Some of the most fascinating features to observe in vertebrate fossils are pathologies. These are injuries or diseases the animal sustained over its life that left a legacy on the bones we collect. We like to think about these great, extinct beasts dominating the landscape — but what about the sick? The old? The injured? What happened to them? Living things in the past are just like living things today, each vulnerable to its own set of typical injuries. For the examples I provide below, I will be using Edmontosaurus, the duck-billed dinosaur (which also happens to be the same type of animal as Dakota the Dinomummy!).

Over the course of excavating these wondrous, giant “Cretaceous cows,” you would notice patterns in many of the bones. You would come across the standard bones and become more familiar with them, and thus would learn what they should look like as you gently scrape off the dirt . . . but the bones don’t always look the way they should. One of the most common bones to sustain injury is the tail — specifically what is called the spinous process. These long spikes sticking out of the centrum (main body) of the vertebrae are the same bumps you can feel on the back of your neck — just on the tail in this case. Interestingly, a lot of these tail injuries started healing before the animal died. Evidence of this healing includes breaks with a large callus (massive growth) of spongy bone around the breaks to stabilize fractures, or pockets and holes that were draining pus. The oldest animals even show evidence of arthritis on the ends of the spinous processes. Vertebrae also had a high chance of getting stepped on, perhaps while the animals slept in their large herds.

This spinous process shows just a touch of what could be arthritis, but gives you a good idea of what one of these tail bones would look like.

This broken spinous process is a mass of rough bone growth that had an active infection in it. The arrow is pointing to a lesion that was most likely an exit for pus.

Damage happened during life to this tail, with the healed result being a fusion of two tail bones together.

This trio of caudal (tail) vertebrae (not from the same animal) all show breaks on the top-most portion of their spinous processes. The zoomed-in spine at right shows a different angle of the break, with the bone offset while healing.

Series of caudal vertebrae with crushing damage. Vertebra C had nearly healed from a horizontal break that split the bone in two. Vertebra D was not as far along in the healing process. Vertebrae E and F split vertically in half and were riddled with infection. Pus-draining lesions can be seen scattered throughout the bone.

This caudal vertebra is odd — it has lost the prezygopophyses [G] that connect the bone to the one in front of it, yet the area of bone has healed. The back end of the bone also shows damage, with another lesion.

This spinous process is one of my personal favorites — just LOOK at that gnarly arthritis and infection! Crazy! AND a break on top of that.

The tail wasn’t the only bit of the animal to sustain injury. At the fossil site these came from, hand injuries were more common than foot injuries — at least you can run with a sore hand. But you become a Tyrannosaurus snack with a sore foot. Below are two hand bones that show damage. Both are set next to a normal, undamaged bone for comparison.

This hand bone shows some possible arthritis in what would have been the pinky finger.

This hand bone shows an interesting pucker on one end, which slowed the growth of the bone. It is much shorter than it should have been.

I used to think being a custodian was just a matter of mastering the skills typical of janitorial work, occasionally managing the unexpected, and having some ability to empathize with people. But it isn’t. Custodians must constantly grapple with the challenges that come with any job: ensuring we have the resources we need to do our jobs, managing time, and dealing with changing circumstances, incomplete information, organizational culture, and our own shortcomings.

Custodian Bob Canter starting the evening shift at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum.

Business innovator Nilofer Merchant wrote, “Culture is a set of habits that allows a group to cooperate by assumption rather than by negotiation.” When visitors enter the awe-inspiring North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, they assume safety, and they assume cleanliness. It is the custodian’s mission to ensure— through diligence, awareness, initiative, and responsibility — that those expectations are met.

As you might imagine, Heritage Center custodians clean and maintain public spaces like the museum galleries, restrooms, and event spaces.  But we also clean and maintain the non-public areas in the lower level of the building: workshops, laboratories, offices, and special project rooms. So there is quite a variety of skills involved. On one shift, while cleaning the usual cubicles, restrooms, offices, and employee lounge, I may also oil a squeaky door hinge, or discover, report, and mitigate a leak in a mechanical room. On tomorrow’s shift I may replace the brush bearings on a floor scrubbing machine.

Our duties fall under three larger, overarching objectives: first, protect the safety of the visitors and employees; second, protect the building itself; and third, assure visitor and employee comfort, enjoyment, and satisfaction. Custodians, in our continuous process of constructing a clean and safe environment, are often invisible to our building’s users. We are behind the scenes; out of sight and out of mind. In short, my role is a little like Batman (if Batman also had the talents of his butler, Alfred): Protect people. Protect the building. Assure comfort.

Custodian Josh Masser mopping the terrazzo floor of the Northern Lights Atrium and front entrance at the end of the day.

Examples of safety include sanitation of restrooms and “touch surfaces” like door handles, countertops, glass cases, and water fountains. Other safety watch-outs are slip hazards from leaks and spills. Gallery carpet tiles can loosen from their adhesive during exhibit changes and become a trip hazard. I can’t be there to swoop in like Batman and catch the child who trips on a loose carpet tile, but I can prevent the accident from happening in the first place.

Building protection involves watching for and reporting leaks and stains, a loosened door plate, a failing window seal. Are we custodians using appropriate products for buildings surfaces? Are we keeping three-year-old humans from climbing on the 13,000-year-old mastodon?

The National Association for Interpretation, a professional organization for museums and historical sites, says, “Cleanliness is a cardinal principle — people will remember dirty bathrooms more than anything else.” I agree that cleanliness is closely tied to enjoyment of a public space. I think it engenders a feeling of safety and comfort (even if subconsciously) among our visitors and employees. It sends a signal that here, in this place, someone cares.

Bob dusting the tin sculptures displayed near the James River Café.

Hospitality in ancient cultures involved welcoming the stranger and offering him food, shelter, and safety —the hospitality for which the Mandan villages were famous. My approach to custodial work is through a lens of goodwill.

April is an exciting time in the State Archives. The month includes two weeks that are relevant to archival collections. National Library Week (April 7–13), promoted by the American Library Association, raises awareness of the importance of libraries and their staff to our communities. National Library Preservation Week (April 22–28) raises awareness of preserving items held in library collections across the country.

This year’s theme for National Library Week is “Libraries = Strong Communities.” With this in mind, a couple of unique examples from our library collection stand out.

First, the oldest cataloged item in our library collection is a 1749 published report related to the Hudson’s Bay Company. This is a beautiful example of mid-18th century publishing. Entitled Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the State and Condition of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson’s Bay and of the Trade Carried on There, the report deals with the land granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which included parts of present-day North Dakota that fell within the bay’s drainage basin. The trade in furs and skins is noted, as well as other aspects of trade with Native Americans in the region.

It is fascinating to consider that when the report was published, Great Britain and France still vied for control of North America. George Washington was a teenager, and many of our nation’s Founding Fathers were still children — some not even born yet.

Pages 216-217 of Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the State and Condition of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson’s Bay and of the Trade Carried on There (1749). Photo by Daniel Sauerwein

Another unique book in our library holdings is The Kindergarten Book (1906). At first glance, one might think this book deals with educating youngsters, but its subject matter is not as innocent as the title implies. It was a publication of the Kindergarten Club, a group of powerful political figures in early North Dakota history. Signatures in the front of the book include Judson LaMoure, one of the first legislators in North Dakota. The Club also included North Dakota politicians Alexander McKenzie and Jerry Bacon, as well as Govs. Louis B. Hanna and Elmore Sarles.

The book is full of poetry and boisterous drinking songs set to popular melodies of the day. The contents of the book denote a group of men who engaged in raucous partying, drinking, and gambling, and perhaps some behind-the-scenes power politics.¹

Pages 28-29 of the The Kindergarten Book (1906). Photo by Daniel Sauerwein.

While we actively engage in preservation of items every day in the Archives, one special activity that some staff engage in is book repair. Sarah Walker, head of reference in the Archives, wrote an earlier blog post on what goes on when the repair group gets together. She noted that it is not a service provided to patrons, but is something the staff does to keep heavily used materials in our collections accessible for future generations as long as possible.

Repairs usually involve gluing loose pages back in place, or shoring up binding, but some are more involved and require the rebinding of the book with special tape. Books deemed too fragile for such repairs are instead housed in phase boxes to protect them from as much wear and tear as possible. The repair efforts do not restore the book completely, but are important to keeping the documented information around for future generations.

As you can see, the State Archives is more than individual pieces of paper or photographs. We also have books that illustrate the changing political history of North Dakota. When those books show signs of frequent use by researchers and need some love and attention, our staff does what it can to keep them around and available for years to come. Each spring, a season of growth and rebirth, we look forward to new additions to our State Archives collection and to repairing items in need.

¹¹ “Kindergarten Club Records, 1906, 1971 Collection Overview,” Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, accessed April 1, 2019, https://apps.library.und.edu/archon/index.php?p=collections/findingaid&id=858&q=Kindergarten+Club.

There’s an old cliché that “history is written by the winners,” and it’s an uncomfortable fact that the winners — culturally, socially, and economically — have mostly been men. The result is a historical narrative biased toward men’s deeds with an often deafening silence surrounding women’s accomplishments. Women, however, have always been a part of making history. In recent years women’s stories have come to light and are adding to, if not rewriting, part of our shared history. Here are just a few remarkable women from North Dakota’s past.

Dr. Fannie Dunn Quain
Dr. Fannie Dunn Quain (1874–1950) was North Dakota’s first licensed female physician. As a young woman, she worked multiple jobs to save money to go to medical school. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1898 with a doctor of medicine degree. After moving to Bismarck, she became a prominent figure in the area and was elected Burleigh County’s superintendent of schools. She had an active private medical practice for many years, but later turned her efforts to organizing the North Dakota Tuberculosis Association.

Linda Slaughter
Linda Warfel Slaughter (1843–1911) accompanied her husband, a military surgeon, to Fort Rice in 1870 (http://blog.statemuseum.nd.gov/blog/linda-warfel-slaughter-bismarck-pio…). After moving to Fort Hancock, near Bismarck, she effectively filled the role of postmaster, although technically her husband held the position. She was a prolific newspaper columnist, Bismarck’s first teacher, Burleigh County’s first superintendent of schools, a leading figure in the woman suffrage movement and an organizer of the Ladies Historical Society, which later became today’s State Historical Society of North Dakota.

Minnie Craig
In 1923 Minnie Davenport Craig (1883–1966) was elected to the North Dakota House of Representatives. Ten years later she became the first woman speaker of a state House of Representatives in the nation. She ultimately served six terms in the North Dakota legislature and was a Republican National Committeewoman for North Dakota from 1928–1932.

Florence “Tree Tops” Klingensmith
Florence Anderson Klingensmith (1904–1933) had an insatiable appetite for speed. Inspired by Charles Lindbergh, Klingensmith learned to fly, earning the nickname “Tree Tops” when she became North Dakota’s first female licensed pilot. She persuaded local Fargo businessmen to donate money for a plane in exchange for free advertising space on it. She bought a Monocoupe named Miss Fargo in 1929. Now licensed and with her own plane, she set out to break flying records. In 1931, over four hours, she completed 1,078 loop-de-loops, an average of four loops per minute. She did exhibition flying, and won international air races against men and women. In 1933 she tragically lost her life during a race in Chicago when a faulty wing caused her plane to crash.

Scattered Corn
Scattered Corn (1858–1940) was a respected Mandan seed keeper and daughter of the last corn priest, Moves Slowly. With no successors, his medicine bundle came to Scattered Corn, who did her best to continue the traditions and maintain the accumulated wisdom of generations. Over hundreds of years, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara gardeners had developed vegetable varieties appropriate for northern climates. Scattered Corn shared her knowledge about native agriculture and Mandan traditions. Seedman Oscar Will began selling corn seeds originally sourced through Scattered Corn in his seed catalog. Ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore recorded Scattered Corn singing ancient prayer songs. Because of Scattered Corn’s generosity, many aspects of Mandan agricultural traditions have been preserved for future generations.

Last summer the Chateau de Mores State Historic Site had the pleasure of welcoming Quinn Rick from Dordt College (Sioux Center, Iowa) as an intern. As part of this internship, Quinn’s supervising professor, Dr. Paul Fessler, made a trip to Medora to check in on him. Our work with Quinn impressed Dr. Fessler, and he told Quinn that not many interns are so lucky. Our success with Quinn has to do with my philosophy on what an internship is. It is a pretty simple philosophy: an internship is a learning experience.

Chateau Intern Quinn Rick working on ammunitions exhibit case.

It is all too common for companies or organizations to look at an intern as free labor or grunt labor. Interns fetch coffee and tackle the tasks that nobody else wants—the idea of “paying one’s dues.” The truth is that internships are about learning how to do a job. My background is in education. To me, my time student teaching was my internship. One of the best things that my cooperating teacher ever did for me was to hand the reins of the class over to me. I had done observation with him, and he wanted me to have the experience of teaching the class. On the first day, he introduced himself and then turned the class over to me. For the next 16 weeks, I was the teacher. I will always credit this experience with my classroom success.

I wanted to give Quinn that same experience. I tried to train him to take my job.¹ My job does not require me to fetch coffee for anyone, so I was not going to ask him to fetch coffee. I do clean the bathrooms and take out the trash in Chimney Park, and Quinn got to spend some time working with me on that. As we schlepped bags of refuse to the dumpster, I told Quinn that this was my site. How it looks and how visitors experience it is on me.

Quinn's work table

But unlike my cooperating teacher, I could not just throw Quinn the keys and say, “It’s your site now, I will be back in September for it.” There are some things that he was not ready to handle on his own, but I did not shy away from teaching him these tasks. Instead of having him fill out the daily deposits and purchase orders, I went through them with him. I included him in meaningful conversations about site management and had him sit in on meetings. He went with me to a city council meeting and talked to me about how we handle all the difficult parts of the job.

I have always been a jack-of-all-trades, and it means that I do a little bit of everything around the site. For that reason, Quinn did too. He gave tours of the Chateau, helped with inventory in the store, covered lunch breaks, and worked on other projects. Quinn helped with public relations and helped with the creation of Augmented Reality experiences in the gallery. He got to see other sites like the Former Governors’ Mansion State Historic Site, the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, and the Billings County Museum. At each of these places, he got to talk to the folks who work there. They discussed the challenges facing their sites and the work that they do to overcome them.

Ammunitions exhibit case at the start of the season (left) and end of the project (right)

We wanted Quinn to leave here with an experience that he could put on his resume that was truly impressive. His big assignment was the reorganization of an ammunitions exhibit case that we have not opened in decades. He had to catalog the items, document his process, make decisions on what steps he needed to take to update the exhibit, and write up artifact labels. For this project, we also sent Quinn to Bismarck to work with Jenny Yearous, State Historical Society curator of collections. She taught him about various preservation techniques and how to handle artifacts properly. He worked with Genia Hesser, curator of exhibits, on solutions for making the case better. Quinn identified and organized the artifacts in the cabinet by category, removed excess artifacts, and created a list of needed labels to be printed. After putting his new skills to use, Quinn made the exhibit case look great, and we are proud of all his hard work.

Quinn and Interpreter Jesse Whumaker work together to open the ammunitions exhibit case

In the ten weeks that Quinn was with us, we threw a lot of stuff at him, and he handled it well. He was a valuable member of our team last summer. As our site moves forward, I hope to see us offer more internship opportunities. There are many projects that the staff and I want to get done out here. We are continually striving to have the best site. We have some pretty ambitious goals, and they are going to create some great opportunities for future interns. If you or someone you know is interested in interning at the Chateau de Mores, feel free to contact me at cdorfschmidt@nd.gov for more information.

¹ This post was written when Chris Dorfschmidt was Site Supervisor at the Chateau de Mores State Historic Site. On April 1, 2019, Chris became a Historic Sites Regional Manager for the State Historical Society. He currently oversees staff and operations at the Chateau de Mores State Historic Site, as well as various other sites across North Dakota.

As someone who is tasked with increasing public access to our archaeological collections, here is one of the biggest challenges: some artifacts are very small, while exhibit cases can be very big. In fact, archaeological artifacts that tell some of the biggest stories about North Dakota’s past can be measured in mere centimeters. When our average visitor might spend less than 20 minutes in an entire gallery, chances are high that the smallest artifacts could be overlooked.¹ In a museum that comprises five galleries, thousands of displayed artifacts, dozens of tech and media installations, and tens of thousands of words of interpretive text — how do you help visitors appreciate some of the smallest representations of our state’s history?

The first installation of the Small Things Considered artifact photo exhibit, 2016.

When confronting this challenge in 2016 while planning for the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act, we opted to display these collections in the form of a photo exhibit. Titled Small Things Considered, the exhibit featured 12 large (11”x17”) color photos of archaeological objects. The exhibit was a hit, and ended up being an effective way to give some of our smaller collections the spotlight. So we decided to plan another one for 2019!

Putting together this exhibit is a team effort. First we need the go-ahead from the Audience Engagement & Museum Division, which schedules exhibit spaces. Once the space is secured, our division director and collections staff brainstorm about what unique or interesting artifacts we have come across lately. Then we either find photos we already have of that object, or we take new photos. Sometimes we find an artifact that is amazing to look at, but we can’t include it — because we don’t know enough about it to write an informative caption, or we feel that it needs more context than this type of exhibit allows. Other times we might find an artifact we know a lot about, but we don’t include it because it doesn’t photograph well, is too big, or we have a similar example on display elsewhere in the galleries. This time around we started out with more than 20 photo possibilities, narrowed it down to 14, but couldn’t get to 12. They were all too good, so we just bought two more frames!

Bone toothbrush recovered from Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s home at Fort Abraham Lincoln, ca. 1872–1876. The holes in the head of the toothbrush would have been filled with tufts of animal hair, usually boar bristles.

While our collections assistant Meagan processes the photos, I start researching each object so that I can write the captions. This is the best part.

I have mentioned before that we manage millions of artifacts, so we always have a lot to do. There are a lot of emails, digital records, databases, paperwork, and phone calls involved in managing a collection this size, which means that there are many days that I do not handle a single artifact. But this exhibit project affords me the luxury of focusing on one artifact at a time. I have always considered it a privilege to take care of these objects, and I take any opportunity I can to get to know each one of them better.

There are objects that I initially think I am not interested in (e.g., coins come to mind), but after a few hours of research, I find myself talking to anyone who will listen about the history of the nickel or the miracle that is a fish scale. And if I am being honest, not all of this is rosy — I also spent an afternoon tearing my hair out trying to identify the Tiffany & Co. design on a silver spoon (extra challenging when the handle — the most identifiable feature of an historic spoon — is completely missing).

My typical approach is to write captions that are too long, because I can’t bear to leave out any of the interesting information I found. Then our curator of exhibits and our editing team rein me back in, and we miraculously condense this research to about 50 words per artifact. Our division director gives final approval on photos and captions, and the rest is up to the exhibit installation team. Here are a few highlights:

1. 1866 Shield Nickel
I’d like to introduce you to my new favorite nickel, which dates to 1866 and was found near Fort Rice. The rays around the “5” were believed to have complicated the striking process when these were minted. The coin’s design broke the dies or resulted in a coin whose features were not as sharp in relief as they should have been. For these reasons, the rays were removed from the design in 1867. This object represents a shift in minting practices after the Civil War.

An 1866 Shield Nickel, the first 5-cent piece to be made from a nickel-copper alloy.

2. Clay Horse Figurine
While researching the clay horse figurine from the 19th-century site of Fort Berthold pictured below, I came across a historic photo that explains who likely made it. It closely resembles the clay figurines made by students at the Fort Berthold Indian Mission School during the 1870s. Note the detail in the horse’s mane, and the eye on the side of the (broken) face. Another less complete example in the same collection has holes in the bottom, which appear from the historic photo to have been used to insert small twigs for legs. The founder of the mission (1876), Charles Lemon Hall, learned all three languages (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) spoken by the students who attended the mission school.

Clay horse figurine from Fort Berthold, ca. 1870s.

Stereoscopic image of clay or mud animals made by Native American boys at the Fort Berthold Indian Mission School, ca. 1870s. Photo by O.S. Goff. (State Archives 00088.0031)

3. Olivella shell bead
The shell bead pictured below is about ¾” long. In a typical exhibit case (which is about the size of a small closet), its details might easily be overlooked when surrounded by larger or more colorful objects. But in this picture, you can see that the pointed spire at the top has been lopped off, which creates a hole through its body. You can also see the variegated color near the top, and the texture of the whorl. These Olivella shells (Olivella dama) are from the Gulf of California and made their way along trade routes to North Dakota. The presence of Olivella shells in this region demonstrates the extent of trade networks between Native groups long before Europeans arrived.

Olivella shell bead (Olivella dama) from McLean County

It is important to display artifacts in the context of where, when, and with what other objects they were found, and our exhibit cases achieve that. The context of an artifact tells the story. This photo exhibit does not diminish the importance of context, but rather brings the beauty and details of individual objects into focus. Stop by the Merlan E. Paaverud Jr. Gallery outside the auditorium the next time you find yourself at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, and see for yourself!

¹Average visitor time tracking statistics can be found in Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach by Beverly Serrell, 1996, AltaMira Press.