When Perry Webster sewed beads onto his moccasins last October, he imagined his ancestors doing the same thing more than 100 years ago.
[Perry Webster, Omaha Nation student] Because back then the Omaha men always wore these kind and the men always had the design along the hangover.
[Denine Parker, Omaha Nation teacher] It's just logical that they had to prepare to go a long distance on foot-- some of them on foot walking. So they would have prepared new moccasins for themselves in a way to prepare for the buffalo hunt.
Students of the Omaha Nation school spent weeks preparing for their buffalo hunt. Topics related to the hunt and their heritage were woven into their classwork. The P.E. class learned a traditional game called Shinny. It's a game that might have been played while the tribe was on a hunt. Shantel Webster explained that it was the consae or wind plan that started the game.
[Shantel Webster, Omaha Nation student] The ball was made from buffalo hide and like usually sometimes I heard it was made from a bladder. Then they would sew on the side of it and it would be about this size.
Educator and historian John Mangan taught about the Omaha's clan system and the role each clan played in the hunt. (Speaking native)... Among the students, there was a mixture of anticipation and reluctance.
[Shantel] I would really like to know more about my ancestors, my other side. And it's been pretty fun doing all the work that we have been doing.
[Angelina Tamayo, Omaha Nation student] At first I thought it was a waste of time but after they started assigning assignments and papers, I found out a lot more than I knew before so now I can't wait to go.
And so the buffalo hunt of 1999 began with a five-mile hike to the first campsite of the 1876 hunt. More than 100 middle and high school students were joined by parents, teachers, and tribal elders. Grade school children walked part of the way. Others like Marcella Clark hiked all five miles even though she couldn't go on the rest of the trip. Ms. Clark is on the school board and two of her sons went on the trip but she has another connection to the hunt. Her great grandfather was a young scout on the hunt of 1876. Francis Laflesch later told a researcher about the hunt. His account made this recreation of the journey possible.
[Marcella Clark] Well, I think it's a really wonderful experience for my sons that are going and we talked about it last night while they were getting ready and what we talked about was think about as you are walking on this trail here that your ancestors walked this same trail and more importantly, their great-great grandfather, Francis Laflesch, was the one who went ahead and found all these campsites for them to stop at and to think about the hardship and all the things that they had to go through. Finding out who they are, I think is really important for their culture because if they don't know who they are, they're going to look at the first thing they see and, you know, that's the MTV videos and the baggy clothes and even the talk and the dress. They need to find out who they are.
Now we don't know exactly where the first campsite was.
Mark Awakuni-Swetland is an anthropologist and an adopted member of the Omaha tribe. He discovered the story of the 1876 hunt and researched the route taken on that journey.
[Mark Awakuni-Swetland] So you can think about what your relatives went through every day for 34 camps until they got to the buffalo herd. For the students this is a good beginning place. It's away from Macy. They have had to walk the five and a half miles to get here putting them kind of in the frame of mind of gosh, maybe some of my ancestors also had to walk.
From here, the travelers took buses. The pace picked up as they moved on to more campsites. The first night these modern buffalo hunters made camp at Grand Island Senior High. Outside Mark Awakuni-Swetland and John Mangan set up the tepee that Mark and his family slept in. It's something the Omaha students only see on special occasions.
[Awakuni-Swetland] Part of why we're bringing this along and using it is to show the kids well, yeah it was used as a utility object. It has a sacred function but it also has a practical function.
By the third day the travelers were weary. They made it all the way from Macy to Franklin. This was already far beyond where their ancestors usually found buffalo. But in 1876 the buffalo had already been pushed further away.
[Awakuni-Swetland] This is one of those decision camps. You've got to decide do we keep going upstream hoping to find buffalo still on the north side of the Republican or do we decide to cross the river which is no easy thing to do-- there was no bridge there at that time-- and go south.
Some on this trip would have headed home if they had the choice. Others were learning the lessons.
[Shantel] A bunch of stuff about our past is very educational. It's a very educational experience for me.
But the lessens of the past aren't always important for a generation saturated by the MTV culture. As the attention of the students drifted, the message of the adults intensified. This journey was as much about the future as the past.
[Adrian Saunsoci, Omaha Nation teacher] Getting them to understand who they are and where they come from and to be proud of that.
As they gathered in a circle by the shore of a Kansas lake, Elsie Harlan, a tribal elder, spoke out.
[Elsie Harlan] But you know what, the time is here. If you are going to save your tradition and your culture, it's left up to your generation. You have to start taking life seriously and think about what you are going to do not for yourself but for your tribe if you want it to survive.
[Saunsoci] I think they're starting to catch on and feeling some of the importance as to why we're doing this. Maybe it's not so much visible but we can't take credit away from them. After all they are students and it is a whole learning process.
By day four the end of the journey was in sight. They were near Scott City, Kansas near the site where in 1876 their ancestors found and killed the last buffalo they would claim as a tribe.
[Jo Meyer, Omaha Nation school] If we had been here 123 years ago, we would have been walking in search of buffalo and the Wava would have been leading in front with the Wushabi. And we have the Wushabi and other staff that we will use to lead the group.
They crossed the pasture of a buffalo ranch but the west Kansas landscape probably isn't much different than it was 100 years ago.
[Tamayo] After I see a buffalo up close then I will be happy and can go home and say it was really worth the trip.
As she walked, Angelina Tamayo thought of her ancestors and how they might have felt when they found buffalo.
[Tamayo] I think it would have made them feel very, very happy and grateful to the creator for giving them the buffalo meat that they need.
After they walked for a while, something unexpected happened. One of the students noticed a buffalo skull on the ground.
[Saunsoci] That's a good sign for all of us because we're going to find what we're looking for. The appropriate thing to do when we come across such a good sign is again to pray.
[Kennard Parker, Omaha Nation school] Today I was carrying this up here, I was praying in my own mind, in my own way thanking our relatives up there, our spirit relatives who once had been here many years before us. It brought a lump into my throat.
Then they saw them grazing in a little canyon. A small herd of buffalo. Buffalo are no longer the source of life's necessities for the Omaha people but they are a powerful symbol.
[Denine Parker] Education is your buffalo today. You need to prepare yourselves, go to school. Your tools are the books. Your tools are the pencils. Learn it really well so you can hunt that education and get it because that's what we're going to need to survive as a people.
[Awakuni-Swetland] I think each one of you when you have a chance to sit down by yourself and reflect, I think you are going to come to understand that you found something that you had forgotten.
[Michael Parker, Omaha Nation student] When I was listening the songs they were singing, it made me think of what my grandpa Francis Laflesch went through.
When we spoke with Michael Parker's mother on the first day of the journey, she told us how she hoped her sons would make a connection with their ancestors.
[Michael] It made me feel better about who I am as an Omaha person, Omaha native and I don't know, it just makes you feel good when you know that your people did all this.
In 1876 the Omaha tribe hunted buffalo to survive. In its own way, the 1999 version of the buffalo hunt may have served the same purpose.
[Denine Parker] The whole reason that we wanted to come on this buffalo hunt was to show them, you know, again, that they come from real strong ancestors and today their buffalo is education and they have to try hard and look at those books and pencils in school as tools to get that education that they need. They can get that education and it's going to provide for their families in the generations to come.
Reporting for Statewide, I'm Brad Penner.

Captioning by Nebraska Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .