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.

As a historian, I was very comfortable researching and writing topics for eighth grade North Dakota Studies curriculum North Dakota: People Living on the Land (ndstudies.gov/gr8). That is, I was comfortable until I faced Unit 1, which runs from the Paleozoic Era to A.D. 1200 I had much to learn about paleontology.

I turned to now-retired State Paleontologist John Hoganson. Hoganson’s articles and books are written for non-paleontologists. I interviewed John and read his publications. With his help, I developed a plan to bring paleontology into the eighth-grade curriculum.

While I was working on Unit 1, the Heritage Center expansion was underway. Another paleontologist, Becky Barnes, temporarily occupied a desk just a few feet from mine. I was fortunate to be within “hollering” distance of a paleontologist. I could have inquired in a loud voice, “Becky, how is Xiphactinus pronounced?”

The Xiphactinus was a predatory fish, 18 feet long, with immense fangs. Fossilized remains of a Xiphactinus that lived 85 to 65 million years ago were found in Cavalier County. 10.12.13.

But, I found that a trip to Becky’s desk offered other opportunities I had not imagined.

Becky is a paleontologist and an artist. She paints many images for the State Museum and paleontology publications. One day, I strolled over to her desk and found her working on an illustration of how sediment was laid down and how geological shifts and erosion had left the earth’s surface looking like what we see today. That illustration, “A Piece of Cake,” was modified and included in People Living on the Land.

I worked with people in all divisions of the State Historical Society to develop a well-rounded curriculum. I turned to the Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division (AHP) for help with prehistory. I took an archaeology course once, so I wasn’t completely ignorant, but I depended on the division staff to direct me to pertinent research reports and photographs, guide me in the right direction, and answer my endless questions. State Archaeologist Fern Swenson encouraged me to use archaeological evidence to determine the ending date of Unit 1. Historians commonly use 1492 and the arrival of Columbus to divide prehistory from history. But Fern convinced me that A.D. 1200 is a better date for North Dakota Studies because that is when Menoken Village was occupied.

Menoken Village, located a few miles east of Bismarck on Apple Creek, was occupied around 1200 A.D. The palisade wall and the remains of earthlodges indicate that it was a permanent village.

The village is the earliest known permanent village site in North Dakota.

We wanted to include museum objects that could tell a story or illustrate a point. Jenny Yearous, Museum curator, helped me out one day when she brought out a bundle of ration tickets that had been used on the Fort Berthold Reservation. The ration tickets seemed a curiosity and a good illustration for reservation history. Further research indicated that the tickets told a profound story about the transition from a pre-reservation life of hunting and gardening to a life of poverty and dependence by 1900. Research in the federal Indian census produced more information and brought to life the families listed on the ration tickets.

With friendly advice from all divisions of the State Historical Society, the curriculum creditably covers 500 million years of history. By the way, Xiphactinus is pronounced zy FACT in us.

It’s a situation most people have encountered, and it goes something like this: “Hey! I need you to complete (insert project of your choice) in a really short amount of time, and by the way, we have little to no budget. Not a problem, is it?” As small non-profits, museums regularly find themselves in this conundrum. In the Exhibits department we call it the holy trinity: fast, cheap, and great. Most of the time, however, you can only reasonably be expected to achieve two.

• Fast + cheap ≠ great
• Cheap + great ≠ fast
• Great+ fast ≠ cheap

So what can you do? In the absence of superpowers, we’ve integrated a number of techniques into our daily exhibit operations to help us get closer to the “impossible utopia” of fast, cheap, and great.

Fordization

Henry Ford’s great success as an automobile manufacturer came from standardizing everything – methods, parts, and tools. As much as possible we have standardized the hardware and material we use in building exhibits. This provides many benefits: eliminates the possibility of error, easier to remember components when designing, and it’s cheaper to buy in bulk. Being more efficient saves resources – time and money – neither of which we ever have enough of.

Reuse and Recycle

It’s not just fashionable to go green, but it saves resources. We always take a look at our existing inventory first and ask, “How can we re-purpose it?” But, if we need to buy something new, we plan for its reuse and buy high quality. The initial expense is made up in its longevity.

KISS (keep it simple stupid)

This applies to so many things, but especially exhibits. We design components to be not only durable but easily fixable – because nothing can withstand a determined five-year-old. Our most utilized designs are ones that we’ve used for years because they have withstood the test of time. We also keep in mind who will be maintaining and repairing the components; the repair has to be within their ability.

Learn from History

It’s okay to stop using something if it doesn’t work, even if it’s been around for years. We have started to consciously plan to our existing resources. It seems self-evident, but checking to make sure an exhibit case will move through a doorway and can be moved by two people saves a lot of heartburn later.

Although these techniques were developed for exhibit production they can be applied to many other areas. Ta Da!

This month a journey began into the collections from Like-A-Fishhook Village (32ML2). Why Like-A-Fishhook? And why all the excitement?

An archaeologist on our staff is researching Like-A-Fishhook as part of her dissertation work. So, part of the excitement is getting to look closely at the objects as she inventories and photographs them. Also, as an older collection, the objects are in need of being repacked. The rest of the excitement has to do with the site itself.

Into the 19^th century, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples were prosperous traders, hunters, and farmers who lived in earthlodge villages and grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers in large gardens along the Missouri River. But in 1837 a small pox epidemic took a large toll on native populations in North Dakota. The loss of so many people during the epidemic, combined with ongoing conflicts with nomadic groups, led the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples to settle together for mutual protection. By 1845 Hidatsa people and some Mandan people had settled at a new village site nestled in a large bend of the Missouri River. The large bend was shaped like a fish hook—which is why the village was called Like-A-Fishhook. The Hidatsa were later joined by more Mandan people, and by 1862 the Arikara people joined the village as well. Multiple cultures, languages, and traditions lived in close proximity in this village, making it very unique. Like-A-Fishhook was the last traditional earthlodge village settled in North Dakota. Situated next to Fort Berthold, it was a home and a hub of trade for people for more than forty years. The US government, however, began encouraging the people at the village to resettle, and by 1889 the village was mostly abandoned.

Most of the objects in our Like-A-Fishhook collection came from the River Basin Surveys. The River Basin Surveys were started as a series of archaeology projects in the mid-1940s sponsored by the National Park Service and coordinated by the Smithsonian Institution. After World War II dam building became a popular method for flood control, but many archaeology sites located on rivers were being destroyed as a result. In North Dakota, many of the early River Basin Surveys attempted to record important places along the Missouri River before they were flooded by the construction of the Garrison Dam. The location of Like-A-Fishhook is now underwater, but several excavations took place at the site before the river flooded it. The artifacts and records from the River Basin Surveys are part of the surviving record of the site.

Left: Some crew members from the Like-A-Fishhook River Basin Survey excavations in July 1954, left to right: Hubert Smith, Jerry Giddings, Fred McEvoy (holding “Fishhook”), Harold Dietsch, Bruce Conner, Alan Woolworth, Ray Wood, Lee Madison, and an un-identified visitor to the site (Photo by Raymond Price, AHP Archaeological Records)
Right: A view of part of the Like-A-Fishhook River Basin Survey excavations in July, 1954. The tents from the archaeologists’ camp can be seen in the left background. (Photo by W.R. Wood, AHP Archaeological Records)

We are now are going through the objects in the archaeology collection to photograph, record, and repack the artifacts in archival materials (in bags and boxes that will not damage the artifacts over time). We have only just started this project, but here are a few of the things that we have seen so far.

One of the first boxes we opened had an elk antler bow fragment in it. I have not seen an elk antler bow before!

Elk antler bow fragments (12003.726)

I was excited to see some cloth fragments! Cloth does not survive very well in North Dakota’s climate, so it is not very often that we have any in our archaeology collections. What do you think was made from this cloth material?

Textile fragments (12003.258)

There was a small child-sized leather shoe sole. I would like to know who this shoe belonged to and how old he or she was when it was worn.

Leather shoe sole (12003.2642)

The first few boxes contained a lot of plant materials. There were many charred corn cobs, plum pits, and squash seeds. Plant remains are interesting because they can show what types of food people were collecting or growing, harvesting, and using or eating.

Left: Charred corn cobs (12003.2263)
Middle: Plum pits (12003.258)
Right: Squash seeds (12003.258)

There were also some fish scales, so I am assuming someone enjoyed a good fish dinner.

Fish scales (12003.258)

We have many more boxes of Like-A-Fishhook artifacts to go through, so hopefully I will be able to share some more of the objects that we find in the future!