We’ve had a late spring here in Pembina, and I’ve been eager to get back outside. One of my passions is gardening and with the ground thawed and the air warm I’m finally getting my hands dirty again—literally! Spring cleanup in our interpretive garden, which features many plants native to the Red River Valley, is well underway.

The first sprouts of spring!

The Pembina State Museum garden is an ongoing project that started in 2021. We’ve arranged different native species as a decorative and informative addition to the front of the museum. Layered from back to front are red osier dogwoods, smooth sumacs, junipers, wild onions, columbine, bluebell, highbush cranberry, and purple prairie clover.

The garden acts as a great source of food for local pollinators and other wildlife.

This year I hope to make even more additions to the garden and the wider museum grounds. Now that the sumac is well-established and under control, I intend to add lady ferns underneath where they will have plenty of shade. (Woe to anyone who plants sumac without doing their research—they spread fast!)

Smooth sumac with berries. These berries stay around all winter and are a great food for birds.

Beyond the garden, we have two old tree rows that flank the museum. Many of the trees are old and the north side is wildly overgrown. Cleanup of the tree rows has been slow, but as we clear away deadfall and tangles of Virginia creeper (a native climbing vine that’s a nuisance to other plants), areas of opportunity open.

In the southern tree row, a large bald area has appeared where a fallen tree was removed. In its place, I plan to eventually add native flower beds to complement the nearby picnic area. In the north row, there is open space between the rows that I think will be perfect for a native grove of shrubs and trees.

While it is my responsibility to maintain the garden, I do try to delegate the weeding and general maintenance, which is never-ending. Part of the garden plan takes ease of maintenance into account. One way I’ve tried to achieve that is by creating dedicated beds for each plant and filling the space between with a deep layer of mulch. The mulch helps keep weeds down outside of the beds and makes it easier to explain to our summer staff and volunteers where to pull weeds. Not everyone enjoys gardening, and I’ve tried to take people’s plant blindness into account.

Spring cleanup begins by clearing away last year’s debris.

The prevalence of plant blindness, the inability to identify or differentiate plants, was never something I noticed until I was working on the museum garden. According to a recent presentation by Extensions Program Coordinator at North Dakota State University Paula Comeau, most people have established their concept of a plant by age 9 and carry that concept into adulthood. If kids aren’t exposed to plants and don’t learn about them, they will lack the ability to identify them as adults.

The highbush cranberry, also known as “summer berry” to local Chippewas, is a shrub that bears bright red berries beginning in summer that don’t ripen until the first frost and stay on the vine through winter. The Pembina River and the town of Pembina are both named for this native bush.

Highbush cranberry in bloom.

Comeau’s research inspired me to develop a program using our interpretive garden. Later this summer, I’ll be hosting various plant drawing programs to introduce visitors to the basics of botany. They’ll be given art supplies and told to draw their favorite plant on the grounds. Then they’ll exchange drawings with another visitor and try to identify the plant drawn. By encouraging people to pay closer attention to the details in various plants and arming them with the knowledge of where the plants grow and what they are good for, I aim to help revive old skills once crucial to life in the region—or at least revive an appreciation for the natural environment around us.

I’m no artist, but I do my best. The plant depicted is the highbush cranberry. Can you tell? Later this year, visitors to the Pembina State Museum will have a chance to draw their favorite plant from the museum grounds and learn more about it in upcoming programs.

Work goes on, and with each growing season that passes the museum grounds become ever more alive with native plants. Hopefully our late spring won’t be paired with an early autumn and I’ll get plenty of time to work outside in the garden. We invite visitors to enjoy our garden and learn a little from it, too.

Our resident jackrabbit also enjoys the spring flowers.

While researching fur trade material culture to develop new programming and interpretation for the Pembina State Museum, I occasionally latch on to smaller details. The past few weeks I’ve been focused on the history of buttons, something most of us rarely think about. But during the 17th and 18th centuries, buttons were big business. Buttons feature prominently in collections from fur trading sites, including at Pembina. Buttons are part of our “Red River Rendezvous” program and will also be showcased in a gallery interactive currently in development.

My fascination with buttons as fur trade material culture comes from my personal experience wearing historical garments at reenactments. Today, if a shirt loses a button, we may choose to get rid of it rather than fix it. Sewing buttons isn’t as common as it once was. At reenactments and living history events, I and many of my colleagues have found buttons to be an omnipresent concern. I have lost at least one button from a coat or trousers at every event I’ve attended. Most reenactors will say the same. Given this frequency, I have learned how to quickly reattach a button between public demonstrations. I rarely read in journals from fur traders or frontier soldiers about losing or sewing buttons, but my experience with historical garments makes me think that it was so commonplace as to not be considered worth mentioning.

Artifacts, including dozens of buttons, collected from the Fort Pembina trading post site.

The history of buttons and button manufacturing speaks to their importance. In England, where most of the fur trade buttons for the Pembina region were made, laws were passed in 1699 and 1721 to protect the domestic button industry. Many of the firms listed on fur trade receipts were founded in the 18th century. Several new developments in button manufacturing were also made at the same time. Stamped two-piece buttons and brass gilding were both developed in the mid-18th century. Hundreds of millions of buttons were made every year in the manufacturing centers of England, France, and Italy. The Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company each ordered tens of thousands of buttons to be shipped to North America and sold to Indigenous customers. In Europe, buttons were practical fasteners of garments. However, for the Indigenous consumer, buttons were adornments for traditional garments meant to enhance the prestige of the wearer.

In this 1832 painting by George Catlin, Tchón-su-móns-ka, Lakota wife of fur trader François Chardon, wears a shawl festooned with brass gilt buttons. Smithsonian American Art Museum

The value of buttons as trade goods lasted from the 17th through the early 20th century. The “Red River Rendezvous” program interprets the value of different trade goods through the lenses of various local groups and their specific needs during the early fur trade period at Pembina. The new interactive elements that I’m working on for visitors in the museum gallery interprets value based on historical costs. The interactive will consist of a scale. On one side visitors can place weights representing beaver furs or pemmican and on the other side weights representing a variety of purchased trade goods. Guests can press a button to see whether their trade is “balanced.” If it isn’t, the scale will tip, dumping the weights back into containers.

By determining the historical prices of items found mostly in fur trade ledgers and journals, the value can be translated into weight as a proportion of their monetary value, with the value of one beaver fur or pemmican pack set at 1 kilogram. I’ve chosen metric measurements to better fine-tune the weights of different items using grams. This leaves some things a bit too heavy. In 1802, a guide in Alexander Henry the Younger’s brigade recorded being paid an annual salary of £15. Compared to the price of a beaver pelt for that same year that would make the weight representing his wages 16.5 kilograms, or about 36 pounds, which is more than a visitor should be expected to lift. A simple solution is to represent the monthly wage instead, which would be £1 and 5 shillings, or a more manageable weight of about 3 pounds. More reworking, as well as designing and prototyping, are required before the interactive is finished. We plan to have it ready by this summer. In the meantime, my fascination with buttons has yielded an enhancement to the “Red River Rendezvous” program.

Here, the author puts skills learned while wearing historical garments to work.

These buttons sewn to hand-drawn cards represent a small but important improvement to the “Red River Rendezvous” program, which resulted from ongoing research for a new interactive element at the Pembina State Museum.

Prior to beginning research for our new interactive, the buttons for the “Red River Rendezvous” were left in loose piles for children to handle. This often meant that the kids, when instructed to buy buttons, would trade for a single button rather than enough to complete a garment. While this offered an opportunity to talk about the historical uses and importance of buttons, our new authentic packaging helps demonstrate the typical quantity of goods directly traded. As in the past, buttons come attached to a card today. While working on the interactive, I took care to attach our buttons to cards with simple hand-drawn labels. This may seem like a trifling detail, but every improvement to the authenticity of the items used in our programs improves the interpretation and creates a more authentic experience. With each new piece of information, existing and new programs become better and better. No detail is too small.

Our new button cards pictured with the other sewing items in the “Red River Rendezvous” program are now on display for visitors to interact with at the Pembina State Museum. To schedule a tour or an interpretive program, contact us at shspembina@nd.gov.

When fresh, pemmican has a waxy, gritty texture and a fatty, beefy flavor. While pemmican can store indefinitely if kept dry, its flavor does not improve with age.

Pemmican is a food made of a mix of dried meat and fat. As George Colpitts notes in his book, Pemmican Empire: Food, Trade, and the Last Bison Hunts in the North American Plains, 1780-1882, the name came from the Cree word pemigan and means “he makes grease.” The grease came from bone marrow and was mixed with harder fats by Native Americans to produce traditional pemmican, sometimes referred to as sweet pemmican.

Two types of pemmican were commonly made foods. Sweet pemmican consisted of a mixture of more palatable fats, including bone marrow grease and unsaturated fats, which made it softer and more palatable than its more prolific counterpart, trade pemmican. It was prepared with care using the best meat and fat. Dried fruit was sometimes mixed into it. For instance, in the Red River Valley, the highbush cranberry, also known as the Pembina berry, would have been added.

Trade pemmican, by contrast, was a hurriedly mass-produced food made by Euro-American and Métis fur traders from whatever was most accessible. It contained more saturated fats and was thus much harder. It often contained other ingredients such as fur, bits of bone, or even bark, which inadvertently found their way into the mix during processing. Despite its rough and unappealing taste and texture, the calories packed into every pound of pemmican helped to drive the fur trade.

Fur traders first came to Pembina in the 1790s to hunt beavers. By 1804, they switched to hunting bison for meat and making pemmican to feed fur traders who operated in the far north of Canada. The Métis quickly took over the pemmican industry, dominating in the middle 19th century with their annual bison hunts at Pembina and Walhalla, then called St. Joseph. Pemmican was so important to feeding people working and living in the Red River Valley that in 1814 the Pemmican War broke out between competing fur trade companies and their allies when the governor of the British territory of Assinaboia (modern southern Manitoba and the Red River Valley) tried to forbid its export. The pemmican trade, like much of the industrial fur trade, ended when bison herds were hunted to near extinction in the late 19th century, a problem exacerbated in part by intensive bison hunts of the Métis pemmican trade.

Despite reading about pemmican in the accounts of many writers who described it in varying degrees of admiration or derision, I still didn’t know what it tasted or looked like. So I embarked on some experimental archaeology to find out. Having no easy access to bison bones, I made a version of trade pemmican, though I left out the fur and bark. I used beef fat since the butchers near me did not carry bison fat. Though bison was historically the most common meat base, pemmican can be made with the meat and fat of any animal, even wild game or fish.

I started with dried bison, which to me tasted almost flavorless but slightly gamey. Adding some beef fat, the dish tasted like fatty ground beef with only a hint of the bison, but the texture is that of a wax candle mixed with gravel. That may not sound appealing, but at almost 4,000 calories per pound, pemmican couldn’t be beat as a source of shelf-stable nutrition in the 19th century.

Two pounds of raw meat and a ½ pound of suet. The meat will reduce to a quarter of its weight when dried, leaving ½ pound of dried meat and ½ pound of suet for 1 pound of pemmican.

If you are up for an adventure and want to make your own pemmican, you’ll need only two or three ingredients:

• 2 pounds of raw meat (bison or beef), as lean as can be found
• ½ pound of suet or fat (bison or beef)
• 1 cup of finely chopped dried fruit (optional)

Begin by cutting the meat into strips as thin as possible. Cut against the grain to make the meat dry faster and easier to pulverize later. Lay the cuts of meat on a wire rack. Place the rack on a baking sheet to catch any errant fat drips.

Cut against the grain to dry the meat faster and make it easier to grind.

Set your oven to the lowest possible temperature—for me that was 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake the tray of meat in the oven for 10 to 12 hours. The historical method of drying meat was to hang it outside in the sun for one or two days. The hot sun and prairie winds would desiccate the meat and dry it into jerky. Smoke and fire were sometimes employed to aid the drying process. A more hygienic option is to use an oven or dehydrator.

The dried meat should be brittle and tear apart easily. Place the dried meat in a food processor or blender and use the pulse setting until the meat is mostly ground into a stringy powder; a few remaining small chunks are fine. The longer you process the meat, the finer it will become, which will improve the texture of the final product. If you are including dried fruit, now is the time to mix it thoroughly into your ground meat.

Grind as fine as you wish. Sweet pemmican would have been made with meat pounded into a literal powder. Trade pemmican would have been rougher, which is what I ended up making here.

Next render the fat in a saucepan over medium-low heat. With a metal strainer or spoon, remove any chunks that do not melt so only liquid fat is left. Pour the fat mixture over your ground meat and begin mixing it together with a spoon. Once cool enough to touch without burning your hand, begin mixing by hand to cover everything thoroughly in fat. It is best to wear gloves while mixing. After mixing, but before the fat has set, you may choose to pour your pemmican into a muffin tin or other shaped dish. Let the mixture rest until it has fully hardened.

Pemmican when kept dry has a shelf life measured not in months or years but in decades, though added fruit will shorten it. Historically, pemmican was stored in bags made of bison hide with the seams sewn with rawhide and coated in tallow to keep air and moisture out. A freezer bag or plastic container will suffice to store your pemmican. You may choose to refrigerate your pemmican, but it is not necessary. I made a bag from rabbit fur purchased at the Pembina State Museum store, and my pemmican has kept without refrigeration for over a year. The pemmican is still gritty and a bit unpleasant to my taste buds but completely edible and should remain so for many years.

For added flare, I bought a rabbit fur and sewed it into a pocket to more authentically store my pemmican. You may prefer a plastic freezer bag.

Spring has sprung, and we’ve been busy at the Pembina State Museum. Besides the usual spring cleaning, we are renovating spaces and preparing for spring and summer programs. This summer season promises to be an exciting one as we focus on an expanded schedule for Gingras Days in conjunction with Walhalla’s 175th celebration and on developing new programs that will be available at the museum.

We’ve already finished one of our renovation projects, updating the restrooms, and visitors can enjoy the improved bathrooms when they visit. Since the museum was first built in 1996, the restrooms had been a boring sea of beige. But now they are bright and colorful and so much more pleasant. The new design was inspired by the Hudson’s Bay Point Blanket with its four colored stripes of green, red, yellow, and indigo, an iconic part of the northern Plains fur trade.

This capote at the Pembina State Museum, which was made from a Hudson’s Bay Company Point Blanket, is part of our “Hands on History” display and helped inspire the restroom revamp.

We replaced the stalls, painted the ceiling, and installed new lighting. The lighting was installed first, and that improvement alone was stunning. Once the color was added and the space steam-cleaned by the contractors, the restrooms felt completely new. These pictures show the dramatic nature of the change.

The men’s room before, top, and after the renovation.

With the bathroom project complete, our attention now turns to program and event planning. “Arrows and Atlatls,” a pre-historic hunting program, is slated for introduction later this year. Atlatls, for the uninitiated, are spear throwers. The word “atlatl” derives from the Nahuatl (or Aztec) word for this ancient hunting device, found world-wide during Neolithic times. It was gradually replaced on the northern Plains by bows and arrows, with the bow appearing around A.D. 600. The atlatl had been in use for many millennia, but the bow was around for less than one millennium before Europeans introduced muskets. While visitors to the Pembina State Museum can try out our atlatl at any time weather permitting, “Arrows and Atlatls” will provide an in-depth experience for students and visitors.

Our atlatl, soon to be joined by others, is always available for visitors to try out. Just ask for a team member at the front desk to help you get started.

The objective of “Arrows and Atlatls” is to show students the advantages and disadvantages of pre-contact hunting technologies and to let them try their hand at using the tools themselves. This summer we will have scheduled atlatl demonstrations, where visitors can also participate. A few large animal targets will be available as well. Be on the lookout for a bear or bison decoy lurking around the museum.

The big event of the summer, though, is going to be the Gingras Days at the Gingras Trading Post State Historic Site near Walhalla. We are working with the Walhalla Area Chamber of Commerce to plan an amazing two-day event to coincide with the city’s 175th celebration. This will take place on July 1-2 and will include live music, vendors, and other programs.

Ryan Keplin, also known as “Fiddling Lefty,” will perform in the Walhalla parade on the morning of July 1 and then take his show over to the Gingras Trading Post for an afternoon performance of live music and folk tales. There’s no charge for admittance and anyone interested in Métis fiddle music is encouraged to attend. Vendors will also be on-site. Regional craftspeople will be on-hand selling various souvenirs and gifts.

On July 2, the Gingras site will once again be open with activities available all day. We will have “Games of Pembina’s Past” available for people to play both days of the celebration. These include grace hoops, hoop-and-stick, and trundling hoops. (Suffice to say, a lot of hoops are involved!) The house and trading post will be open both days for tours. The storeroom of the trading post will be set up with crafts on July 2. Bring the family and make your own popsicle stick ox cart. The “Red River Rendezvous” hands-on activity will also be set up in the trading room with new features representing life during the fur trade era of the early 1800s in the Red River Valley. Visitors will have the opportunity to try on a capote, a top hat, and snowshoes, and even set a trap with help from staff.

The Gingras trading room during last year’s Gingras Days. This year’s celebration promises to be even better.

These are just the plans solidified so far. More is still in the works, including improved shelving for on-site storage and the much more exciting, and relevant for visitors, improvements and programs planned for the updated conference room. The summer season promises to be very busy and very exciting!

In a quiet corner of Walhalla, tucked among some trees on the south end of town just beyond the local Lutheran church, sits an old log cabin. This structure, known as the Kittson cabin, is about 170 years old, and it looks like it. The walls are slouching outwards, the roof is sagging, and the front door is so bowed it appears it may be the only thing still holding the cabin up. Thankfully, the site will soon become louder as workers begin the process of dismantling the cabin to examine the logs and reclaim what they can in preparation for its reconstruction next year.

The Kittson cabin will soon be restored to a like-new state while preserving as much of the original material as possible.

A lot has been happening at the state’s historic sites in Walhalla the past few years, though it may not seem like it at first glance. At the Gingras Trading Post State Historic Site and now at the Walhalla State Historic Site, where the aforementioned Kittson cabin stands, restoration work has been progressing steadily. Several rotten logs and the roof shakes at the Gingras Trading Post were replaced in 2020. The following year the Gingras house had its roof replaced with fresh cedar shingles. In early September work began to replace the timber siding and windowsills of the house. The next step in the long process of restoring these sites is the dismantling, examination, and reconstruction of the Kittson cabin, which is set to begin in the coming weeks.

In 2020, the Gingras Trading Post underwent restoration work. Courtesy Steve Martens

The Gingras house with a new set of cedar shingles after their installation in late 2021. A year later, the shingles have weathered to a light gray color and look as if they have always been there.

Kobiela Brothers Construction is at work restoring rotten and weather-damaged wooden siding on the Gingras house. With the siding removed, the tenon-and-groove log construction elements are visible. Observe the newer looking logs from the 1974 reconstruction. The siding has done its job in preserving the covered material.

But what makes these cabins so important compared to others in the area? These cabins are among the last remaining buildings from the fur trade era in northeastern North Dakota representative of Red River Frame, a construction style unique to this region. Only four of these buildings still exist. They are the Kittson cabin, soon to be rebuilt, the Gingras Trading Post and house, and the Dease-Martineau House. All of these buildings can be found in Pembina County, located just a few miles from each other.

Red River Frame style is a synthesis of different architectural elements developed by the Métis, a culture born from the descendants of fur traders and their Native wives. Author and archaeologist David Burley, who has studied the origins and expressions of Métis culture in depth, noted in a 2000 Historical Archaeology article that “the ethnogenesis of Métis peoples ... involved a creolizing process in which cultural traits from many different groups were adopted. An analysis of Métis vernacular log architecture ... illustrates this clearly with individual building components derived from a number of different sources.”

Immediately noticeable about this style is that the exterior is built to maintain a level of symmetry. This element is taken from Georgian architecture, which was popular from 1714 to 1830, during the reigns of the British Kings George I, George II, George III, and George IV.

The side of the Gingras Trading Post that leads into the storage area displays characteristic Georgian symmetry.

Underneath the Georgian facade, Red River Frame combines elements of different log cabin construction, including both dovetailed corners and tenon-and-groove assembly around windows and doors. The French called these styles pièce-sur-pièce and pièce-sur-sole, respectively. French influences are strong in Métis culture, and their architecture is no exception.

At the corners of the Dease-Martineau House, you can see how the dovetailed notches of the pièce-sur-pièce style are slanted in two directions, which prevents the logs from slipping in any direction but toward each other, effectively locking the structure together and ensuring its stability. The dollar is included for scale purposes. Courtesy Steve Martens

Another unique characteristic of this style is found in the way windows, doors, and additions are made to fit Red River Frame buildings. Upright beams are attached to horizontal logs with the use of wooden pegs or are set directly into the earth. Slots are cut along the length of the upright beams. Tenons are cut into the ends of the horizontal logs, which are fitted into these slots. This feature is adapted from the pièce-sure-sole style, which had the benefit of allowing buildings to be constructed with few, if any, iron nails. Such buildings could also be disassembled and reassembled with relative ease, much like the Métis’ other famous wooden construction: the Red River ox cart.

This circa 1890 image of the Kittson Trading Post, then located in central Walhalla, shows the upright beams with horizontal logs stacked in between. Each of these horizontal logs has a narrow tenon that is fitted into the uprights. The Kittson cabin stands behind and to the right of the fallen structure in the foreground. SHSND SA C1602-00001

This amalgam of different construction methods developed in the 19th century along the Red River of the North is found nowhere else in the United States, which makes the preservation of these cabins important to local, regional, and state heritage. As such, the restoration process will be meticulous. Every piece of wood and every detail of the design will be recorded as the work progresses. When the Gingras site was restored in 1974, the buildings were first disassembled, and each design aspect as well as the state of the existing material was recorded. Then, new material was acquired, and the building was reassembled on the original location.

In this interior view of the Gingras house, the walls display the same tenon-and-groove construction as the Kittson Trading Post. Notice the original logs on display from the 1974 restoration of the house.

The Gingras house in 1960. It had been abandoned and left to deteriorate. The house was restored after it became a state historic site in 1974. SHSND SA 00101-00062

The same careful process will begin this month at Walhalla State Historic Site, where the Kittson cabin will soon be disassembled and its parts put into storage. The site will stand empty for the winter as the old material is assessed and salvaged and new materials are acquired. In spring 2023, the cabin will be reassembled at the same location with new materials to replace whatever cannot be recovered. Kobiela Brothers, the contractors responsible for the restoration, expect the project to be completed by the end of June 2023. When the dust of construction settles, a cabin that is 170 years old will have been preserved for another century so that people can study and enjoy this unique piece of history.

There is a lot to consider when developing a new program at a state museum. Who is it for? What is it meant to teach? How will that message be conveyed? Where will the program take place? Why is this topic important? On top of all that you must consider what resources are available and what safety guidelines need to be followed. Ultimately, what you want most is for participants to be engaged and eager to learn. In my experience participants seem the most engaged when they are having fun. And what better way to accomplish this than with games?

I am currently working on a program called “Games from Pembina’s Past,” which includes a short virtual element for classroom use and a longer element that will allow visitors to the Pembina State Museum to play various games from the different peoples that settled at one time or another in the region, including the Anishinaabe, Dakota, Métis, Scots-Irish, Icelandic, and others. The program is in the early stages of development. We’re gratefully receiving tribal input regarding the Indigenous games that are included to ensure these are portrayed appropriately and respectfully. Stewart Culin’s “Games of the North American Indians” has also been helpful to my research. The book provides key details such as the Indigenous names for games, designs for the game pieces, and rules for play.

The first game I worked on was hoop and stick. According to Culin, the Chippewa of the Turtle Mountains called it tititipanatuwanagi. It was played by two competitors, one of whom rolled a small hoop ahead of themselves while running. The two competitors would throw their sticks, which had forked ends or were decorated with feathers, at the webbing woven around the hoop. Points were awarded based on where the stick struck in the webbing, much like darts. No points were awarded if the stick passed completely through the hoop.

Students visiting Fort Mandan State Historic Site play a version of hoop and stick. We hope to have students playing the game here at the Pembina State Museum very soon.

The difficulty of the game can be adjusted by changing the size of the hoop. Historically, hoops have ranged from two inches up to two feet in diameter. So far, I’ve made one 12-inch hoop for the museum based on a 1903 artifact from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. The original is currently held by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In the coming weeks, I plan on making a few more hoops of varying sizes.

Pictured here is a hoop and stick set I made for the interpretive program using an embroidery hoop woven with artificial sinew to create the web pattern. The sticks are simple painted wooden dowels, with a feather attached to the end with more artificial sinew.

Culin groups different North American Indigenous games into broad categories, which prompted me to compare Indigenous games with games played by European settlers that fit into the same categories. I mentioned that hoop and stick shares some similarities to darts. Other comparisons can also be made. One that I make in the virtual element of the program is to compare a category of game played on an icy track that Culin “included under the general name of snow-snake” (which is also the name of the game itself) to the sport of curling.

Snow snake was played by almost every tribe in the colder climates of North America. The game was played with long, slender pieces of wood carved with heads resembling snakes. Another similar game that Culin includes under the umbrella category of “snow-snake” is ice gliders, also called bone sliders by Culin. Ice gliders were made with animal ribs and decorated with feathers. Snow snakes and ice gliders are slid with an underhand motion along an icy track, which has been prepared beforehand. The Chippewa often built these tracks by dragging a log through the snow and sprinkling the resulting trough with water to create an icy playing surface. Points are awarded to the player whose snow snake travels the farthest in each round.

Culin classifies snow snake as part of a category of games in which game pieces are “hurled along snow or ice.” In the case of snow snake, the pieces are often similar to darts or javelins. This type of game has obvious comparisons to curling, a team game played by sliding a large stone down an icy track toward a target area. I hope to help bridge a cultural divide for students by comparing something familiar, like curling, to something that isn’t, like snow snake or the ice glider game.

A set of ice gliders, or bone sliders, made by the staff of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.

More familiar to many North Dakota students than curling (and immediately recognizable to the Scottish settlers who built Fort Daer in Pembina in 1812) would be field or floor hockey, also known as shinny. Shinny refers to any game of field hockey where players use curved sticks to bat a ball through goalposts. The name shinny comes from an older Scottish Gaelic word, shinty, which is a game related to hurling and is of prehistoric Celtic (Irish/Scottish) origin.

European and Indigenous field hockey are uncannily similar, which may be why the Indigenous game bares the European name in Culin’s book. The Assiniboine name for the game is tah-cap-see-chah. Shinny was a common tribal game throughout North America. During the game, a buckskin or wooden ball is batted about with curved sticks by two opposing teams. According to Culin, the buckskin ball, weighted with clay or filled with cloth scraps, is the most common ball used by Plains tribes. Players are prohibited from holding the ball but in some versions of the game rules permit the swatting or passing of the ball with the hand. The object of the game is to pass the ball through a goal, usually a pair of stakes set at either end of a flat playing field.

Currently visitors to the Pembina State Museum can play hoop and stick, the hand (or stick) game, a type of guessing game, which we purchased from Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian artists, and double ball, another field sport like shinny which involves passing two balls bound by hide or string back and forth using sticks. Like shinny, the goal of double ball is to get the ball to a goal at either end of a playing field. We also have a few settler games available including hoop trundling, which involves rolling a hoop along with a stick. (Children would often race each other as they rolled the hoops.) Visitors can also try their hand at jacks and marbles, which though sometimes played today has waned in popularity. Research continues into what other types of games were played in the region both by Indigenous people and those of European origin. While we don’t have the facilities to include curling among our offerings, we do intend to add field hockey in the very near future.

This handcrafted stick game set came from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and is available for visitors to play at the Pembina State Museum. In this guessing game, one team of players hides both black and white pieces in their hands. The other team must guess which hands hold the black pieces. Score is kept by passing sticks between the teams until one team wins all the sticks.

While many of the European games like curling, field hockey, and darts are still played today, their Indigenous counterparts have been mostly forgotten over the past centuries as tribes were expected to adapt to Western culture. But there are many efforts to revive these games. One example is the Ojibwe Winter Games held annually since 2012 at Camp Nawakwa near Lac du Flambeau in Wisconsin. The games were started to educate students about the history of Native sports. Snow snake, hoop and stick, atlatl throwing, and many more Indigenous sports are played by school students during these winter games. In some small way, I, too, hope to spark interest in Indigenous games at Pembina State Museum through the development of our new program. After all, sports and games are universal pastimes that unite people around the world.