and costumes nearby that you can play and try on. It's less like visiting a museum and more like going to visit your eccentric globe-trotting grandma who lets you play with some of the less breakable stuff. You could easily spend an afternoon just looking around.

Not content to just close the museum, we then went over to the Renaissance Room (conveniently located in the next plaza over) and closed that, too. 

Once the weather gets nicer, we're planning to spend a whole day up in Peterborough, just wandering around. Providing we make it out of the house early enough to do so, that is.