This summer, as collections interns, we had two major projects. The first was discussed in the last post by my fellow intern, Meg Glazier-Anderson (http://blog.statemuseum.nd.gov/blog/teeth-cleaning). The second was the Recent Acquisitions Case.

The purpose of collections care and maintenance—and museums themselves—is to preserve heritage and history for future generations as best we can. Collections care goes beyond maintaining an updated catalog, periodic inventory, and correct storage practices. It revolves around sharing and exploring history with the public. Telling the stories we have collected, preserved, and maintained helps connect future generations with their past and keep true to the ideals of what a museum is and should be.

We interns tried to keep that in mind as we developed the Recent Acquisitions Case. The case is located in the Corridor of History, near the Adaptation Gallery: Geologic Time. Every year new interns search out artifacts and stories they would like to include in the case. When a list is finalized, our next steps are creating a layout for placement of the artifacts, writing labels, researching related materials, and making dozens of small adjustments as things change and stories become more cohesive. At the end of our collective time, with only about six weeks to design the case, interns de-installed last year’s exhibit and installed the new.

Layout experiments. We found it useful to adjust our layouts on the full scale.

There are very few requirements or criteria for the case, but artifacts must have been acquired by the museum within the last year. Though most of our artifacts came from the Museum Division general collection, we worked with the Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division and the North Dakota Geological Survey’s paleontologists to discuss some of their recent finds as well. We had an abundance of choices. Since there is no timeline we had to stick to, nor just one story to tell, we took advantage of the wildly varying objects within the museum’s collections. Each intern chose a few pieces she liked for the interesting story, unique construction, or nostalgia, and together we put the disparate objects into related sections and stories.

A bottle of “St. Jakob’s Oel” from Fort Rice, one of the pieces from the Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division’s collections.  (Photo by David Nix).

For those who have not seen the case, it spans prehistoric time to the early 2000s; from a Subhyracodon occidentalis skull—an ancient rhino—to an iMac computer. There are Barbies, a bowling dress, 19^th century medicine bottles, and musical instruments, among other things. The case proved a real chance for us not only to show off our exhibit design skills (and gain a few more) but to show off the breadth of the collection. It’s not a large case, all things considered--12 feet x 8 feet x 3 feet, and yet it contains so many stories, objects, and ideas.

The process of putting the case together, from artifact selection to installation, was an adventure in group work, constant readjustment, and often asking advice from the people who do this every day and with whom we worked closely. We wanted to share the stories we get to work with every day and show our visitors how much a museum can discover and share.

The three museum division interns—Meg, Maria, and Elenore—in front of the installed case. (photo by Genia Hesser)

Left: Expansion phase pictured here is of the Treehouse children’s exhibit, now fully finished and ready to go. Each phase seemed like a new gift to unwrap. (Photo by Brian Austin)

Right: This photo is of my supervisor and me at the Legislative Reception, where we were allowed into the construction areas. I had to wear a hard hat and a vest. Other staff here (Becky Barnes) decorated my hard hat so I could feel more myself.

When the State Historical Society’s expansion occurred, a lot of planning went into the exhibits that would populate the new and existing spaces. While I was uninvolved with that process in my role here, I really was eager to see what would be used. Staff who were not part of the installation process were not given ready access to the areas (understandably, or they may have had a few of us—okay, me—underfoot). So whenever we were given permission to sneak over and watch construction going on, or see a hint of what was going to be installed, it was exciting.

But I admit, as excited as I was for everything else, I really was looking to see what audio resources might be used from the State Archives.

I’ve talked about audio and video resources several times before; I wrote about conducting oral history interviews in my second blog post, and discussed the idea of transcripts of these interviews (or lack thereof), in my third blog post. I often group audio and video resources together, because there are some similarities between the two, and because they do go together in many ways. However, I primarily work with the audio files of these types of collections.While both are very important, the audio files are a little more dear to my heart.

We have various types of audio formats housed at the State Historical Society. Reel-to-reel, audio cassettes, microcassettes, records, and CDs are typical items in our collections. We also have some files that are formed or created as digital files. Just as is the case with any other collection, all of these must be stored specifically and properly in cooler conditions, and monitored for breakdown of materials.

Unlike some other items, however, the intrinsic historic value of the item has little to do with the structure of the format (which does admittedly still provide us with history and a timeline, showing the technology at the time). The value comes from accessing what is on the cassette, or record, or CD. Which means, we really need to find ways to preserve it so we can continue to use it.

When I was a very little girl, cassettes were all the rage. (It was the 1980s and 1990s, after all.) I loved listening to all sorts of things, including music, and books on tape. I had one book on tape (A Sesame Street Christmas) that I listened to so many times, I wore the tape out. My mother actually purchased several more copies for me, because I kept wearing them out. I had other cassettes that I listened to so frequently that the tape pulled off of the reels, or wrinkled, or just jammed up in the tape player.

Obviously, the act of playing something so you can listen to it can cause wear or damage. But historic interviews and moments captured in time—those can’t be repurchased or reproduced. People want to interact with their past, and as archivists, we also want people to interact with their past. If we have an item here, we want to keep it here for the future—but we also want you to be able to hear the voice of your great-grandmother who settled in Minto in 1900.

Since around 2009, I have been increasingly working with these various audio components, transferring them to digital audio files. We did these only on request before I began working with these collections, and we did not store the files, or even have procedures set to name the files. In the years since, I have learned a ton about how to work with these formats.

Today, I have a set-up that allows me to plug different types of audio equipment into my computers and run the content through the software we use, the free program Audacity, transferring old audio to the very new digital formats. I save each file as an MP3, which is more compressed and easily accessed, as well as WAV, which is a more standardized, uncompressed file.

Fast forward to the opening of the exhibits of the State Historical Society’s expanded museum.

Our museum space is a treasure trove of items from all across the agency. I am pleased to say that both video and audio files from the Archives did appear in the exhibits, along with maps, photos, and other documents. But nothing quite made me feel the same as when I found one of the hubs that had on it, among other things, oral interviews of a few veterans that I had both interviewed and digitized.

Occasionally, I hear other bits of interviews that I have digitized, or recognize names from interviews I have worked with. Some of them are from interviews I have done myself, but many more are ones that I simply worked with years after the fact. For me, it has become a point of personal pride. You start to become protective of these files. You want to make them their best and help them find their way into the world. You have made these items ready for the future. It’s the coolest thing.

This is the second blog in a series on the Beadmaker archaeological site, a Mandan campsite dating to AD 1600-1650 near the Heart River. I previously wrote a brief background on Beadmaker, which you can find here (blog.statemuseum.nd.gov/blog/beadmaker).

Ornamental stone bead production is a fascinating aspect of life at Beadmaker. More than 120 beads in various stages of manufacture have been recovered from the site. Like other types of technology, beads were manufactured in a set of successive stages: (1) obtaining raw material, (2) initial shaping, (3) preparation for drilling and actual drilling, (4) shaping/smoothing after drilling, and (5) final shaping/rounding of bead. Mandan people might not have recognized these as distinct phases, but this type of classification helps archaeologists understand how beads were produced and the thought process behind their manufacture. At Beadmaker, stone beads come in both disc and cylindrical forms.

Stage 1: Obtaining raw material. These are pieces of soft siltstone or mudstone.

Beads were made on soft siltstones found locally in a variety of colors. It was fairly easy to carve or grind these stones. Think about scratching a piece of scoria road rock with your fingernail, and you’ll get a sense of how “soft” these rocks are.

Stage 2: Initial shaping to create a bead blank. Notice the trimmed edges and placement of “pilot holes.”

After choosing pieces of siltstone for raw material, the stoneworkers would shape the rock to create a “blank,” or a piece that begins to resemble the eventual shape of the bead. Two of these rocks show the beginning of drill marks, suggesting the initial blank shape may have been achieved or a type of pilot hole was started to give the beadmaker a sense of the center. A beadmaker had to be careful during grinding and plan ahead to the final product, because once material was removed, it could not be put back again. The softness of the material probably allowed people to modify their plans as they worked, in case they made a mistake.

Left - Stage 3: Preparation for drilling. These bead blanks have been rounded and smoothed.
Right - A very small (~1 inch) flake tool used to drill beads. This could be held between the thumb and forefinger and twisted repeatedly.

After a beadmaker attained the desired shape, beads were prepared for drilling and drilled using a small flake tool. If the bead blank broke during this process, it was either reshaped or discarded. Drilling was probably the most difficult step of manufacture; even if a blank was successfully drilled, the bead itself became more fragile with the addition of a hole. This could make further shaping after drilling risky, as the bead could snap in half. This is seen fairly regularly in the next stage of production.

Left - Stage 4: Shaping and smoothing after drilling. These beads broke either during or shortly after drilling. Note the ridged drill marks on the specimen in the top row, second from left.
Right - Two pieces of a tubular bead that refit. The center and outside are very smooth, suggesting this bead may have been finished but then accidentally stepped on or broken.

Most of these beads show drill holes that pass all the way through the center, but the beads then snapped or cracked. The two tubular pieces in the image above actually fit together, and may represent a finished bead that was accidentally trampled or crushed when people walked around their camp.

Stage 5: Finished beads. These are only about 1 cm (0.4 inches) in diameter.

Finished beads were probably prized objects used for personal adornment and unlikely to be purposefully left behind at a site. Three complete, finished beads were recovered from Beadmaker, along with broken finished beads They were probably shaped using sandstone or clinker abraders.

So why are there so many stone beads at Beadmaker? If the interpretation of a hunting camp is correct, it’s plausible that the men had downtime while waiting for scouts to return with a report on bison location and movement. Perhaps older men used this time to teach younger men how to craft these ornamental objects. With a seemingly endless supply of raw material on hand, the novice beadmakers could try their hand at bead manufacture without worrying about wasting stone.

Stone beads from On-A-Slant Village, Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park.

Stone beads appear at other Mandan sites, including Huff, Bagnell, and On-a-Slant Villages, indicating these were probably an important feature of decoration and group identification prior to the arrival of glass trade beads.

A fellow blogger recently wrote that a visit to one of North Dakota’s state historic sites is “a bit like traveling in time” (see https://blog.statemuseum.nd.gov/blog/time-traveling-historic-sites). As my friend wrote, “A visit can give me a better perspective on what is happening in my own time.” This statement is spot on, and I couldn’t agree more!

One of my ongoing interests in recent years has been the emerging field of aerial photography via Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. A “U.A.V.” (or “drone”) elevates the concept of gaining “a different perspective in our own time” a step further to include the bird’s-eye view! I’ve talked about my interest in aerial photography before, most recently in a blog on the use of this technology to monitor ongoing erosion threatening Double Ditch Indian Village State Historic Site (see http://blog.statemuseum.nd.gov/blog/an-eye-in-the-sky-for-preservation.)

Thus far I’ve used a U.A.V. to capture aerial imagery at five of the 56 state historic sites managed by the State Historical Society of North Dakota. I should mention that all flights were over property managed by the SHSND and were flown in observance of guidelines established by the Federal Aviation Administration. I’d like to use this space to share some of my favorite aerial images of these sites with you!

Aerial view of Menoken Indian Village State Historic Site – April 2015

Menoken Indian Village State Historic Site marks the location of a village dating to AD 1200-1220. The village contains approximately 30 earthlodge depressions, and was home to about 200 people. The village is surrounded by a defensive ditch and palisade, and is an excellent example of the period of transition from a hunting-gathering subsistence to a hunting and gardening way of life. Menoken Indian Village is on the National Register of Historic Places and is located 11 miles east of Bismarck.

Visit http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/menoken/index.html for more information on Menoken Village State Historic Site.

Aerial view of Huff Indian Village State Historic Site – August 2014

Huff Indian Village State Historic Site is an ancestral Mandan earthlodge village dating to approximately AD 1450. This large community consisted of more than 100 rectangular earthlodges and was surrounded by a fortification ditch and bastion. Huff village was home to about a thousand people two hundred years before Europeans first entered what is known today as North Dakota. The lodge depressions visible at the site were laid out in an organized plan, evidence of a high degree of social and political structure within the village. We know this village was only briefly occupied, perhaps about 50 years. Huff Village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located 22 miles south of Mandan, North Dakota.

Visit http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/huff/index.html for more information on Huff Indian Village State Historic Site.

Aerial view of Double Ditch Indian Village State Historic Site – November 2013

Double Ditch Indian Village State Historic Site is the location of a Mandan village occupied from AD 1490 to 1785. The state of preservation of the site is amazing, with more than 100 lodge depressions, many large refuse piles (called middens), and two fortification ditches visible on the surface. Recent geophysical and archaeological investigations at Double Ditch have demonstrated that there are two additional fortification ditches buried at the site. The population of the site was about 2,000 people at its height (larger than many small towns in North Dakota today!) The population declined to about 400 people by 1780. Double Ditch was decimated by a smallpox epidemic that swept through much of North America in 1781-1782. Survivors of this epidemic moved up the Missouri River to consolidate with the neighboring Hidatsa people in the Knife River region. Double Ditch village is located eight miles north of Bismarck and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Visit http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/doubleditch/index.html for more information on Double Ditch Indian Village State Historic Site.

Aerial view of Fort Clark Trading Post State Historic Site – February 2016

Fort Clark Trading Post State Historic Site is the location of a large earthlodge village and two early fur trade posts on the Missouri River. The Mandan people built a village named Mih-tutta-hang-kusch” in this location in 1822. The American Fur Company established two trading posts in the area soon after to trade with the Mandan villagers and other neighboring groups. The village suffered heavily during the smallpox epidemic of 1837, and the Mandan again moved further up the Missouri River. The neighboring Arikara people moved into the abandoned village soon after in 1838 and continued to trade with the post until moving further upriver themselves in 1862. The site features at Fort Clark Trading Post are exceptionally well-preserved, with approximately 100 lodge depressions visible. Many features of the nearby Fort Clark trading post are also well preserved. Fort Clark Trading Post State Historic Site is located between Washburn and Stanton, North Dakota in Mercer County. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Visit http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/clark/index.html for more information on Fort Clark Trading Post State Historic Site.

Aerial view of Fort Rice State Historic Site

Fort Rice State Historic Site is a great example of a military post established during a period of turbulent culture conflict on the Upper Missouri River. Built in 1864, the fort was established by General Alfred Sully to guard expanding northern plains trade routes rapidly expanding into lands claimed by groups of Dakota and Lakota peoples. The fort was eventually abandoned in 1878 with the establishment of Fort Yates on the nearby Standing Rock Agency. Many site features at Fort Rice are clearly visible today. Although no standing structures are present, the foundation outlines of the blockhouses, defensive palisade, and many other buildings are easily recognizable. Fort Rice is located 30 miles south of Mandan, North Dakota.

Visit http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/rice/index.html for more information on Fort Rice State Historic Site.

Finally, we want to hear from YOU ! The State Historical Society of North Dakota is seeking feedback from the public about visiting North Dakota State Historic Sites and Museums. Please visit http://history.nd.gov/survey.html to share your thoughts and experiences with us. All responses are confidential, and greatly appreciated. Your feedback will help us build a better experience for the site visitor. The survey period closes August 21, 2016.

Now that you’ve seen these sites from the air, I invite you to do a little “time traveling” of your own and visit these sites, and the other 51 State Historic Sites located in North Dakota. Enjoy summer and keep flying high!

Working as a collections intern in the Museum Division this summer, my major project was to inventory the dental/medical collection in storage. This entails updating and cataloging records already in the database, photographing the objects, and then relocating them to areas of storage where they can be better organized. Although the collections I worked with were accessioned and catalogued in the 1950s and 1960s many had not gone through another full inventory since that time. Also, cataloging practices have changed over the last 60 years, particularly the numbering system and arrangement of objects within the collection.

During my second week, I started to inventory the first shelf which, according to the database, held seven objects. One of these objects turned out to be a bag full of 55 dental utensils, all of which needed to be cataloged individually and given object identification numbers. This soon became the trend for the dental collection, in which I have turned seven previously cataloged entries into 300+ individual entries. I can now say that I am well versed in the names and functions of various dental utensils.

Left: Assigning new object identification numbers to each utensil
Top Right: Case of 127 dental utensils used by C.C. Hibbs in Carson, ND. SHSND 13308.00128
Bottom Right: Dental utensils in storage after inventory completion

One of the more enjoyable aspects of working in collections is being able to handle objects that you know have a story. A large portion of the dental collection was donated by Charles C. Hibbs in the 1950s, but there wasn’t much information about him, his accomplishments, or the significance of his collection. It wouldn’t be until week nine of this project that I would come across a wrapped, brown package with “Dr. Hibbs – Dental Charts” written on the outside. Within this package were 21 paper items, which then of course had to be cataloged individually. Amongst the documents in this package was a letter written to the Louisville College of Dentistry Alumni News. This four-page document, written by Hibbs, outlined his career and major successes as a dental surgeon in North Dakota. I finally had a primary source, giving place and importance to the collection I had worked with over the previous eight weeks.

Brown paper package with 21 paper items inside. SHSND 13650

Dental chart showing the relationship of tooth shape with the form of the human face. SHSND 13650.00021

As it turns out, C.C. Hibbs was one of the first dental surgeons in North Dakota. In 1907, he rented space in a newly constructed building in downtown Bismarck for $20 per room. His offices were the first in the state of North Dakota to be used strictly for dental purposes. One of Hibbs’ major accomplishments was creating roofless dentures. He had studied the idea for years and, after losing all of his upper teeth, he experimented on himself. As he notes in his letter, “Now lets get perzonal, I am the only dentist in No. Dak. that makes roofless dentures.” Hibbs was in his eighties when he wrote this letter and exclaimed that he could still be in practice for another ten years if his eyes didn’t fail him. 

Aside from learning more than I ever wanted to know about dental scrapers, scalers, probes, root extractors, elevators, etc., I was able to make major improvements to the storage condition of the dental collection, while filling in essential information as to why the museum accepted this collection more than 60 years ago. The physical objects are often thought of as the quintessential part of the museum collection, but the story behind them is often just as substantial as the objects themselves.

I’m currently preparing the next exhibit for the James E. Sperry Gallery, which is situated right outside the archives reading room. We decided to do an anniversary type of thing, looking back 100 years at the Nonpartisan League (NPL). What is the Nonpartisan League, and what was their mission? The NPL was created by the joining of two organizations with a common cause – helping the farmer. The organizations were the American Society of Equity (ASE) and the North Dakota Socialist party. The new party believed farmers could rid themselves of the control and power of the Minneapolis grain companies by creating state owned industries, specifically a bank where farmers could borrow money and mills and elevators where farmers could sell their grain.

A lasting legacy of the NPL, the State Flour Mill and Elevator in Grand Forks. SHSND – C0455(1939)

With farmers making up 70 percent of the state’s population, NPL organizer and president, A.C. Townley, certainly had an audience to pitch the NPL platform and convince them to join the League for $6 per year. Using Model T cars, Townley and his organizers worked tirelessly, motoring from farm to farm all over the state to get people to join. They were successful. As word of the NPL spread, membership grew immensely. NPL leadership found candidates to run on their ticket. Cleverly, the NPL ran their candidates in the Republican Party primary elections. The winner of the Republican primary usually won the November election because most North Dakotans were Republican. It’s difficult to understand in today’s political world how an organization with a socialist slant became a faction of the Republican Party. Wow! That is wild colorful stuff!

A.C. Townley speaking at a NPL rally in 1917. SHSND - B0921

Creating an exhibit can be fun and stressful at the same time. I want to make things interesting for patrons, but I know it is impossible to please everybody, as we all have different interests. For me, I look at the NPL’s creation in 1915 and subsequent election victories in 1916 and 1918 as somewhat of a phenomenon. In the 1919 legislative session NPL members controlled the state house, senate, supreme court, and had an NPL governor in Lynn Frazier. By 1921 the NPL-led state government experienced serious setbacks that resulted in a recall election which ousted the governor, attorney general, and the commissioner of agriculture and labor. These three positions make up the Industrial Commission, which was created through NPL-sponsored legislation. Ironic..

The cover of the league’s newspaper following the 1916 election. The NPL won every race they were in, but 24 senate seats were not up for election. They would capture the senate following the 1918 election.

Before the NPL popularity declined, the party created the Bank of North Dakota and the State Mill and Elevator. These are probably two of the biggest legacies of the heyday of the NPL. Check out these links and the upcoming exhibit to learn more.
http://www.ndstudies.org/articles/the_nonpartisan_leagues_rise_to_power_overview
http://history.nd.gov/ndhistory/npl.html

The exhibit, “The Peak of Power: The Nonpartisan League 100 Years Ago,” will open in August 2016 through July 2017. Stop by and check it out!

I was looking to see if my great-grandfather was an NPL member. This just says “Republican” like every other card I thumbed through. The search will continue. SHSND 41301 Divide County