In December of 2014, I had the opportunity to write a guest blog for the State Historical Society. In that blog, I mentioned the volunteers and archaeology enthusiasts (like me) who gather at the ND Heritage Center archaeology lab on Wednesday afternoons to sort and quantify artifacts.

Sorting crew in the Heritage Center archaeology lab.

A question that volunteers ask from time to time regards the importance placed on their activities and what happens to the sorted and quantified artifacts when they are done. I worked on a major sorting project during winter 2006-2007 and pondered those very questions. I would like to give a personal example of what happens to the sorted material.

During summer 2006, a major (actually “world-class”) archaeological project was conducted at a site called Beacon Island in northwestern North Dakota. PaleoCultural Research Group was the lead institution for the research project, and the field director originally from France. Other team members were from Germany, Florida, the University of Chicago, archaeologists from the State Historical Society of North Dakota, and others. I was fortunate enough to participate in one of the four nine-day sessions.

The 2006 archaeological project at Beacon Island, North Dakota.

When the excavation was completed in August 2006, all of the artifacts recovered, as well as the water screened debris, were transferred to the State Historical Society. The winter of 2006-2007 was spent sorting and quantifying that “debris.”

“Debris” sounds like something that is quickly discarded. That is far from the truth. When we finished each small part of the large project, our sorting trays would hold neat piles of bone fragments, stone flaking debris, fire-cracked rock, small aquatic shells, charcoal fragments, and other material. Upon completion of the sorting project, all of the neat, distinct piles were consolidated and sent off to the experts who specialize in the analysis of bone, shell, stone, charcoal, and other materials.

The final report was delivered in August 2012. The report, titled “Agate Basin Archaeology at Beacon Island, North Dakota,” was edited by Dr. Mark D. Mitchell of the PaleoCultural Research Group of Denver, Colorado. The 277-page report details every aspect of that world- class project.

To summarize the report:

In early to mid-winter of a day ca. 12,000 years before the present time, a group of PaleoIndians (ancestors to modern Native Americans) surrounded a small kettle basin in what is now northwestern North Dakota. That day, they killed and butchered at least 29 Bison antiquus, ancestors to the modern species of bison. After the kill, they butchered the animals, preparing some of the forelimbs and hind limbs for transport to a secondary processing camp. At the same time, they refurbished some of their stone tools. Fires were built to prepare some of the bison meat for consumption at the site. They then departed the area.

How can archaeologists determine:

1. The event happened 12,000 years ago at this location?
2. The event happened in early to mid-winter?
3. They gathered at a small kettle basin?
4. They killed 29 animals (a pretty precise number)?
5. They took the time to refurbish their stone tools?
6. They made a meal of the bison while still at the site?

Space on this blog will not permit detailed answers to these and many other questions.

You can, however, find the answers to these questions at the ND Heritage Center & State Museum. A prominent display in the Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples is devoted to Beacon Island; it features a Bison antiquus skeleton, artifacts recovered from the site, and a large, detailed painting of the site.

Beacon Island exhibit at the ND Heritage Center & State Museum

So, back to the original question - why is the work of the volunteers in the archaeology lab important? Because without their painstaking work, the small pieces to a very large mystery could not be assembled. By combining the detailed information obtained from sorting and quantifying the “debris” with the larger artifacts obtained from the site, the story can be reconstructed by archaeology professionals, and an exhibit can be created depicting that event.

Visit the Beacon Island exhibit at the ND Heritage Center & State Museum to discover the answers to a 12,000-year-old mystery!

The expansion of the North Dakota Heritage Center was a major investment in the preservation of the state’s history. From state-of-the-art storage areas to new State Museum galleries, we were given the tools needed to protect and present North Dakota’s story for decades to come. I’d like to share with you one way we’re using the expansion to safeguard those stories.

North Dakota’s native people have always played an important role in the state's history, and the State Museum’s collection reflects that. Some of the earliest pieces we collected back in the early twentieth century were Native American in origin, and it is something that we have continued to build upon ever since.

During our recent expansion project, it was decided that the Native American collection would be the primary focus of our new, 5,000-square-foot collection storage area. The new space is a big improvement for the collection, because it went from occupying three rows of storage to 21, plus a restricted access room specifically created to house more significant or sensitive items. With more room and improved shelving, we can better care for and continue to expand on an already exemplary collection.

A panorama of our new collection storage room, which is initially committed to the Native American collection. In this image you can see that much of our new area contains compact, moveable shelving. Rows are accessed by rotating the black handles you see on the side of each unit, which causes the shelves to move along the tracks in the floor. That allows us to fit more rows of storage in the room than if they were stationary.

In October 2013, I started planning a basic layout for the new area and figuring out the scope of the project. After a few weeks of preparation, I began the move of the Native American collection to the new space. With nearly 4,000 artifacts involved, it was a challenging project to organize and wrap my head around. That is especially true given all the different types of artifacts such as beaded moccasins, hide dresses, firearms, preserved food, and even a birch bark canoe, just to name a few, each of which have unique needs and preservation concerns.

The original shelving units for the collection were filled many years ago and space was limited. This was our chance to store the collection exactly how we wanted it, and much thought was put into what we would do. We decided to arrange the new storage area into sections divided by type of artifact and also separated out by tribe within each section. That allows us to easily compare the differences between say, Sioux and Chippewa pipe bags. With similar objects grouped together, the layout also makes artifacts easier to find.

Left: Here you can see one of our enclosed cabinets, which are ideal for objects such as clothing. Notice the gaskets around the doorframe. With these seals in place, the environmental conditions inside each cabinet are very stable. Also notice the labels on each shelf with tribe names. I organized the storage area by type of object, separated by tribe. That arrangement allows us to easily compare objects created by different tribes.
Right: A row of open shelving, which happens to contain various types of bags, pouches, and other containers.

I have spent the last 18 months moving the collection over to the new area, cartload by cartload. As of this writing, I have about 22 artifacts left to move. There is more work to be done in the space, but phase one is nearly complete!

When presenting the history of our historic sites, it can be difficult to cover everything that happened over the course of the site. Oftentimes significant events that occurred in the last 50 years or less get reduced to a couple words at the end of an interpretive sign that discusses a longer, older history. The Former Governors’ Mansion State Historic Site was built in 1884 for Bismarck Businessman Asa Fisher, who sold the building to the state in 1893 for use as the executive mansion. The interpretive history displayed at the site focuses on the years from 1893 to 1960, when it was occupied by 20 different governors and their families. If the Former Governors’ Mansion was opening as a historic site today, would the introduction to the history of the building be written differently? What if?

The North Dakota Psychiatric Clinic

In the post-World War II United States, a movement was gaining ground to end the incarceration of the mentally ill in state psychiatric hospitals. In 1946 President Harry Truman passed the National Mental Health Act, which paved the way for states to find ways to help the mentally ill cope, recover, and live positive lives.

The state of North Dakota was a progressive leader in the development of ways to help the mentally ill beyond locking them away for their own safety and that of the community. Legislative action in the 1950s led to the development of outpatient care at the State Hospital in Jamestown and to the opening of the State Psychiatric Clinic in Bismarck in 1960.

The clinic opened in the recently vacated Executive Mansion at 320 East Ave. B. Located in the heart of the residential section of Bismarck, the residence was an ideal, friendly, home-like environment to help those in need.

In 1963 the clinic was part of a national pilot program to develop standards of care and treatment for mental illnesses under President John Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Act., which officially ended the practice of incarcerating the mentally ill without due cause in the United States.

Oral histories collected from many of the professionals that worked at the clinic through-out the ‘60s show that the care provided at the clinic was one of a nurturing, respectable nature every bit as modern in its approach as today’s widely available talk therapy. While it varied over the course of the decade, the clinic generally had two psychiatrists, a psychologist, a couple of social workers, and support staff.

SHSND Superintendent James Sperry exposing the plywood separating the psychiatrist offices. (SHSND0071-009)

Those who utilized the clinic were not limited to what we would consider classic mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia), but what we would consider by modern standards to be general mental health. Common clientele would have included couples seeking marriage counseling, addiction counseling, children with behavioral issues, speech therapy, and developmental disabilities, etc. While many of the people at the clinic were voluntarily seeking help, many of them were court ordered to receive treatment. Prison inmates and children involved in delinquency cases were commonly evaluated for signs of mental illness and provided with treatment options.

In 1966 the clinic became one of eight state-run mental health clinics in North Dakota. To this day those eight clinics continue to serve the people of North Dakota’s mental health needs. In 1972 the clinic moved to the Liberty Memorial Building in downtown Bismarck. The Former Governors’ Mansion was then occupied by the Department of Health Administration offices until 1975, when the building was turned over to the State Historical Society of North Dakota as a state historic site, which now highlights the years it served as the Governors’ Mansion.

State Health Department Administration Office Building, circa 1975. (BPL41_12072007)

When visiting the Former Governors’ Mansion State Historic Site, or any historic site for that matter, keep in mind the history you see presented may be incomplete.The name of the site may only be an introduction to part of a longer history.

Guest Blogger: Johnathan Campbell

Johnathan Campbell has been around the SHSND for around a quarter of a century. He has been the site supervisor for both the Former Governors’ Mansion, and Camp Hancock State Historic Sites for over a decade, and previous to that was the fossil preparator for the North Dakota State Fossil collection.

Every month, we receive hundreds of historical and genealogical requests in the State Archives – in fact, more than 6,000 each year. However, only three of us deal with the majority of this inflow. Jim Davis, head of reference staff, started working here when the North Dakota Heritage Center was built in 1981. He was originally hired to unpack collections moved from the Liberty Memorial Building, where the State Historical Society used to be, to the new Archives wing. Luckily for us, he stayed. Greg Wysk has been here for just over 13 years. Greg is really involved with the family history side of research and has presented at quite a few family research workshops on the subject. I am the third and have been here for almost seven years.

Remember this image from my explanation of what an Archives is and holds from my first post? We have long been the official state repository for newspapers, and though the collection is not complete for many of those earlier years, we have most issues from most areas. Older ones are on microfilm.

We all deal with different types of requests. Some are straightforward, but some are not. Some stick with you. I’ve helped a woman create a shadow box with artifacts about her family member’s sporty past; helped a couple find the location of where their relative was buried so they could place a tombstone there; helped a man find his step-siblings through an obituary search; and just recently, helped a researcher who was looking for a divorce record determine that the couple in question never actually divorced.

One of the most memorable requests, however, was one that Jim and I worked on together. The researcher involved was interested in a tragedy that had occurred in New Salem in the early 1950s concerning a man who had shot and killed the chief of police of New Salem. He had tried to get information on the trial, but was told repeatedly that the records were closed. When he came to us at the Archives, we turned to the local newspapers, a public source, and found his answer.

The Chief of Police who was shot is shown in this paper from New Salem.

As it turns out, the man charged with murder had been passing through the area with his wife and kids, looking for work. The kids had bought some pop at a local soda shop. When they were charged a penny’s tax on the pop, they protested and departed; then their father came in to protest as well. As the situation escalated, the chief of police was called. He picked the man up—but then the man turned on him, shot him, hijacked a car, and took his family down toward the border of South Dakota before he was finally caught.

This was big news, and many newspapers in the area reported on the tragedy. In this image, the owner of the café points to bullet holes that were shot through her front window during the incident.

The researcher looking into this case was a family member of the accused party, and he wanted to find out what had happened. Knowing this made me uneasy. What do you do when you discover information that shows someone’s relative to be a murderer? I was still pretty new at the time, but even then, I had seen what people experience when they find out anything about their relations. It can be very emotional working here. I’ve seen people cry with joy at finding a solitary picture, and I’ve seen people walk away in total surprise and even disbelief when they’ve unearthed someone’s checkered past.

However, as Jim reminded me when I expressed this, nobody can change the past. We can only find what our records show us and provide that information.

Luckily, in this case, there was no need for unease. The researcher was elated to learn what we had found and contacted us several times more for follow-ups and additional information.

I was talking to a woman recently about her own request, and when I told her that I finished it, she said, excitedly, “What a great job. You help people find their past. You help people find themselves.”

Not every research request, historical or genealogical, is easy to deal with, and every one comes in with its own set of challenges and constraints—but then again, every bit whops an impact.

The search for microfossils is sometimes a very unrewarding task. I have collected, washed, and scoured through, quite literally, tons of rock looking for a single mammal tooth. But however tedious and arduous the task of looking for microfossils is, the rewards greatly outweigh the time spent looking. Microfossils are, as you may have guessed, very small fossils. These small fossils can be anything from microscopic animals that lived in water environments to very small bone fragments to very, very small teeth and everything in between. In this case I am referring to very small mammal teeth. These teeth are so small they can be glued on the head of a pin.

The recovery process of these teeth begins with collecting rock. However, paleontologists don’t just randomly stick a shovel in the ground and hope to hit pay dirt. Sites used to study microfossils are chosen very carefully. These sites, called microsites, are usually places where other fossils are already weathering out at the surface. Small fossils, easily visible with the naked eye, are usually common, and the fossils tend to be concentrated within a definable, thin horizon.

This is an example of a thin fossiliferous horizon. The black specks in the overturned chunk are fish scales.

This horizon is then collected by hand or by shovel and brought back to the laboratory. That collected rock is then subjected to a process called screen washing. The collected dirt is washed through one or sometimes two sets of screen, the smallest screen usually smaller than the screen on your windows and doors at home. What remains on the screens after washing is dried and then systematically “picked”- under a microscope where microfossils are collected from the remaining dirt and rock.

The most common fossils that come out of this concentrate are usually fish bones and teeth. Rarely though, a mammal tooth will be found. It is these rare mammal teeth that can potentially tell us the most about one particular site. From being able to potentially restrict the age of the site to within a few million years or to give us greater detail about the paleoenvironment, fossil mammals play an important role in paleontology.

One of the cool things about my job is I get to put real objects in people’s hands. When objects are donated to a museum they generally go through a basic process. A committee considers a number of things including: What is known about the history of this item? Do we know who created it or who used it? How does this relate to what we already have in our collections? Do we need another one? Is there a clear connection to North Dakota history? Is there a clear chain of legal ownership established? This chain of ownership is known as provenance in the museum world. If we can’t establish provenance, we usually can’t accept an object as a donation.

So what happens to items that are not accepted in the official museum collection? There are a number of things a donor might decide to do at this point—keep the item, sell it, throw it away. We usually recommend other museums that might be interested in particular items, and sometimes we ask to add the objects to our Education Collection. While an official museum collection is handled in a very purposeful manner, objects in an education collection are eventually used up. Objects that are part of the official museum proper are not touched unless they need to be, such as an inventory or being placed in an exhibit. The goal is to preserve these objects forever. An education collection is different in that while we do try to handle things carefully, we know that it is unlikely these items will be preserved forever. The objects very well could be used up to the point they are broken and eventually thrown away. Why would we allow this to happen? An education collection gives us objects we can put into people’s hands. Visitors can examine quilt squares to see the difference between machine and hand stitching. They can put on a pair of wire rim eyeglasses. They can pick up the scent of cloves that can still be detected in a metal spice container. They can write on a slate board and feel the fur on a beaver pelt. There is nothing more fun than explaining to a group of 4^th graders that the coprolite they are holding is real, fossilized, dinosaur poo.

One way of getting all these educational objects into people’s hands is to ship them out to every corner of the state in big boxes we call SEND trunks. The Suitcase Exhibits of North Dakota (or SEND) program is geared to the 4^th grade classroom. However, we have all kinds of other organizations that use SEND trunks including other museums, nursing homes, Boy Scouts, and homeschool groups. We retire and add new topics periodically, with about 18 to 20 topics available most of the time. If your school or organization is interested in getting your hands on history, you can order a trunk by submitting the form available at this link: http://history.nd.gov/pdf/SENDApplForm2013.pdf or e-mailing me at dlstuckle@nd.gov.

Gun Barrel fashioned into a scraper to clean the flesh off of animal hides before tanning. From the Fur Trade SEND Trunk.