Day 11 and What we Learned

Bismarck, North Dakota

Today, we drove over into downtown Bismarck to see the State Museum at the North Dakota Heritage Center. 

All I can say is WOW!

I had been told we could visit the museum in about an hour, but boy was that an understatement.

We were there for 3 1/2 hours, and I still felt a little rushed.

We started out in the exhibit of Sakakawea.

They have a bronze statue in her honor on the capitol grounds. 
Sakakawea's granddaughter, Mink, posed for the statue.

Here's what we gathered about her today.

Sakakawea lived with the Hidatsa people in an earthlodge village on the Knife River in North Dakota. She was about 16 years old when Lewis and Clark arrived at her village in 1804.

She was married to a French trader named Toussaint Charbonneau. They traveled with the Lewis and Clark Expedition when Charbonneau was hired as an interpreter. Sakakawea carried her baby on the long journey to the Pacific Ocean and back to the Knife River. The journey took 18 months. Her son's name was Jean Baptiste, but was fondly called Pompy. 

Many discrepancies arise concerning the spelling of Sakakawea's name which means "Bird Woman" in Hidatsa.  Some spellings are Sacagawea and Sacajawea, but the people of ND have chosen Sakakawea from the more direct translation from the Hidatsa language. 

We also saw a mummified dinosaur skin. Never seen that before. 

Here's the mummified skin. 
It was discovered by a high school student who was fossil hunting on his uncle's land.

No museum is complete without a really big skeleton.

Here'a mastadon.

Nana is checking out a display.

" Six foot wide," Natalie thinks,

"That's pretty big."

We also saw an exhibit on the first peoples of the Dakotas and how they lived. 
The Clovis artifacts. 

We also learned many things about the Plains Indians, which included the Dakotas, Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. 

Paw likes the fish catching basket.

He describes how the Indians would catch their fish to Adam.

Over the course of a century and a half, Native groups witnessed their population decimated by disease, the bison herds almost exterminated, the land surveyed and opened for settlement, and eventually their way of life constrained in the boundaries of reservations. 

There was another exhibit on the Settlement Era, where Euro-American settlement of the Northern Plains commenced in earnest after 1861 when the Dakota Territory was organized by Congress. 
New railroads started boom towns. 
Most new residents were either immigrants or children of immigrants. 

After a very late lunch, we drove across the Missouri River to see Fort Abraham Lincoln.
 (which has absolutely nothing to do with Abe Lincoln)

We went to see the ruins of the "On-A-Slant" Indian village which lies within the park. It got its name because of its downward slope toward the river. It was occupied by the Mandan Indians about 20 years before Lewis & Clark arrived. 

The village contained at least 86 round earthlodges. Several reconstructed earthlodges were toured.  You could still see the outlines and depressions in the grassy hillside.

The inside of an earthlodge.

The inside of the roof looks like basket-weave with smaller branches crisscrossing. There's straw above that to keep the dirt from coming through.

Then we drove over to the 3 reconstructed block houses to look out the port holes and on the observation deck. 

Paw's not sure he wants to venture out on the observation deck. Nana says, "no way!"

 The wind was really blowing hard up here. 

Adam likes the view from up here.

The panoramic view

Looking at the Missouri River.

Can you imagine pulling a keelboat up this river?

Look at the wind blowing Adam's hair!

Natalie's hair.

Next, there was Calvary Square, 

the Victorian-style Custer Home, as well as the commissary storehouse, granary, stable and enlisted ment's barracks.

We took a tour inside Custer's house.

Inside the parlor. 

Custer had a Queen Anne's window installed to make it stand out from all the other quarter's.

He asked for volunteers to play the piano, but got no takers...

The dining room table. 

We found out General Custer liked onions and would eat them raw.

The kitchen. 

The story goes that the cook, Ms. Mary, would climb down the stairs each day to get the supplies to cook the meals and would have to face the wild cat tied up down there.

 It had been captured by Custer and kept in the cellar.

He later donated it to the zoo.

Custer's portable writing desk. He had it transported whenever he went out in the field.

Mrs. Custer had only 30 days to vacate the house after her husband was killed at Little Big Horn. She moved back home after realizing she could not support herself on the army widows' pension. She spent the rest of her life defending her husband's honor.

Paw noted to date of the State Historical Society.

1936. 

It was a good year.

An unidentified snake in the grass.

A sweet couple