In the 1700s, tribes with names such as Seneca, Shawnee, Abenaki, Oneida, Huron and Cherokee lived in Southwestern Pennsylvania. This weekend, visitors to Friendship Hill, in New Geneva, Fayette County, will be able to see how they lived during a special living history program.

The "historic lifeways demonstrations" will include games, fire-starting techniques, tanning, quilling, cooking, drumming, native plant usages, finger weaving, bone jewelry, cord and arrow making, use of historic weapons and interpreting pictographs.

On Saturday only, the Oneida Nation -- First Allies of New York will demonstrate the loading and firing of 18th-century cannons.

"One of the reasons we're having this event is because visitors usually only understand American Indian culture from the aspect of conflict and warfare," said Mary Ellen Snyder, site manager. "However, over the course of many years, American Indians and White settlers traded with and learned from one another."

Friendship Hill is an apt location to stage the two-day event because many American Indians were still living in the region when Albert Gallatin built his house as a residence for his family in the early 1800s. After witnessing the decline of their cultures in the mid-1800s, Gallatin founded the American Ethnological Society in 1842, partly as a way of studying and recording information about these waning societies.

At the weekend event demonstrators dressed in authentic 18th-century style will set up a variety of traditional shelters on the north lawn of the Gallatin House, including mat-covered wigwams.

"Most of the demonstrators have a Native American background and all are committed to presenting accurate and culturally sensitive representations of the Eastern Woodlands American Indian Nations," Ms. Snyder said.

Kinorea Tigri, of Chippewa, Beaver County, grew up in Cherokee, N,C., where she learned "the old ways of doing things" from her grandmother, mother and elderly aunts.

"I'll focus on the female culture of the American Indians because a lot is already known about the masculine side," she said.

Ms. Tigri's demonstrations will include pottery making, native cooking and farming techniques like "Three Sister Gardening," which included companion planting of corn, beans and squash.

"All three vegetables helped one another," she said. "The squash provided shade, moisture retention and weed control. The beans added nitrogen to the soil, and the corn served as props for the beans."

Portraying a "well-to-do" native during the French and Indian War, Ms. Tigri will show how a deer shoulder blade could be used as a spatula and how deer antlers could be used for lifting hot coals from a fire, as a garden rake or as a meat fork.

"I'll try to have the audience think about what tools the Indians had and compare them to what they traded for with the White settlers," she said.

On Saturday, twelve Oneida re-enactors from New York will fire off cannons and other artillery and talk about their culture and traditions, especially the game of lacrosse. During the American Revolution, when the Oneida warriors were off fighting the British, George Washington, with the approval of Congress, gave cannons to the Oneidas as a way to defend their villages.

During the event, visitors will also be able to tour the 10 rooms of Gallatin's historic house, where a display of Robert E. Lee's furniture is currently on exhibit. They will also be able to hike on any of the 10 miles of trails that traverse the property and the banks of the Monongahela River and tour two on-site cemeteries.

"The program hopes to dispel misconceptions about the American Indians who lived here, and the demonstrators will present history from the diverse points of view of their native cultures," Ms. Snyder said.

The free event will be held, rain or shine, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more, call 724-725-9190.