Frank Barker likes to start his joint Native American language and snowshoe- making programs with a story about the development of the first pair of snowshoes.

He told the story once again Dec. 22, while devising small snowshoes to get across the idea of how they are made.

Speaking at a Pokagon Band of Potawatomi facility, Barker, a member of the Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Potawatomi, also known as the Gun Lake Band, said a Native American was hunting for food for his hungry family when he tracked a rabbit into a thicket.

The story goes that the trapped but quickthinking rabbit struck up a conversation with the hunter, telling him his family really didn’t want to eat him because he was “all bone and gristle.”

“He said, ‘Oh, no, you don’t want to eat me. What you want is a fat doe.’ But the hunter said, ‘I didn’t get a doe. I got you,”’ Barker said. “Then the rabbit says, ‘I’ll show you how you can get the doe.’

“The rabbit showed the hunter how the rabbit’s foot was all spread out... and how he could mimic him. And that’s how the hunter was able to get the doe.”

While there’s more than a small measure of doubt about the story’s veracity, it makes up for it by paving the way to Barker’s real goal of instructing Native Americans not only about snowshoe-making but their Native tongue.

Pokagon Band chairman John Miller pointed out recently there are only two elders in the Band who speak the language fluently. To preserve it, the Band sponsors programs like the one Dec. 22.

Prior to addressing nearly a dozen Native Americans representing three bands of Potawatomi, Barker, a Dowagiac resident who teaches at Justus Gage Elementary School in Dowagiac, recalled that he “picked up” the language mainly through his contact with his late grandfather.

“When I was a kid, the older people spoke it when they didn’t want the younger people to know what they were saying,” he said.

He said the language, just like English, can be tricky. For example, he said “boon,” which means snow, also means to quit or rest.

The term has its place in the Pokagon Band’s annual Kee-Boon-Mein-Kaa Powwow at St. Patrick’s County Park in South Bend, Ind.

Spelled different ways, the term, translated loosely, equates to “finished picking berries.” A term used more commonly is “boozhoo,” a greeting that resembles the French “bonjour.” Barker said the Potawatomi didn’t have a term for goodbye but they’d often say “bam-ma-mien,” which means “again some time.”

And while it might seem the word for snowshoe would be “boon-meksen,” for snow (boon) and shoe (meksen), Barker said it’s actually “agemek.”

He said the Potawatomi used snowshoes often. The key in their manufacture is size, he said, as each shoe has to be capable of supporting the wearer’s weight.

Using a formula of one square inch per pound, each shoe would have to be 200 square inches to support a 200-pound man, he said.

He said he has used snowshoes and, while they take some getting used to, they make it much easier to get around. Swamp-like areas also are much easier to maneuver wearing snowshoes, he added.