November and December are gift-buying months for many people in the United States, which often leads to a shortage of some of the year’s must-haves. The day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday, is a popular day for shopping the sales with hordes of crowds hitting America’s malls. Since some items are limited in number and are only on sale during certain times of the day, people line up early in the morning, risking frostbite (at least in North Dakota) to guarantee they will get the product at the discount price. Here at the State Historical Society, we’ve been lucky over the years to snag a few of these coveted items for the museum collection.

In the early 1980s, the most desired toy was a Cabbage Patch Kids doll. By the end of 1983, nearly 3 million Cabbage Patch Kids had been sold. Cabbage Patch Kids were flying off the shelves, and some were being sold on the black market at a highly inflated price.

This Cabbage Patch Kid was purchased from Target by the State Historical Society of North Dakota in 1985. The name on her birth certificate is Oriane Adelaide. No staff members were harmed in the procurement of this doll. SHSND 1985.85.1

Beanie Babies were one of the most popular collectibles of the 1990s. Since 1994, collectors have been on the hunt for the tiny creatures, with some more collectible and desirable than others. In 1997, McDonald’s had a line of Beanie Babies created for their Happy Meal toys. They sold 100 million Teenie Beanies within two weeks.

This purple platypus Teenie Beanie appeared in kids’ Happy Meals during the late 1990s. SHSND 2019.43.1

Commemorative Princess Diana Beanie Baby bear released in the months after her 1997 death. SHSND 2019.43.4

The donor of the Beanie Babies, Becky King, and her daughter started collecting them in 1994, eventually amassing more than 500. All were kept with their Ty tags intact, and some even came with plastic tag protectors and in plexiglass protective boxes.

Toys are not the only items in the Black Friday danger zone. Electronics often go on super sale, causing people to throw elbows in the quest to check off their shopping lists. One such item was the fourth generation iPod of 2004. Apple sold 4.5 million iPods during the holiday season that year.

Fifth-generation iPod from 2005 featuring a colored screen and a larger memory than its predecessor. You can all but hear the sounds of Fall Out Boy as you gaze upon it. SHSND 2018.40.1

The Nintendo Wii was released in November 2006 and sold over 600,000 consoles in its first week on the market. Due to its immense popularity, the Wii was soon hard to come by in many markets. The Wii is a different kind of video game option because the controller is a hand-held remote with motion-sensing controls that have gesture recognition. Might one of the contributors to this blog post have accidentally flung a controller across the living room during a particularly intense game of Wii Tennis? You’ll never know.

The Nintendo Wii in the state museum collection was a Christmas gift to our donor from herself and her husband in 2008. She liked to play the games because she could get a workout and have fun at the same time. SHSND 2018.9.10

The most popular must-buy gifts each year are usually the iconic toy or cutting-edge electronic item of the moment. Our collections are missing some of these. If you have any of the following, please consider donating them to the State Historical Society. In particular, we would like to add objects with stories (i.e., something loved and used by its owner) to our collection such as Teddy Ruxpin, Transformers, Nintendo NES, Game Boy, Castle Grayskull from “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,” Tickle Me Elmo, Furby (the non-haunted version, please), a Razor scooter, a television with built-in VCR, a Tamagotchi virtual pet, an Instant Pot, an air fryer, and a flatscreen TV. You can offer items to our collections by filling out the donation questionnaire online here.

We hope you had a safe, trample-free Black Friday!

During the 2021 legislative session, management of the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center and Fort Mandan in Washburn transferred from the North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department to the State Historical Society. To grasp the full extent of what the agency had just obtained, we needed to perform a complete inventory of the sites’ collections. With laptops, cameras, and steely resolve in tow, our collections staff descended on the Interpretive Center and got to work on a project that will entail multiple visits. During our initial trips, we came across some fun, quirky, and surprising items in storage. What follows is a sampling of some of our more interesting finds.

1. This box looked like many others in the Interpretive Center storage. Any guesses as to what could be inside?

The contents of this box were anything but ordinary.

Based on the wobble and weight of the box when removed from the top of a cabinet, we thought it might contain a piece of pottery with a bowling pin-style bottom. Imagine our surprise when we lifted the lid and saw the beady little eyes of three small taxidermy critters: a gopher (with a face that looked like it had run headlong into a brick wall), a weasel, and a mole. Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center only has a few natural history objects, so we were certainly not expecting to be greeted by these curious creatures

Some of our cute taxidermy friends. SHSND

2. In a box filled with Bismarck artist Vern Erickson’s sketchbooks, we found this scrapbook labeled “Napkin Art.” Like us you’re probably wondering, “What is napkin art?”

SHSND

It turns out napkin art is exactly what it sounds like. Attached to the pages of Erickson’s scrapbook were napkins from North Dakota restaurants filled with (mostly pen) sketches of Native Americans and horses, though he also included a few examples of place mat art. Napkins from Donutland and Wendy’s feature descriptions of what colors the artist would like to use in his painting of the sketch as well as other notes. Considering the medium, some sketches are very detailed, putting our doodles of fancy “S” and anime eyes to shame.

Artist Vern Erickson’s detailed sketches of American Indians on horseback adorn napkins and place mats found in one scrapbook. SHSND

3. A box of Altoids in a collections space? We all know food and drink is not allowed in collections spaces, right? So what could be in this tin?

SHSND

Given the Interpretive Center’s plethora of lead shot, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the tin was full of tiny lead balls. Indeed, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery is a key collecting theme for both the Interpretive Center and Fort Mandan State Historic Site. These shot are in remarkably good condition compared to some of the other lead shot already inventoried and had not turned white due to oxidation.

Not exactly the “curiously strong” contents you might have expected. SHSND

The inventory is not yet complete, so we wouldn’t be surprised if additional interesting finds await us. Since there are many more objects at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center than we initially estimated, we look forward to other fun discoveries.

This blog was co-authored with Elise Dukart.

Our registration staff at the State Historical Society of North Dakota is tasked with completing the paperwork for and transportation of incoming exhibit loans. We ask individuals, museums, and companies for loans of objects to fill gaps in our collection for the purpose of creating a more complete exhibit. For the upcoming Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style exhibit at the State Museum, created by our own staff, we requested and received 11 loans ranging from a pair of jeans to Cara Mund’s Miss America gown.

Our collection does not have much Native American powwow clothing that is sturdy enough to be on exhibit for the two-year duration of Fashion & Function. As a result, we turned to other museums in neighboring states to fulfill our need.

Discussions with the Minnesota Historical Society began in January 2020. First, we identified the pieces we wanted to borrow for the exhibit by searching their online database. We came across a woman’s jingle dress and a child’s grass dance outfit in their collection that would be perfect additions to our exhibit. They then required us to fill out a General Facility Report about the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. The report asked everything from what material the walls were made of to how far the building is located from the closest fire station. It took us a few months to complete the report, and then COVID-19 struck. We pivoted to telecommuting from home, while the staff from Minnesota was also sent home for a time. Due to the pandemic, it was November before Head of Curatorial Services Melissa Thompson and Jenny Yearous, curator of collections management, drove to St. Paul to pick up the loaned dress and child’s outfit. Our internal loan policy states that loans in transit must be accompanied by a curator at all times. So during the drive back to Bismarck, either Jenny or Melissa stayed with the boxed loan in the vehicle. They took turns using restrooms and relied on drive-thrus for meals.

The loans from the Minnesota Historical Society were transported in a box made of coroplast, which is a corrugated archival material.

One of the loans from the Minnesota Historical Society was a jingle dress completed by Orvilla Longfox (1956-2020) of Cloquet, Minnesota, in 2016. Longfox was an artist who revitalized the ancient art of quillwork learned from her mother. She was renowned worldwide for her traditional artwork with dyed quills and buckskin. Her work is featured in museums and businesses, as well as in private collections.

This hide, hoof, and quill jingle dress on loan from the Minnesota Historical Society features floral-and-butterfly quillwork designs and deer toes for jingles. The dress took Orvilla Longfox one and a half years to create, partly due to collecting and cleaning the deer hooves and quills.

Meanwhile, the boy’s grass dance outfit, below, was made by Kirstie Davis Deyhle of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe for her son Loyn Deyhle during the winter of 2001-2002 and altered as Loyn grew. It was worn at the Mille Lacs Indian Museum Memorial Day powwows in 2002, 2003, and 2004.

Ojibwe boy’s grass dance outfit from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Jocelyn Lamoureux-Davidson (born July 3, 1989), a North Dakota native from Grand Forks, played for the now-defunct University of North Dakota women’s hockey team. Her skills earned her a place on the U.S. Women’s National Team. She won six gold medals and one silver medal at the women’s world hockey championships. She was also a member of the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey teams at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, in 2010, and Sochi, Russia, in 2014. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Jocelyn scored the game-winning goal to win the gold for Team USA.

When we heard that Jocelyn and her twin sister Monique Lamoureux-Morando were going to be inducted into the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Hall of Fame at the North Dakota State Capitol last summer, the agency got in touch with the governor’s office and was able to get Jocelyn’s contact information. Jocelyn kindly offered one of her USA hockey jerseys and her 2009 IIHF World Women’s Championship gold medal to the Fashion & Function exhibit. Ideally, she would have travelled to Bismarck to drop off the items or Melissa would have travelled to Grand Forks to pick up the items. Due to the pandemic, however, we put our trust in the U.S. Postal Service to transport these items. They arrived safe and sound and will be on display in the exhibit’s sports section.

Front view of Jocelyn Lamoureux-Davidson’s jersey from the 2009 world women’s hockey championships.

The back view of the same jersey with its J. Lamoureux nameplate.

Check out the bling. Here is Lamoureux-Davidson’s 2009 International Ice Hockey Federation World Women's Championship gold medal.

Born in Jamestown, Peggy Lee (1920-2002) was an acclaimed musician and actress. Elise Dukart, assistant registrar, knows her best as the voice of Peg from Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp.” The State Historical Society did not have any artifacts in the museum collection to showcase the famous singer’s life and fashion style, so we reached out to Peggy Lee Associates LLC in California for assistance in February 2020. The exhibit team decided to borrow a beautiful dress worn by Lee in the early 1940s.

Like Lamoreaux-Davidson’s items, Lee’s dress also needed to be shipped from its location.

Holly Foster Wells, Lee’s granddaughter and president of Peggy Lee Associates LLC, had intended to bring it in person in July 2020 during a Peggy Lee centennial year celebration scheduled in Jamestown and Wimbledon. But the pandemic prevented her from travelling, and the celebration was postponed. The dress was shipped to the Historical Society in July.

Peggy Lee’s dress for the exhibit arrived in this bruised and battered box.

Unfortunately, the box containing the dress arrived damaged. The registration team took photos of the box and contacted the Lee organization to alert them of the situation. The dress was then removed from the box, and its condition was assessed. Additional photos were sent to Peggy Lee Associates LLC. Thankfully, the dress was not damaged during shipment. It currently happily resides on a mannequin amid the other dressed forms waiting to go on exhibit.

A dress worn by the singer and actress in the 1940s was borrowed from Peggy Lee Associates LLC.

We are grateful to all those who worked with us to obtain loans for Fashion & Function during these trying times of the pandemic. This exhibit, opening in February, will be more complete because of these items.

This blog was co-written by Elise Dukart.

The State Historical Society accepts about one hundred donations per year into our museum collection. Each donation can consist of one item up to several hundred items. We are stewards of the collection on behalf of the people of North Dakota, so we would like to hear from you. What do you think we should have in our collection? What sorts of objects define North Dakota? Your input matters for our future collecting. Click here to fill out our survey: bit.ly/proactivecollecting.

We will use the public responses to better guide our collecting strategy for the future. We will also use the data to determine how much additional storage space we will need to continue collecting the history of North Dakota.

We collect a myriad of different objects from all time periods. Our museum collections committee always looks for a story behind the objects, for that is what sets one object apart from another. Here are a few collections that recently arrived at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum.

The Office of the Secretary of State donated voting machines that were being replaced by newer models. The M100 and AutoMARK were purchased using federal, state, and county funds following the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA was passed following the hanging chad fiasco in Florida during the 2000 General Election and was meant to modernize our nations voting systems. Ninety-five percent of the purchase was paid for with federal funds, 2.5% with state funds, and 2.5% with county funds.

AutoMARK assistive ballot marking device. Acc #2019.00058

The M-100 was implemented in approximately half of the counties in 2004. M-100 implementation was completed in all 53 counties for the 2006 election. AutoMARK implementation was completed during the 2006 election. The M-100 and AutoMARK were available at every polling place in the state for every statewide election through the 2018 General Election. Counties also used this equipment for local special elections.

Ballot boxes for the M-100 optical scan and Optech III-P Eagle. Acc #2019.00058

The Optech III-P Eagle (the tan machine below) was used in several counties prior to the adoption of the statewide voting system. This particular machine comes from LaMoure County.

The Optech III-P Eagle ballot tabulator. Acc #2019.00058

The soccer uniform was worn by four-year-old Hannah while playing on the pre-K team Orange Pumpkins in the fall of 2018. Although she and her parents live in Bismarck, Hannah had a friend who played soccer in Mandan, so Hannah’s parents signed her up for Mandan’s recreational soccer team.

A: The uniform consists of the orange Mandan soccer team shirt, a pair of athletic shorts, shin guards, pink soccer socks, and soccer cleats. Acc # 2019.00066; B: Hannah playing a game at the Dakota Community Bank and Trust soccer fields in Mandan, ND.; C: Hannah posing for a photo in her uniform.

Harvey Jaeger donated a wool sweater made by his grandmother, Anna Jaeger, for his father, Hugo Jaeger. It was made by Anna in about 1930. Anna raised the sheep, sheered the wool, spun and dyed the yarn, and knit the sweater.

The sweater is a brown wool, button down cardigan, with multiple knit patterns. Acc #2019.00054

Anna (Birkmeier) Jaeger was born in Germany, August 15, 1882, and emigrated to the United States in 1885, settling south of Hebron. She married Fred Jaeger in 1901 and homesteaded south of Zap. Hugo Jaeger was third oldest of 11 siblings, Anna died in 1968.

Hugo Jaeger (1904-1946) married Pauline Jacober (1908-2013) in 1929 and lived in a three- room house on the family farm for nine years. Then they moved to Zap where Hugo worked in the coal mine. They moved to Bismarck in 1942.

***Due to the temporary closing of our sites for COVID-19 precautions, we currently will not be accepting the donation items until further notice. If you have something you would like to donate, please still fill out our potential acquisition questionnaire, which can be found at https://www.history.nd.gov/data/padq_emailform.html. This is the first step to start to make a donation. We will continue to respond to your requests to make donations.

In honor of Veterans Day, I decided to highlight a military recent acquisition to the museum collection.

Radar bomb scoring sites were developed during World War II, by the Army Airforce Tactical Center, to more accurately bomb at night and in poor weather. The Strategic Air Command, established in 1946, controlled most of the US nuclear weapons until after the Cold War. The SAC supervised these radar bomb scoring sites to improve accuracy through training and practice. The 1st Radar Bomb Scoring Group’s mission was to provide the best training, which included simulated unguided bomb drops, and comprehensive evaluation of Strategic Air Command’s aircrews.

Staff and equipment for the Radar Bomb Scoring site (RBS), located off 43rd Street in north Bismarck, arrived from Marrakesh Africa in 1958. The building site was designated Detachment 10 and later redesignated as Detachment 14. A radio antenna is now located near the former site. An average of 80 to 90 air force personnel occupied the site at a time. They scored the bombing accuracy and countermeasure capability of the B-52 bombers out of Minot AFB and the B-58s from Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota.

Road sign to Detachment 14 in north Bismarck for an open house in September 1981.

Aerial view of Detachment 14 taken in the 1970s.

John Ringland made the radar site model in April 1975 to honor Col. Alvin E. Prothero upon his retirement from the US Air Force. Prothero was commander of 1 Combat Evaluation Group (1CEVG) from July 1, 1971, to April 25, 1975. Ringland was stationed at 1CEVG headquarters in Barksdale AFB in Louisiana from 1966 to 1975. Col. Prothero wanted the radar site model to remain at the 1CEVG headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base for display in the office as a visual example of a radar site. Eventually it was displayed at the Barksdale Air Force Museum and then returned to 1CEVG for display before being given back to Ringland.

2019.00011 Model of a bomber radar scoring site, similar to that of Detachment 14 located in Bismarck. When plugged in, the plane rotates above the building and the radar rotates to track the plane. The motors running the plane and radar were removed from a plotting board used to track B-52s at Barksdale AFB. It is 13inches high (not including the legs), 24 inches deep, and 31 inches wide.

Our donor, John Ringland, was stationed at the Bismarck Radar Bomb Scoring (RBS) site three times throughout his Air Force career of 23 years. Ringland’s first assignment to the Bismarck RBS was in May 1965. He returned from 1975 to 1980, and again from 1983 to 1986, when the Bismarck site closed and moved to Forsyth, Montana. Ringland retired from the Air Force as a senior master sergeant in 1987.

2019.00048. John Ringland donated his Air Force uniform including the jacket, shirt, tie, pants, cap, socks, and shoes.

Thank you to those who served.

Throughout the year, the State Historical Society accepts hundreds of objects into the museum collection, all with interesting stories to tell. Occasionally, we accept objects under non-ideal conditions. For instance, there may be gaps in an object’s history, or a donation arrives damaged.

In June 2018, Curator of Collections Management Jenny Yearous purchased a Native American jingle dress with military patches at a garage sale in Bismarck, North Dakota. The proprietor of the garage sale had received the jingle dress from someone at the United Tribes Technical College International Powwow in Bismarck and no longer wanted it. Unfortunately, the owner did not have any additional information, so we had to do our own investigating.

The dress is believed to have been worn by a member of the Native American Women Warriors (NAWW), a color guard of female veterans. They also perform a jingle dance, which some tribes regard as a healing rite traditionally performed by women. Founded by Mitchelene BigMan, NAWW is a nonprofit group based in Colorado. Their mission is to support U.S. veterans and their families.

2018.00067

The back of the silver bodice has a series of patches sewn onto it, including “Native American Veteran,” “Iraq Veteran,” “Operation Iraqi Freedom/Woman Veteran,” and a “Bring Home or Send Us Back POW-MIA” patch. There is also a red, white, and blue ribbon with the words “Native American” on it, and in the center a large patch with an eagle head and the words, "THE NATION WHICH FORGETS ITS DEFENDERS WILL ITSELF BE FORGOTTEN / FALLEN HEROES / IN MEMORY OF OUR TROOPS / DEFENDERS OF OUR FREEDOM."

The Museum Collections Committee decided to accept this jingle dress into the collection despite not having much history about it. We simply do not have many contemporary Native American regalia, or many female-owned items related to the military. We have only one other jingle dress, which is not military-related. Combining the lack in the existing collection with the connection to the military and women, this object has an important place in the collection, even without a complete history.

If you or someone you know may have additional information about who wore this dress, please contact Melissa Thompson at 701.328.2691 or methompson@nd.gov.

Frances Reese donated a stone sculpture made of Colorado pink alabaster by the artist Tex Wounded Face. Wounded Face was born in Watford City, North Dakota, in 1955 and is of Mandan/Hidatsa descent. He passed away at the age of 57 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The sculpture was given to the donor’s husband, William F. Reese, when he and Wounded Face held a joint exhibit in Seattle in 1978.

The sculpture, titled The Americanization of the Native American, is the head and shoulders of a Native American with flowing hair, arms outstretched with a blanket covering the arms.

The box carrying the sculpture arrived at the North Dakota Heritage Center damaged. When unpacked from the box, the sculpture was discovered to have several pieces of rock separated from the base area. The Museum Collections Committee decided to acquire the sculpture for our collection despite its damaged condition. We do not have many pieces of contemporary Native American artwork, and the missing pieces do not distract from the overall aesthetic of the sculpture. The sculpture was placed in our collection with the hope that we would someday have the funds to repair the damage.

If you would like to donate to the collection’s conservation fund, please call 701.328.2666.