A Full Fall Schedule
What a marvelously full few days it has been, with Saturday’s Trick-or-Treat Trail bringing 1,141 walkers, strollers, and riders on a one-way path through our open doors and the darkened, holiday-decorated lobby. Some entered boldly, some were hesitant, and some hurried through so quickly they forgot to take treats as the hanging “skeletons” kicked and groaned, the caudron bubbled and “smoked,” a giant spider suddenly dropped from above, and an amber-eyed raven cawed accompaniment to the upright grand piano “played” by a red-eyed skeleton within a skeleton costume. As always, we loved seeing children in adorable costumes and providing a safe, trustworthy venue for holiday treats.
The following Sunday afternoon the museum meeting room upstairs was nearly filled with people eager to participate in our Fall Event featuring Harriet Toombs followed by our new native liaison Michelle Clark presenting early pioneer and native history.
Harriet Toombs gave us eye-opening insight to some of the difficulties of tracking down family history. She gave much credit to help at the museum and use of the free Jonsrud library upstairs. Out in the field she was stumped in the quest to find a key gravestone even after learning which cemetery to search. She finally enlisted help from a knowledgeable person who had the location flagged, but even then the grave was hard to find with years of ground level vegetation and soil buildup. She used what she had on hand plus her fingernails to dig down and clear the name of her relative on the headstone. She wants to continue the work.
Michelle Clark brought our imaginations back to pioneer times: to the final goodbyes in the east, to the the swaying of the wagons,eating dried meat and hardtack with thirteen holes to represent the thirteen colonies, building cooking fires with straw, wood, or buffalo dung, interactive singing around the campfire at night,and dancing to the tune of a fiddle. She read many quotes from the pioneers.
Artifacts and memorabilia enhanced the presentation: artwork, a “buffalo” head, a quilt, pioneer dresses made true to the times by a historian seamstress, a bucket, a model wagon, a drum she played to accompany a native Morning Song, and many more. She also contrasted the pioneer migration towards a better life and free land to the forced movement of natives, some also in wagons, along the Trail of Tears to a land and a way of life they did not choose.
The meeting closed with conversation, much food for thought, and fall treats and beverages.
On Wednesday Michelle Clark, along with Dan Bosserman, Ken Funk, and Austin Ernesti, traveled from the museum to Grand Ronde and toured the museum there. Bosserman said they
had productive conversations on the two-hour journey as well. We look forward to what those conversations will bring to our museum.