Sometimes the methods archaeologists use to preserve artifacts stand in stark contrast to the objects themselves. Using modern three-dimensional (3D) scanning technology to create digital models of ancient stone technology is one of those instances. This type of image capture is becoming increasingly popular in archaeology and museum labs for its relative ease of use and the affordability of commercially available scanners, not to mention the highly detailed models produced. We purchased a 3D scanner in 2011 to aid our staff and researchers in artifact analysis, and to provide the public with better access to our collections.

NextEngine Scanner ready to create a 3D model of a stone knife in the Archaeology and Historic Preservation division of the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum.

In addition to creating a digital record of an object, archaeologists and others working in cultural heritage fields can use the models to take high-resolution measurements, create exact replicas using a 3D printer, and share high-precision digital data with colleagues.

One of the benefits of digitizing artifact collections is the ability to share those objects in a way that encourages the public to interact with the past. An artifact’s minute features are captured in greater detail with a 3D scanner than with traditional digital photography. There are about 12 million objects in the state archaeology collections. Most of these will not be on display in the galleries, but with 3D scanning, anyone with an internet connection can get a behind-the-scenes look at these collections. From the comfort of your home, you can appreciate the craftsmanship of an artifact that 3D scanning brings to life.

Screen grab of the finished scan in NextEngine StudioScan software prior to uploading the model to Sketchfab.com.

Sketchfab.com is an open source, free hosting site for 3D models. With a mouse, trackpad, or finger, the user can move and turn the object, zoom in and out, and copy the link to share with others. A user can also “Like” the model and leave a comment. The object can even be observed in virtual reality if the user has VR headset.

Navigation directions for the Sketchfab.com viewing window.

This artifact is a stone knife from Griggs County in eastern North Dakota; it was donated by a private collector. The knife was hafted, meaning it was fit into a handle that could give its user better leverage while cutting. We don’t know how old the knife is, but we do know it’s still usable and has only a small break on the base. Why do you think someone left it behind? Was it lost?

Like photographs and videos, 3D scanning is a digital medium that helps us engage with the past. Unlike those types of media, 3D models invite you to interact with an object in an almost tangible manner. So go ahead—give it a spin and feel like you’re holding history in your hand.

When we published the web-based curricula for North Dakota Studies including The Civil War in North Dakota and North Dakota People Living on the Land, we hoped to receive comments from readers that would lead to corrections, new approaches to organizing the material, and perhaps ideas for new sections. We thought that a web-based curriculum, unlike a paper textbook, could be easily changed and we welcomed the dialog that we might have with students and teachers.

Well, we have heard from nary a student nor a teacher. However, we have heard from a good number of readers who have been out of school for a long time. Their comments have brought smiles to our faces, but also some work that led to careful thought and corrections. The whole-community method of writing history is new and inspiring, but also a little worrisome and frightening at times. We take our responsibility to write accurate, thorough, and interesting history very seriously, but sometimes a nudge in a different direction is just what we need.

I will not reveal the names of the people who wrote, but we want to share a few of their comments with you.

A descendant of Siegmund Rothhammer wrote to tell us we had his name and some other details wrong. Rothhammer traveled to North Dakota in 1864 with General Sully. His assignment was to observe and take notes on plants, animals, soil, minerals, and climate.

Our correspondent’s email sent us on a search for the errors. Certain that I had copied his name carefully, I returned to the archival source. Indeed, my spelling matched the documents. But one cannot easily dismiss the family knowledge that our correspondent had, so I carried on. Finally, I found the source of the error. The microfilm copy of Rothhammer’s report had come to us from another state with the error already embedded. A further search in other resources confirmed the error and we made the correction.

Two Bears was a Dakota leader who defended his peaceful hunting camp at Whitestone Hill in 1863.  Our Civil War piece on Whitestone Hill was criticized for calling the conflict a battle, instead of a massacre. SHSND 1952-5644a

Another comment came to us from a descendant of Two Bears who defended his hunting camp from an army attack at Whitestone Hill in 1863. This correspondent asked that we reconsider the use of the word “battle” in the title of our story about the conflict at Whitestone Hill. “Massacre” was more appropriate, he argued, and gently scolded us for this error. I agreed with him, and made the change to the website. Again, using words found in original resources had led to our error.

Some correspondents have praised these educational websites, and we are proud as peacocks when we hear from happy readers. Recently, a British woman wrote to tell us how she had found North Dakota: People Living on the Land and read through much of it. She said, “I want to thank you for such a beautifully written, informative and stimulating website.”

And that’s why we love our web-based curriculum: widely read, easily corrected.

SHSND D0692. World War I Draftees shown in front of a building.

These past few months, we have seen an uptick of researchers in the Archives looking for information on World War I. This is at least partially because we are currently a century out from the Great War, as it was known at the time. An event that is so widespread and life-altering across the world evokes curiosity, reminders, and memorials.

You might think we would not have a ton from World War I in our archives, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s true that it is not our largest grouping of collections. However, we are a state entity archiving North Dakota history, and many North Dakotans served and saw battle, or pinched and saved and donated for the cause. The Great War impacted everyone, including North Dakota. Therefore, we have some collections related to it.

SHSND 10935 P014, 10935 P345, 10935 P149. Several posters from our WWI collection.

One of our most popular World War I collections, #10327, consists of four scrapbooks of letters from soldiers that were printed in various newspapers from 1918 to 1919. These oversized books contain a plethora of snapshots into a different past, allowing soldiers to share details of their daily lives and experiences in their own words.

We also have collections that deal partially with World War I. Collection #10107, for example, contains some correspondence to and from Hazel Nielson o ver several decades. This includes letters from Hazel to her family and friends while she stayed in Europe during World War I.

We also have one of the largest collection of WWI and WWII propaganda posters in the country. This is because one of our past curators, Melvin Gilmore, felt that the war posters documented such an important piece of our history, he needed to save them. He sent out a call for these documents, and received them from all corners of the world. As a result, we have war posters that are in multiple languages and in different conditions. Some are pristine, some are well-used, and all paint an interesting picture of the attitudes at the time of the war.

A screen shot of the WWI page on our website.

More books, documents, and photos can be found searching our website through ODIN, our online database. You can also venture off our website, looking through Digital Horizons, or even skimming through collections we have earmarked as related to World War I on this web page.

This year, as part of the curriculum of Dr. Joseph Stuart’s Great War class at the University of Mary, we were lucky enough to have about 20 interested and excited young men and women visit the Heritage Center and the Archives to research different facets of World War I. The class was composed of college students of different ages and interests, and developed into a cross-discipline event. Some researched war propaganda; some researched specific individuals who served; some researched the components of the mustard gas used in warfare.

Many of the students in the Great War Class at the University of Mary had never been inside an Archives before, and did not know what to expect. They came as a class multiple times, and some continued to come individually. We showed them around our Reading Room and showed them how to use our websites to locate these collections, and then they were free to discover their truths. They were kind and courteous and so excited! Their instructor informed me that at the start of every class, they started talking about what they were researching, what they were learning.

This sort of collaboration is a really cool and different way that we can help new and continuing researchers. It was incredible to watch these eager young adults work, learn, and grow as they developed their research, and as they began to understand what people went through just a century ago.

The Great War was terrible in many ways, but it is helpful to study it and learn from it, for all generations. We are lucky to be able to provide that service, and to see students use our collections to bring new knowledge and perspectives to an old story.

KFYR photo. One of the students worked at our local news station, and put together a report that aired on local news channels of the work they were doing, still available to read on this page.

Many of the students in the Great War Class at the University of Mary had never been inside an Archives before, and did not know what to expect. They came as a class multiple times, and some continued to come individually. We showed them around our Reading Room and showed them how to use our websites to locate these collections, and then they were free to discover their truths. They were kind and courteous and so excited! Their instructor informed me that at the start of every class, they started talking about what they were researching, what they were learning.

This sort of collaboration is a really cool and different way that we can help new and continuing researchers. It was incredible to watch these eager young adults work, learn, and grow as they developed their research, and as they began to understand what people went through just a century ago.

The Great War was terrible in many ways, but it is helpful to study it and learn from it, for all generations. We are lucky to be able to provide that service, and to see students use our collections to bring new knowledge and perspectives to an old story.

What’s the best time you’ve had in a museum? And what made that visit so awesome?

Part of our work in the Communications & Education Division is to find out what our visitors want and need to have the best (or most life changing) museum experience.

The late Governor Art Link once described the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum as “the people’s place.” Our division staff strives to keep his words in mind with everything we do. We focus on providing historically accurate, memorable, educational, and entertaining experiences for 230,000 people coming to this place each year. Quite simply, we want you to learn, have fun, and love museums.

Visitors of all ages and backgrounds come here to discover, to occupy kids for a few hours, to conduct academic research, to enjoy time with friends, to disconnect, to enjoy a program, to sip a latte in the café, or to come in from the cold. With so many motives for museum visits, we use research tools to help us understand what’s most important to you.

We conduct surveys, offer questionnaires during programs, conduct focus groups, compile community input, make comment cards available, and monitor what interests you on our websites and social media. That data helps us make informed decisions on future programs, exhibits, and even where our tourist brochures are placed. Your comments make a difference and shape the way we serve the public.

Here are a few key items that were collectively important to our 2016 visitors:

You requested more family activities. We provided more family friendly experiences and had an enthusiastic public response. The opening of the Treehouse exhibit for young visitors has provided fresh energy and laughter in the building. We added programs for toddlers and parents, new art activities, and more free family films. The Museum Division staff also enhanced a popular hands-on dinosaur interactive in the Geologic Time gallery featuring a T. rex battling a Triceratops. Your feedback caused us to stretch in new child-friendly ways, and we are grateful.

You requested more traveling exhibits to bring the outside world into our state. “I can’t afford to travel, so I appreciate having national exhibits brought here,” wrote one commenter. We listened. In 2016, we offered the Smithsonian’s Green Revolution exhibit and Shakespeare’s First Folio exhibit. Teaser alert: Watch for the national Chocolate exhibit opening on May 27. Everything’s better with chocolate, museums included.

You wanted easy access to history content at your fingertips. Many of you have commented that our agency website is difficult to navigate. We agree, and we’re working on it. You’ll see a facelift in 2017. Meanwhile, our staff launched a new State Museum website to help tourists and locals better plan visits and experience parts of the museum virtually.

We discovered that our social media subscribers can’t get enough historic photos of blizzards. One December Facebook post reached over 220,000 people. Personal connections to history matter. We understand and will keep working to find and share historical stories and objects that have an impact.

Cars parked in the Kirkwood Mall parking lot in Bismarck were covered in snow up to their windows during the April 1997 blizzard. SHSND 32228-02-10

Sometimes we can’t honor every request, like the suggestion of a grade schooler who let us know he would prefer a green John Deere tractor to the red Case ag cab on exhibit. But we do consider every request.

While we can’t change a life with every visit, we do promise to offer some pretty amazing moments of viewing rare fossils, a few shrieks of joy from our Treehouse toddlers, and some engaging ways to explore your own connections to North Dakota history—thanks to your helpful comments. As we begin 2017, I invite you to continue sharing questions and ideas.

PAR-2016015 Japanese WWII Yosegaki Hinomaru, good luck flag.

A Japanese flag (PAR-2016015) and a piece of wood with Japanese writing (PAR-2016085) were unaccessioned items recently found in the museum collections storage area (see Lost and Found in the Collections). Lacking any documentation or provenance on these items and with similar, well-documented objects already present in the General Collection, the Museum Collections Committee declined the objects for the collection. After careful deliberation, the committee determined the best route for these objects would be to turn them over to the Obon Society. The Obon Society is a nonprofit organization that specializes in the repatriation of war prizes taken from Japan during World War II. They specifically focus on the repatriation of Good Luck flags, Yosegaki Hinomaru. Before leaving home, it was common for a soldier’s family and friends to write well wishes and to encourage bravery in battle on a small Japanese flag. The flag was then presented to the soldier and the soldier carried the flag with him throughout his time in the war. It was believed that the Yosegaki Hinomaru held a power with their messages that would watch over the soldier and see him through difficult times.The Yosegaki Hinomaru were popular war prizes among US soldiers, and many flags were taken from Japanese soldiers and brought back to the United States. We currently have 3 Yosegaki Hinomarus in the Society’s collection. Now, many veterans and family members of WWII veterans are returning these flags and other war prizes back to Japan. The flags hold deep meaning for Japanese families. For many families, these returned war prizes are the only remains of the soldier they will ever receive.

Although the Obon Society focuses most of their efforts on the good luck flags, they accept other personal items that were taken from Japanese servicemen including diaries and letters. For this reason, we also transferred the piece of wood with writing on it to the Obon Society. The writing on the wood gives identifying information, similar to the kind of information that would be on a military dog tag. Hopefully the Obon Society will be able to trace the name written on the wood to a living family member.

The Obon Society is not always successful in their endeavors, but they try to send all items back to a family member. If that is not possible, they try to find the community the soldier was from and give it to a community center, local government, or even a local shrine.

The Obon Society believes that returning these war prizes is an exercise of goodwill and friendship between two nations and a symbol of reconciliation. It can bring closure to families both in Japan and the United States. The Obon Society’s work has been endorsed by the American Embassy in Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Museum Collections Committee believed this was an opportunity for the State Historical Society of North Dakota to contribute to a humanitarian cause.

The State Historical Board approved the repatriation action at their October 10, 2016, meeting. The proper paperwork was filled out and the flag and wood were shipped to the Obon Society in November. We have since received a thank you letter letting us know we will be notified when the objects are being researched and whether or not the Obon Society was able to trace the items to the family or town from which they came.

If you would like to find out more about the Obon Society and their mission, visit http://obonsociety.org. You can also learn more from the video, A Peaceful Return.

If you were to look at a map of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation with Arikara elders living in White Shield (North Dakota) today, they would tell you where they used to live. They would point to where their houses were, their relatives’ houses, their school, and the berry patches they walked to with their grandmothers. They would point to the churches, roads, and cemeteries, and the gardens they had to weed in the morning before they could play with their friends. They would describe these in astonishing detail. And this would be all the more astonishing because they would be pointing to the middle of the nearly 200-mile-long Lake Sakakawea. Nishu, the home they describe, has been under water since 1954.

Even, even to this day, if I jump in a boat, and I take that boat out on the lake, invariably I will go downriver. Go down the lake. Pretty soon I’ll be circling around and telling my grandkids or my kids, “I used to live right under this water right here.” (Almit Breuer, former Nishu resident)

Map of Fort Berthold communities inundated by the Garrison Reservoir, showing previous river channel and current lake boundaries. (SHSND AHP Files)

Nishu was a 20th-century settlement on the Missouri River, established by the Arikara in the 1890s. It marked an important chapter in Arikara history, in which this Native nation simultaneously grappled with the effects of the U.S. government’s assimilation policies and maintained many ancestral traditions, such as corn agriculture. In the 1950s, they watched as the place they had made their home was slowly swallowed by the newly constructed Garrison Reservoir. Although it is no longer accessible, it continues to be a significant heritage place for Arikara people today.

Project participant and former Nishu resident Mary Bateman (W. Murray)

Very little information about Nishu exists in the written record. Furthermore, the people who remember living there are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. This created a sense of urgency about documenting Nishu before people’s memories and experiences of it were gone forever. Younger generations have no visual cues for remembering Nishu, because they have only known that area to be a lake. This creates a serious disconnect between generations who have experienced the landscape in completely different ways. Since preserving the physical remnants of this place was not possible, we sought to preserve its intangible history – the memories, knowledge, and experiences of the people who knew it best.

Arikara elders Jerry White, Sr., Rodney Howling Wolf, and Duane Fox look at a map of Nishu. (W. Murray)

In 2014, the State Historical Society collaborated with the Arikara Cultural Center (ACC) in White Shield to conduct an oral history project. The goals were multifold, but the priority was to create a local archive of Nishu memories to benefit the contemporary Arikara community. Namely, we wanted younger generations to have a way to access this chapter of their past in the absence of physical reminders on the landscape. We are grateful to Dorreen Yellow Bird, elder liaison for the Arikara, for her support as she helped us connect with people who used to live in Nishu and the neighboring Elbowoods (also underwater).

Interviewing Joyce Nolan, former Nishu resident. (W. Murray)

Over several months, Dr. Brad Kroupa (ACC) and I interviewed 15 people, most of whom lived in Nishu. Some were either familiar with Nishu or had relatives who had told them stories about Nishu. Thus far, we have collected more than 30 hours of video and audio footage describing life in Nishu. Interviews recount everything from the central role of horses in transportation to the persistence of traditional kinship roles to what it was like receiving initial news about the Garrison Dam development that would destroy their homes. For example, we learned exactly how much kids dreaded having to help their parents weed the garden, the specific ways Arikara women prepared corn, whose father had a beautiful singing voice, the significance of military service in Arikara ceremony, the Nishu school bus route, who accidentally set their grandparents’ barn on fire, whose relatives had knowledge of healing, and what aspects of Nishu life people miss most today (and much more).

What we heard most strongly is that Nishu residents took care of one another. Despite the considerable distance between houses (owing to allotment policy), people visited one another often and unannounced, shared in subsistence labors such as gardening and cattle raising, and were connected by a strong sense of familial responsibility. People’s nostalgia about Nishu was tied to feelings of interdependence and support. Listen to this audio clip from our interview with Magdalen Yellow Bird, talking about the importance of visiting in Nishu.

Arikara Congregational Church in Nishu. SHSND Archives 0041-0260.

Understanding the Nishu experience casts new light on how traumatic the Garrison Dam was for Fort Berthold residents. The Garrison Reservoir split the reservation into five segments. Short visits to relatives on horseback became burdensome, hours-long car rides. The flooding of the most fertile agricultural land meant that corn agriculture–central to Arikara lifeways and identity for centuries– was no longer possible. The relocation also forced the Arikara into participating more fully in a cash economy, which prioritized self-sufficiency and individual property ownership. This undermined the communal aspects of their subsistence traditions and contributed to the partial erosion of the familial connections and obligations that had served to foster a sense of community in Nishu.

Mrs. Sitting Bear (Arikara) gathering corn (date unknown). SHSND Archives 10190-00791.

The Arikara Cultural Center is now using what was learned in the Remembering Nishu project to start community-building and wellness initiatives in White Shield, including the development of a community garden and youth research projects. In a few months these transcripts, audio, and video files will be available for you to review in full at the State Historical Society in Bismarck and the ACC in White Shield. In them, you will discover Nishu’s vital role in Arikara history and find insights into the human experience that extend beyond North Dakota. Through Nishu we understand the complex impacts of landscape loss and the role of tradition in creating healthy communities.

We are grateful to all project participants for being so generous with their time and knowledge, for their commitment to the preservation of Arikara heritage, and their profound concern for the well-being of future generations.