Life as a volunteer for SHSND is always exciting and challenging. There is always a new project, a new event, or a new group of people to introduce to the many wonders of the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum.

I recently had the great fun of hosting a tour of 40 high school juniors, seniors and faculty from a Minot, ND, high school. The group was trying to pack as much as possible into their road trip to Bismarck. They visited the legislature in the morning and wanted a tour of the Heritage Center before heading back to Minot for a basketball tournament. As a result of their busy itinerary, the time allotted for their tour was short.

My challenge was to share as much information about the Heritage Center as possible in addition to allowing time for a hurried walk-through of the galleries. I decided that the only way to introduce the many distinct areas of the facility was to create and present a “photo tour” of the building.

I started the photo tour with a slide containing the following “teaser” numbers:

52 million
255,000
600 million
12 million
1

I spent the next 30 minutes revealing the meaning of each individual number.

In November of 2014, the newly expanded and renovated $52 million addition to the Heritage Center was formally introduced to the public.

On that day, 97,000 square feet of space was officially added to the Heritage Center to total 255,000 square feet under one roof. To visualize that number, we did some quick math with an example everyone could relate to. Two hundred and fifty-five thousand (255,000) square feet is equivalent to just under 5 1/2 football fields under one roof. As I explained, there is an entire unseen world one floor down from the main galleries that contributes 48,500 square feet to the total.

The challenge for a 1 hour tour was not only in roaming over 5 1/2 football fields, but also the fact that 600 million years of history are on display in the three main galleries.

It became apparent to the students that the only way to get some understanding of the many departments (called “Divisions”) and hidden corners of the Heritage Center in one hour was through the remainder of the photo tour.

In the comfort of the new Great Plains Theater, my photos allowed them to descend to the lower, secured area of the Heritage Center. As I explained to them, the lower floor is the “heart and brain” of the facility. It is here that all the artifacts and objects, as well as the information accompanying them, are prepared for display in the main floor museum galleries.

I spend a lot of my volunteer time in the Archaeology & Historic Preservation division, so I had more facts available for this area of the Heritage Center.

The Archaeology Collections Manager is responsible for 12 million artifacts in this Division alone. At any one time, about 800 of the 12 million artifacts are on display in the Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples. The artifacts in the collections storage area are arranged on 20,000 linear feet of shelves—that is 3.8 miles of shelving! These artifacts represent 13,000 years of human history in what is now North Dakota.

I quickly reviewed the remainder of the lower level consisting of the paleontology lab, the archaeology lab, museum preparation lab, other collection storage areas, the Communications & Education division, museum, security, and staff offices.

From the lower level, photos moved them back to the main floor with a “stop” at the Archives Division with its 30,000 square feet of space. From there, we quickly moved on to the overall organization of the main galleries before our time was up.

I didn’t have time to tell them that we now have 300 percent more Paleoindian artifacts on display, that our annual visitation has more than doubled since we reopened, that another of our volunteers has taken 30,000 digital photos in the past 16 months, or that in addition to our 90+ paid staff, we have 200 volunteers that keep the State Museum and our state historic sites ticking.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a personal visit must be worth at least a thousand pictures. We hope to see you at the ND Heritage Center & State Museum. Please allow more than one hour to see everything!

“A strong camp and picket guard were posted for the night—a cold lunch was passed around at nine o'clock, and then some tried to sleep. But soon the night darkened into blackness. Hundreds of wolves, attracted by the scent of blood and of corpses set up a most unearthly howling and yelping, while there gathered and broke over us a thunder storm more grand and terrific than anything I had ever experienced. There was incessant and intensely vivid lightening for nearly an hour, and then came peal and treble peal of heavy continued and incessant thunder which lasted for two hours. A shower, not in drops but in sheets poured for an hour upon our parched camp, till within the corral, in the natural basin around which it was formed, cattle were standing in the morning in two feet of water. The fatigue of the day, the groaning of the wounded, the howling of wolves, the unprecedented storm under such circumstances made this a night in my experience never to be forgotten.”^[1]
James L. Fisk,
Dakota Territory
September 3, 1864

+++++

“To gain a little personal fame he (James L. Fisk) has thrown the train to the south of a route already open & well defined by Gen. Sully under the guidance of the most competent guides, & has been pushing ahead through a rough broken country of which he is utterly ignorant & his engineer often unable to set on his horse from intoxication…. Yet I like him for his good nature covers a great many defects.”^[2]
William L. Larned,
emigrant member of the Fisk expedition,
September 10, 1864

+++++

Hubris, poor planning, and bad luck had followed the emigrant train to this point.

I began this story in my last blog post, [http://blog.statemuseum.nd.gov/blog/troubled-time] and quotes like those above are the reason why I enjoy doing research in the State Archives at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum (http://www.history.nd.gov/archives/index.html). Publications sometimes leave out the gritty details and personal anecdotes of the participants in historical events. Additional searching adds context and substance to some of these stories. Personally, I find it fuels the “what ifs” of history.

For instance:

The Fisk emigrant train spent seven days at Fort Rice awaiting and completing passage over the Missouri River aboard the steamboat U.S. Grant. If they had departed Fort Rice even two days later, would they have steered clear of Sitting Bull and his warriors?

Conversely, if the emigrant train had departed Fort Rice a couple of days earlier, would they have been bogged down in the rugged terrain of the Badlands and put at risk of total annihilation by the Hunkpapa (Lakota) warriors?

Sitting Bull was shot in the left hip during the Fisk raid in September 1864, when a band of Hunkpapas attacked the Fisk wagon train. The bullet exited out through the small of his back and was not serious. How would history have changed if Sitting Bull had been killed during the skirmish?

After the siege, survivors from the Fisk emigrant train returned to Fort Rice. Some of the members of the aborted expedition remained at the fort over the winter and beyond. Is it possible that some of those travelers played a part in early Edwinton/Bismarck, Dakota Territory?

On July 28, 1865, Sitting Bull and his warriors attacked Fort Rice. This intense battle, one of the largest in the history of Dakota Territory, may have wiped out the fort if not for the superior weaponry of the “Galvanized Yankees,” the former Confederate prisoners-of-war stationed there. Would this attack have occurred if Sitting Bull had been killed eleven months earlier?

What if??

If you have not yet visited the State Archives, I invite you to do so. I am interested in your thoughts and research into the “what ifs” of the failed 1864 Fisk emigrant expedition.

As a volunteer for the State Historical Society for the last 10 years and a former president of the North Dakota Archaeological Association, I have had many opportunities to write articles about the history and archaeology of Dakota Territory and North Dakota. One new project examines an attempted cross-country emigration of settlers and merchants from Minnesota to the gold fields of Montana and Idaho. A combination of bad timing, headstrong leaders, and disgruntled Native Americans would lead to its failure.

The year of 1864 was an unsettled time in Dakota Territory and the rest of the nation.

The American Civil War was still raging in the East.

Homesteaders were slowly and reluctantly returning to Minnesota and Dakota Territory after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

President Abraham Lincoln was shuffling military troops in an attempt to bolster Union fighting forces and address unrest in the Midwest.

Demands were being made to assure safe passage to gold fields of Montana and Idaho. Westward expansion was being encouraged, and with it, hopefully, the nation’s gold reserves would be replenished.

Sign at the entrance to Fort Dilts

Major General John Pope at “Headquarters, Department of the Northwest” in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had issued orders to build four forts in Dakota Territory to address Native American unrest and establish a safe route to western gold fields. General Alfred Sully was the “boots on the ground” guy tasked with both objectives. On July 7, 1864, he established the location of Fort Rice eight miles above the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers. It would eventually be manned by former Confederate prisoners-of-war.

After detailing troops to build the fort, Sully and his command continued north to what would eventually be called the Battle of Killdeer Mountain and the Battle of the Badlands. One  “success” of the campaign was destruction of the winter food supply of Native Americans at Killdeer Mountain.

It was a bad time to attempt a cross-country road trip. Yet, that is exactly what James L. Fisk proposed to do. A former private in the Third Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, he had earned the reputation of being “undisciplined” and now was going to attempt a more direct, uncharted route across Dakota Territory to shave several hundred miles off the more established trail to the gold fields. Fisk had been successful in his 1862 and 1863 expeditions from Minnesota to Montana following the established route. His luck would not hold in 1864.

Fisk and 97 covered wagons and 200 men, women, and children traveled from Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, to newly established Fort Rice. His plans were to join General Sully and his troops for protection. Unfortunately, Sully had already left for his battles to the north. Undeterred, Fisk left Fort Rice on August 24, 1864, under an escort of convalescent soldiers and worn out horses.

On September 2, the wagon train was attacked by Hunkpapas under the leadership of Sitting Bull. The band was headed south to their traditional hunting grounds in hopes of replenishing their food supplies destroyed at the Battle of Killdeer Mountain. A wagon train loaded with supplies seemed to be one answer to their hunger problems.

A running skirmish ensued until the Fisk expedition circled their wagons on September 4, built a six-foot-tall earthen wall around the wagons, and hunkered down until Sully’s troops came to their rescue on September 20.

Corporal Jefferson Dilts, signal scout for the expedition, was killed during the siege. Their earthen cantonment and home for 16 long days was named Fort Dilts in honor of Corporal Dilts who was buried on the perimeter of the enclosure.

James Fisk detailed his side of the story in an official report to U.S. Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomason January 13, 1865. His handwritten, 100-page explanation of events did not, in all cases, agree with the daily diary kept by William L. Larned, expedition member and later resident of Fort Rice.

My next blog will explore Fort Dilts through the eyes of those who experienced it firsthand in September 1864.

You can visit the Fort Dilts State Historic Site eight miles northwest of Rhame. (GPS 46.279121, -103.776424). A four-mile drive north of Highway 12 west of Rhame will transport you to a site that looks much as it did 152 years ago.

We will review those sixteen days through the written words and stories of the participants in my next blog.

Landscape at Fort Dilts

Number “22” launched me into the world of archaeology.

Let me explain.

It was Sunday, July 30, 2006, day #7 of a nine-day archaeological project at a place called Beacon Island in northwestern North Dakota.

In those seven days, I had progressed to the point where I was trusted with a trowel, a kneeling pad and my very own archaeological “unit.” The unit was my very own 1 meter by 1 meter square of potential discovery.

It had been very hot, 112 degrees a couple of days before, and just about the same that Sunday afternoon. It was an exciting week but the heat, the baloney sandwiches, and the lack of a long shower was beginning to take a toll on my enthusiasm.

About 2:30 that afternoon, the very distinct sound of metal hitting stone resonated in my sunburned brain. I quickly realized that the sound didn’t come from my trowel, but from the unit immediately to my left. A University of Chicago field school student had discovered a piece of Knife River Flint that would fuel my imagination.

Beacon Island was the site of a brief (one-or two-day) event that took place roughly 12,000 years prior to that hot Sunday afternoon. I wrote of Beacon Island in one of my previous blogs so I won’t retell the entire story. In short, a band of Paleoindian hunters surrounded a herd of twenty-nine or so Bison antiquus, killed them, butchered them, cooked some of the meat, prepared some of the rest for transport, sharpened their tools, and moved on.

Something they left behind that day would, 12,000 years later, become number “22.”

After the completion of the project, the PaleoCultural Research Group (PCRG) issued the official report of the Beacon Island survey. The 275-page report detailed every aspect of the study. On page 144 of the report, the following appears:

“All but one of the projectile points from Beacon Island are morphologically and technologically consistent with points from the Hell Gap and Agate Basin sites…The lone exception is the base of what can be called a Goshen point…This specimen is made from KRF (Knife River Flint) and is relatively broad and flat…Given its position in the bone bed there is no doubt that this point was among the weapons used in the kill.”^[1]

The flint projectile point “…was among the weapons used in the kill,” and I was the second person in 12,000 years to view it “in situ” at Beacon Island.

I followed the Goshen^[2] point, along with the rest of the artifacts uncovered during the project, to the archaeology lab at the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND.) I, along with other volunteers, spent the winter of 2006-2007 sorting and consolidating the bone, stone, shell, pottery and other material from Beacon Island. By that time, I was firmly hooked on the archaeology of North Dakota.

The little Knife River Flint projectile point discovered that hot July day disappeared into the artifact collections of the SHSND for a couple of years, awaiting its designated spot in the display cases of the Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. It had been photographed, assigned a museum catalog number (2007.1.13), and packed away, ready to become a part of the permanent Beacon Island exhibit.

The Goshen point reappeared in 2014, identified as number “22” in the glass Beacon Island exhibit case.

Since the discovery of number “22,” I have had the opportunity to volunteer on a number of North Dakota archaeological projects and serve as president of the North Dakota Archaeological Association. Each project is unique and brings to light a variety of interesting artifacts, each with its own story. None, though, hold the personal fascination for me that little number “22” holds.

I stop and visit number “22” every time I am in the Early Peoples gallery. I still get a couple of goosebumps, mixed with a little nostalgia, every time I view it. It will always be “my” artifact, the little piece of Knife River Flint that got me involved in and fascinated with the field of archaeology, and which links me to a fellow human being 12,000 years in the past.

Stop by and see number “22” for yourself when you visit the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. Let it tell you the story of the 12,000 years between the time it was used to kill a Bison antiquus until it reappeared at the hands of an archaeology student at Beacon Island and opened a new field of study for me.

Learn more about Beacon Island in "From the Field to the Museum." This video is part of the Making Archaeology Public Project, which was created to honor the 50th Anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.

How do you fit 301 men, women, and children into 400 square feet of space? Very easily, if you are Rob Evans.

Rob Evans is the nationally and internationally known artist and muralist who was commissioned to paint the Double Ditch Village cyclorama^[1], the focal point of the new Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum.

Mr. Evans and the concept team from the SHSND’s Archaeology & Historic Preservation Division spent months in preparation, researching and providing the documentation that would ensure an historically accurate depiction of a 16^th-century Mandan village.

The village that was chosen for the mural is the Double Ditch Indian Village State Historic Site located 9.9 miles (as the eagle flies) northwest of the Heritage Center.

The hand-painted mural, crafted one small brushstroke at a time, shows one time in the life of the Mandan Indians. The date chosen was September of AD 1550. That very specific date was chosen by the concept team for a variety of reasons. Autumn would have been a bustling time in the thriving community, with the fall harvest and preparations for winter in full swing. The year AD 1550 would be historically accurate for the depiction of both the recognizable round earthlodge home of the Mandans in addition to its lesser known predecessor, the long, rectangular dwelling. The myriad of activities depicted include gardening, arrow-making, lodge and palisade repair, children playing, pottery making, and the preparation of corn, squash, and meat for winter storage.

The cyclorama wall, 50 feet wide and 8 feet tall, provided Mr. Evans with 400 square feet of canvas for his original artwork. He didn’t paint on canvas, though. The cyclorama is a curved wall of sheetrock fastened to upright metal beams with many screws. The face of the sheetrock was covered with a coat of gesso, an artistic plaster medium, to provide a smooth, curved surface on which he could apply his depiction of the Mandan village.

Three hundred (and one) acrylic men, women and children appeared over the three months Rob spent on the project. In addition, numerous bison skulls, earth lodge homes, herds of bison, and all of the fall activities of the village were carefully crafted. The images followed the prototype drawings and paintings that Rob had prepared in advance of the actual project.

The concept team, as well as the Native American consultants to the project, deemed it very important to include the sounds of the village in the finished painting. Historical recordings were appraised and the sounds and conversations appropriate to the time and place were chosen to be included in the project. When no appropriate archived file was available, contemporary Mandan speakers and singers from Fort Berthold were recorded, along with the sounds of children playing, dogs barking, birds singing and other sounds. The audio is heard on eight individual speakers mounted above the cyclorama. Each of the eight sound files is specific to the scenes in the corresponding segment of the painting. The speakers provide a multi-channel soundscape that brings the original painting to life.

Lit from below by 96 feet of LED lights, adjustable for color and intensity, the cyclorama comes alive before the eyes of the Heritage Center visitor.

The SHSND, in partnership with the North Dakota Archaeological Association, will present a series of six lectures titled, “A Vision of the Village: The Making of the Double Ditch Cyclorama” on the second Saturday of each month at 2 p.m. The series began on Saturday, January 9 and will continue on the second Saturday of each month through the month of June. (Note: The one exception is May, when it will be held on the third Saturday.) All lectures will be held in the Russell Reid Auditorium at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum.

The lectures are free and open to the public. If you would like to hear more about Rob Evans’ painting, the research that went into the 400 square feet of art and the many details of a 16^th-century Mandan village, we encourage you to attend.

Oh, and we won’t confine you to 400 square feet of space.

“An excellent soldier. A true man loyal, honest cleanly & of sweet disposition. Death ere thou hast killed another good & brave & true as he. Time shall throw a dart at thee.”

Company Descriptive Book
Fort Rice, Dakota Territory
May 11, 1865

What would prompt a hard-bitten file clerk at a desolate outpost in Dakota Territory to write the preceding eulogy for one young soldier?

We may never know the answer to that question, but the State Archives and a subscription-based internet military site reveal this and other stories of a band of “volunteer” soldiers in Dakota Territory.

The eulogy is an anomaly among the 24,000 military records I recently researched to gain a better understanding of 645 Civil War soldiers assigned to the 1st United States Volunteer Infantry (1st USVI). The regiment is probably better known as the “Galvanized Yankees.”

The story of how the soldiers came to occupy Fort Rice, a Dakota Territory military post named after a Civil War casualty, is too long to recount in its entirety here. Here is the short version: President Abraham Lincoln was forced to get creative in finding enough troops to fight on the fronts of two contemporaneous wars. The American Civil War was raging in the East and the aftermath of the US-Dakota War of 1862 was smoldering in the Midwest. To address the troop shortage, Lincoln made an offer to Confederate prisoners of war; in exchange for a vow of loyalty to the Union Army, he would send them to the Midwest to “subdue” the Native Americans instead of sending them back to the Civil War.

Many books, stories and articles have been written about the “Galvanized Yankees” at Fort Rice. For my purposes, though, a more thorough study of the individual soldiers was required. After slogging through the military records, I had a much clearer picture of the individuals and personalities involved.

As with the eulogy to Private George Sampson of Company D at the beginning of this post, hints of their stories began to emerge. Private Sampson was a Virginia farm kid. He was described as being 17 years of age, 5 feet, 9 inches in height with blue eyes, light hair, and a light complexion. He died in the Fort Rice hospital on May 14, 1865, of “Typhus Fever.” Unfortunately, it is never revealed why he was singled out for such a unique epitaph and why his superior officer would paraphrase a 17^th-century English poem in his honor.

Left: Private George Sampson’s headstone, Custer National Cemetery, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (Crow Agency, Montana). The soldiers, including Private Sampson, were disinterred from the Fort Rice cemetery in the early 1900s and reinterred at the Custer National Cemetery
Right: Entry for Private George S. Sampson, Company Descriptive Book, 1865

A composite image of the soldiers at Fort Rice is difficult to assemble. Some details, though, can be noted:

The soldiers, as in most wars, were young. They ranged from 14 to 51 years of age with an average of 24 years. Private Clinton Millsaps, also from Company D and another farm kid, was born in Tennessee. He was the youngest of the lot at the age of 14 and measured in at 4 feet, 10 inches tall, which was 2 inches taller than the Springfield muzzleloading rifle he carried. He also had blue eyes, light hair, and a light complexion. At the tender age of 14 he had several things in common with his fellow soldiers: he was already a veteran of the Civil War, he had served time in a Union military prison, and he had survived the trip to Dakota Territory. Unlike Private Sampson and 101 other individuals at Fort Rice, he would survive to return home after his regiment was disbanded. He served as a “musician” at Fort Rice, probably deemed too short to fight.

The majority of the soldiers at Fort Rice were illiterate, as evidenced by the “x” on the signature line of their Union army “vow of allegiance.” Privates Millsaps and Sampson signed their names to the papers; 337 other members of the regiment (52%) signed with an “x.”

The soldiers of the 1st USVI, the first permanent troops at Fort Rice, were mostly southern kids. They hailed from 19 eastern states, with North Carolina being the most represented at 269 individuals. The remainder of the regiment was populated by men from 20 foreign countries including Prussia, Switzerland, and Ireland.

Fifty-two different professions were embodied at Fort Rice. Their occupations included slaters, coopers, weavers and teamsters. The majority (457 of them) listed “Farmer” as their occupation prior to the Civil War. Despite their collective knowledge, agriculture at Fort Rice was mostly a failure. The grasshoppers were able to muster more troops than the army.

Many more stories were revealed in the archives, but my space has come to an end. The stories of desertions, drownings, “accidental” shootings, court martials, sentences of “death by musketry,” acquittals, deaths from various diseases, and even a couple of deaths at the hands of the Native Americans they had come to subdue must wait for another day.