Last Sunday, we spent the day with friends of my husbands at the 41st Annual Feast of the Hunters' Moon. 'The Feast' is held for one weekend each year on the grounds of Fort Ouiatenon Historic Park on a bank of the Wabash.

Thousands of individual participants come together each year to relive the French and Native American history in Indiana and re-enact a harvest trading festival and celebration that features a feast for every visitor's senses and pallet. As you walk among the tents and campfires, you cannot help but smell the wood smoke, hear the report of the muzzle-loader rifles, savor authentic foods and walk in and out of the tents or camp sites of authentically reenacted 1700's crafters and merchants. Blanket traders abound with their goods spread on a blanket on the ground and they will gladly haggle for an hour or so to complete trade either for cash or some other piece of history.

More than 400 booths constructed of tent fabric and wooden poles with rope lashings dot the landscape. Authentic Native American dances and pioneer demonstrations of skills occupy the stages and meadows all day. French canoes once again ply the Wabash. Music created by guitar and dulcimer echo across the festival grounds.

If you've ever yearned to listen to the ring of the blacksmith's anvil or make your own paper or watch as a Cooper builds an old oaken bucket, or saw through a log with a crosscut saw or throw a tomahawk at a target thirty feet away, you can do all those things here.

If you need to buy a powder horn, musket flints, a flaxen undershirt, a sheep or a bear skin, or a three-cornered hat, all -- and more -- are available under canvas canapés for a reasonable price. (Letter of Credit, Visa or MasterCard Accepted).

But what would a 'feast' be without the food. The Feast includes recreations of authentic open-fire-cooked food choices like buffalo stew, roasted chicken or herbal pork chops, navy beans cooked in huge cast iron caldrons, corn bread in a Dutch oven, fried bread, apple butter, fried catfish and -- maybe my favorite new taste -- noodleatables (a combination of fresh chopped vegetables sautéed over open fires then mixed with noodles with butter) -- and non-carbonated root beer in corked blue glass bottles are all available just a few feet away. You can even bring the bottle back for a $1 refill next year, if you want.

The smells of the wood fires and the food cooking are a vital part of the day.

There are compromises to the 21st century, of course. Some of the roofs are covered in plastic sheeting against the possibility of rain. ATMs' are inconspicuously camouflaged at various points on the grounds. Portalets take the place of latrines dug in the soil. Modern campers are headquarters for the Sheriff's department and emergency services. But all in all, you can ignore those little compromises and walk amazingly through French owned pioneer Indiana again for a few hours reveling in all the sights, smells and the commitment to accuracy of its costumed participants.

A most memorable day heartily recommended to the history buff or just anyone who enjoys a day away from the bustle of our 21st century lives.

Here's a history of Fort Quiatenon.

Fort Ouiatenon (pronounced Wee'-a-ta-non) was the first fortified European settlement in what is now called Indiana It was a French trading post at the joining of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers situated approximately three miles southwest of modern-day West Lafayette. The name 'Ouiatenon' is a French rendering of the name in the Wea language, waayaahtanonki, meaning 'place of the whirlpool'.

In 1717, Ensign François Picote de Beletre arrived at the mouth of the Tippecanoe and Wabash with four soldiers, three men, a blacksmith and supplies to trade with the nearby Wea people, an Algonquian-speaking nation closely related to the Miami people. They built a stockade on the Wabash, eighteen miles below the mouth of the Tippecanoe. The French settled on the north bank, with Wea villages on the south bank.

Traders immediately began to bring a steady flow of goods to the new town. Soon officials in Louisiana sent more men to help Vincennes to hold the Wabash River. At its peak level of activity during the mid-18th century Fort Ouiatenon was home to over 2,000 residents.

After the surrender of the French to the British in September of 1760 at the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the British dispatched troops to occupy Ouiatenon. A contingent of British soldiers arrived in 1761, capturing and occupied the fort.

On June 1, 1763, during Pontiac's War, the Wea, Kickapoo and Mascouten peoples captured Ouiatenon. They surprised the British and his men and captured Fort Ouiatenon without firing a shot. Seven similar posts were also captured in the widespread Indian uprising against the British presence.

The British made little use of Fort Ouiatenon after the French and Indian War; it was never garrisoned. As late as 1778, Ouiatenon was a staging ground for war parties fighting on behalf of the British government.

A contingent of 40 American troops arrived in 1778 to secure the fort for the rebelling Americans and was successful in holding it for a very short time. In 1779, a British company arrived and took the fort back by December. Shortly after the Americans captured Vincennes in 1779, a Captain I. Shelby arrived in Ouiatenon and received promises of cooperation from the Wea. During the 1780s, however, local Indian tribes used it as a base of operations to stage raids against American settlers pushing westward. Consequently President George Washington ordered the fort to be destroyed in 1791. What stands there today is a blockhouse build as a restoration in the British fashion.