On July 1, the state of North Dakota acquired a new historic site, the Welk Farmstead. Much has been written about the pros and cons of such an acquisition, but now it is one of ours, meaning the people of North Dakota.

The Welk Farmstead was part of the Ludwig and Christina Welk homestead. They traveled halfway around the world to come here to start a better life. They came with other family and friends from Russia and built a community on the North Dakota prairie. One of their nine children, Lawrence Welk, left the homestead and became quite famous as a musician and TV personality.

Ludwig and Christina Welk home, built of mud brick in 1898. Photo by Thomas C. Linn

So what opportunities does this site provide?

The site gives us a unique opportunity to talk about homesteading on the northern plains, agriculture (the state’s number one economic engine), Germans from Russia (the largest ethnic group in North Dakota), as well as a famous North Dakota son, Lawrence Welk. The State Historical Society has conducted Community Conversations in conjunction with Tri-County Tourism Alliance meetings in Strasburg, Napoleon, and Ashley to get feedback from the local community on what they would like to see at the site for programming. The SHSND also presented a session at the recent Germans From Russia national convention held in Bismarck in July to gather similar information. The results of these meetings will help us form programs, events, and activities at the site in the coming years.

This year at the site will be a time of transition. We will finish out the 2015 tourism season with the same hours and days of operation as those already put in place by Pioneer Heritage, Inc. (the site’s former management group). We have added an information page for the Welk Farmstead to our website, history.nd.gov/historicsites/welk.

From the Community Conversations we have received a lot of great ideas about what can be done at the site. Look for fun things to happen next summer at the Welk Farmstead!

Occasionally as part of my duties, I give tours of collection storage to members of the public. We have a collection of 70,000 artifacts, 90% of which are in storage at any given time. When people see how many artifacts we have in storage, many ask, “What’s the point of having all of these things if you don’t put them in an exhibit?” I am so happy when they ask, because it gives me a chance to share what drives me to do what I do and what makes me passionate about my field.

So why do we have all that stuff back in storage? We work to create an official historical record for our state and our region, a body of objects that encapsulates what life was like in North Dakota in the past and what it is like in modern times. In the same way that an archives collects government records or personal letters, we collect the three-dimensional artifacts that make up our everyday life and that preserve stories from our past. We work hard to ensure that North Dakota’s story is around for centuries to come. I wanted to show you some of my favorite items from the collection that reflect the breadth of the stories we collect and preserve.

We do collect items from significant events in North Dakota history, whether it’s a battle, a change in government, or a natural disaster. You will find items such as sandbags from flooding in Fargo, voting machines, and suffragette banners, just to name a few. One of those significant events associated with North Dakota history is the Battle of Little Bighorn.

The battle occurred in southeastern Montana in July 1876, but Custer and his men departed Fort Abraham Lincoln south of Mandan, North Dakota, two months prior. There are many items in our collection associated with the battle, two of which you can see below.

Pictured here is a lead bullet and empty cartridge that were possibly dug up from the battlefield of the Battle of Little Bighorn. Custer’s men carried the “trapdoor” Springfield .45-70 carbine, which was the first standard issue rifle of the US Army that was not a muzzleloader or musket.

Today, the State Historical Society partners with the North Dakota Geological Survey to create places such as the Adaptation Gallery: Geologic Time in the North Dakota Heritage Center’s State Museum, and the NDGS is the caretaker of the state fossil collection. Before this partnership, the State Historical Society acquired and maintained a large collection of fossils from around the state. Below, you can see one of the fossils in our collection, which we acquired in 1943. Though the Historical Society no longer actively acquires fossils, they make up a moderate, though in my opinion, very cool part of our collection.

We also collect items from people’s everyday lives. Clothing, toys, games, food packaging—all of these things make up the fabric of our lives today, and it’s an important story to preserve in the historical record. As a child of the ’80s and ’90s, one of these everyday items that speaks to me in particular is a Lego set. As a kid, I spent countless hours playing with Legos, and it’s a common story for children of the last 40-50 years. It’s important to preserve this childhood story of creativity and imagination!

We are constantly collecting modern items, and contemporary technology is a big part of that. Purchased in 2009, this smartphone is one of many pieces of modern life that we’re trying to preserve. It’s a challenge to collect electronics because, by their nature, they’re disposable and replaceable. But how can you talk about life in the 2010s and not talk about smartphones? They’re everywhere!

I chose these four items to show you the breadth of the collection and the stories we’ve tried to preserve so far. But what stories can you add to the narrative? By donating an artifact to the State Historical Society, you not only help expand our collection, but add your voice and your story to the historical record.

Every historic site has its own unique story. It may be colorful. It may be weighty. It may even cover events of a controversial nature. If a site falls into this last category, how best do you present and interpret its history?

The history of Fort Totten deals with the interactions and conflicts between two different cultures, the Dakota and American. The interpretation we present to site visitors has changed and expanded over the last fifty years. When first opened to the public in 1960, our interpretation focused on the site being a well-preserved frontier military outpost. The fort was built to protect early Euro-American settlers of the Devils Lake Basin area, as well as Dakota tribes who had been convinced by the US Government to settle nearby. The fort’s role as a boarding and industrial school for hundreds of Dakota and Chippewa children for more than sixty years (three times the length of its life as a military post) was not integrated much at all in the interpretation, except in passing.

Children participate in a reenactment of a scene from the American Revolutionary War era, ca. 1908. (SHSND 0210-006)

Fast-forward fifty-five years and our interpretation of the site’s history now incorporates the military story, the school story, and the site’s role as a preventorium (a four-year program to teach about preventing the spread of tuberculosis). We also discuss the ways previous site staff have interpreted Fort Totten since we became a part of the State Historical Society of North Dakota in 1960. To help visitors connect to the often painful and difficult experiences of Dakota children when they first arrived at the industrial and boarding school, we utilize oral histories of former students. These histories indicate that for most of its existence, the school meted out harsh discipline and focused on teaching students how to do manual labor. This was believed to help native students leave school as good citizens, farmers, and homemakers. Strict rules of discipline assisted the teachers in ensuring the students would cease to use their native language, learn to speak English, and fully embrace American culture. The goal was to remove all prior connection to their Dakota past.

Tipis gathered around outside of fort, ca. 1900 (SHSND 0420-008)

The exhibits we have designed and installed in several of our buildings put the visitor in the shoes of one of four composite characters of real people who lived, worked, or were stationed here. We present the history with this first-hand interaction and strategic use of the voices of former students and soldiers to ensure that when visitors leave Fort Totten they come away with a better understanding of this site’s unique history. More importantly, we hope we have interpreted the layered and nuanced history of the site in such a way that the visitor becomes an advocate for the site - to tell others of this significant place and bring new visitors here to learn about the complex history of Fort Totten; military fort and boarding school.

A tree house, a free house,
A secret you and me house,
A high up in the leafy branches
Cozy as can be house.
-Shel Silverstein

To me tree houses are the epitome of what childhood can be. Whether the tree house is a real structure in the backyard or made of pillows and blankets in the basement, it lives largest in the imagination. It’s a place to dream, to play, to read, to talk, to simply be. It’s safe and fun, and always carries the whiff of hot summer afternoons and the stickiness of melted cherry popsicles.

Almost four years ago we started planning how to take this ephemeral nostalgia and transform it into a museum space just for kids at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. The old museum had an exhibit space called Dakota Kids. Although it was updated periodically, there were a number of elements that young parents remembered (fondly) from when they were kids. It was popular and had lots of repeat visitation, but it had drawbacks too. We wanted the new kids’ area – the Treehouse – to incorporate the beloved elements of Dakota Kids, but update it and correct problems.

So what did we do?

-Plan for the caregivers as well as the kids
Dakota Kids had only two chairs for caregivers and lots of nooks and crannies. The Treehouse will integrate multiple seating areas so caregivers can both keep an eye on their kids AND take a short rest. There will also be open sight-lines to easily keep track of active and fast-moving younglings. Adjacent to the Treehouse entrance will be cubbies for bags, hooks for coats, and parking space for strollers. 

-Emphasize exploration and imagination
For safety, many things in the rest of the museum can’t be touched. In the Treehouse we want kids to not just touch, but to push, pull, spin, steer, climb, and slide – in short, to touch and DO things. The Treehouse can provide the beginning, but the kids will tell the rest of the story. We’ll give you a plane to sit in, but only you and your co-pilot (maybe it’s Chewbacca?) will decide where it will fly, or if it’s a spaceship, or what adventures are encountered along the way.

-Make it fun and durable
No doubt, kids are hard on things. We want LOTS of kids to visit and use the Treehouse, so it’s designed to be tough and easily-repaired. You won’t find modern technology up in the Treehouse, but you will find timeless design and tried-and-true construction methods. Just like in Dakota Kids, we want today’s pint-sized visitors to bring their kids back in twenty years to the Treehouse they remember.

The Treehouse will open in about three months. We hope you are as excited as we are!

Artist’s rendering of the new Treehouse area.

I have written before about the SEND program. SEND trunks provide objects to classrooms throughout the state. Students can touch real things that represent and interpret the history they are learning about. Once in a while I get a chance to see how teachers and kids are using the trunks. Recently I overheard a group of fourth graders using the fur trade SEND trunk exclaim with excitement, “Hey, it’s just like Minecraft!” For those of you not familiar with the phenomenon of Minecraft, it is one of the most popular video games in the world having sold more than 60 million copies as of October 2014.

Minecraft Landscape

Minecraft is a world made up of colorful cubes that players use as resources to find, mine, and craft into other resources. Hit a block from a tree enough times and it turns into wood. Make enough wood and you can build a house. Two key features of Minecraft are that it is open ended and non-linear, and that it allows for social interaction with other players. The open-ended/non-linear format can be seen in a variety of other video games including Farmville and the Sims. Rather than having to achieve something specific to get to the next level, Minecraft players simply have to stay alive and keep crafting new things. The concept gives players an incredible amount of freedom and independence, and allows for a great deal of creativity in a game. The social aspect of the game allows players to interact with each other, create communities, and trade things. One player might be the best person among a group of friends at providing food, while someone else excels at building shelter. Playing together produces a stronger community.

Disneyworld rendered in Minecraft

While much has been written about the evils and dangers of video games, there is a lot of new research focused on how games like Minecraft encourage learning and social interaction among players. The multi-player mode allows kids to form communities and play together in one world. This gives socially awkward kids an opportunity to socialize and make friends. It also fosters an interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). One company, MinecraftEdu, makes affordable versions of the game available to schools. Websites like Minecraft Teacher (minecraftteacher.tumblr.com) and Teaching with MinecraftEdu (services.minecraftedu.com/wiki/Teaching_with_MinecraftEdu) help teachers develop lesson plans based on the game. For example, teachers have created lesson plans using Minecraft to teach math and scale by constructing buildings in the game. Others teachers have taught architecture, geography, and history by having students build entire cities in the game.

The Eiffel Tower rendered in Minecraft

What does all of this mean for our fur trade trunk? Education department staff are exploring ways in which we can take advantage of the open ended and social gaming aspects of Minecraft to teach about the fur trade. Maybe our game could have students acquire furs faster for every ten Objibwe words they learn. This doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice education for entertainment, but rather we can enhance education by making it engaging.

Larson Village (32BL9) is an ancestral Mandan village site that was occupied from the late 1400s to the late 1700s. In 2010 repairs were made to a modern road that runs through the site. Archaeologists excavated the area affected by the roadwork. The excavated area mostly contained cache pits (storage pits) and a midden area (trash heap)—both types of features are valuable sources of information about how people used to live! And a lot of information usually means a lot of work . . .

The collections from the excavation came to the State Historical Society’s Archaeology and Historic Preservation division in 2011. Since that time, our dedicated volunteers have been busy sorting the artifacts from Larson Village. After that much work, it is understandable that a person might wonder if any of the objects being sorted will ever be seen again! In this case, the answer is definitely yes. Part of a reconstructed pot can already be seen on display at the State Museum in the pottery case in the Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples.

Reconstructed pottery from Larson Village, now on display in the Innovation Gallery of the State Museum (2012A.13.1)

However, most of the excavated items are still being sorted into different types of materials – animal bone, stone tools, seeds, charcoal, ash, pottery and more! But this does not mean that these objects will not be used or seen. The sorting is being done so that the objects can be sent to specialists who study specific types of artifacts. A faunal specialist (someone who studies animal bones) will be able to tell us more about the different types of animals that were used by the people living at Larson. Someone who specializes in lithic tools (stone tools) might be able to tell us where people found the materials that were used to make the tools, or from where the materials might have been traded. Knowing what kind of seeds are present at the site might tell us what kind of plants were being used for food, materials, or were growing in the surrounding environment. This kind of detailed information helps give us a better picture of how people lived and interacted with the world around them. After the objects are analyzed and the data is compiled, a final report can be written about the excavation of the site.

It might be a while before this project is completed, but here is a chance to see some of the artifacts found so far.

Just in time for fishing, here are some of the bone fishhooks.

Bone fish hooks and fish hook fragments from Larson Village (2012A.13)

And to give the fishhooks a better story, here are some of the many fish scales that our volunteers have also found.

Fish scales from Larson Village (2012A.13)

There are some very nice pottery like fragments, like the ones from this pot that was decorated with cord impressions.

Pottery decorated with cord impressions from Larson Village (2012A.13)

Pottery sherds are interesting to look at and fun to discover, especially when the fragments fit together like a puzzle.

Pottery from Larson Village (2012A.13)

Some of my favorite things to find are fingerprints! Someone left their fingerprint impressed in the clay when they made this piece of pottery a long time ago.

Pottery fragment with a fingerprint impression from Larson Village (2012A.13)

Stone abraders are tools that were used for sharpening and shaping other tools and objects – for instance . . .

Stone abraders from Larson Village (2012A.13)

. . . all the awls! Bone awls were tools used for various things including punching holes in materials like hides for sewing.

Bone awls from Larson Village (2012A.13)

Hopefully I will be able to post more photos of artifacts from Larson Village as the sorting continues.

Projectile points from Larson Village (2012A.13)

Feel free to send me a message if you would like more information about how you can help us out in the archaeology lab.