Nez Perce National Historical Park Administrative History

CHAPTER SIX:
CULTURAL RESOURCES

Collections

The Nez Perce Tribe purchased two historic collections in 1964 when the park bill was still under consideration in Congress, entrusting them to the Park Service's care once the park had been authorized. One collection consisted of the inventory left in the Watson's Store when the tribe purchased the property. Since this building had served as a general store for the local Nez Perce Indians since 1911, it still contained numerous interesting items that would be of use in a historic furnishings plan. The other collection was that belonging to Joe Evans' Sacajawea Museum, located near the Watson's Store. The Evans family had been augmenting their museum collection since 1931. Most of the artifacts were unauthenticated. They included a buckskin dress alleged to have belonged to Sacajawea, and a dugout canoe supposedly used by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Much of the collection had been damaged or destroyed in the flood of 1963. The Evans family sold other items along with their house lot in 1964. These two collections were stored in various locations at Lapwai and Spalding, including the basement of the tribal headquarters, Watson's Store, and Fort Lapwai Officers' Quarters, and received little curatorial care before the mid 1970s. [260]

In 1967, Washington State University loaned the L.V. McWhorter collection to Nez Perce National Historical Park. McWhorter was a Washington rancher with an interest in documents and cultural materials pertaining to the Nez Perce and Yakima tribes. Park officials stored the McWhorter collection in a locked vault located in one of the offices in the former Blue Lantern Motel. After selecting certain items for exhibit in the new visitor center, the park returned the McWhorter collection to Washington State University in 1983. [261] In 1971, the NPS purchased the Vera I. Rydryck collection, which added about 200 important artifacts to the park's inventory. The park received other collections by donation, including the Chapman family collection of artifacts collected in the 1920s and 1930s in the Snake and Clearwater river drainages, and the Spalding Museum Foundation's collection (see Chapter 1). [262]

Collections management did not go beyond storage of the materials until the mid-1970s, when the park administration gradually added that function to its scope of operations. In 1974, the NPS contracted with Joel Bernstein, an instructor at the University of Montana, to catalog records and artifacts stored in Lapwai. Bernstein found his working conditions in the Officers' Quarters building so primitive that he eventually moved his cataloguing operation to an office in the park headquarters building in Spalding. In any case, the NPS found Bernstein's work to be of such poor quality that it had to be redone. [263] In 1976, the NPS contracted for this work with Stephen D. Shawley, a local expert on Nez Perce material culture with a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Idaho. In 1977, Shawley secured a staff position as the park's first museum curator.

Like Bernstein, Shawley worked under adverse conditions. The collections were still exposed to vermin and the storage facilities lacked proper standards of heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC). Among Shawley's first recommendations was the need for a new museum storage facility. The NPS began renting the Rose building in Lapwai for collections storage. Formerly an auto service garage, the Rose building was a windowless, masonry structure without insulation. The NPS retrofitted the facility with fire and burglar alarms, heaters, and humidifiers. Despite the exorbitant cost of maintaining the proper temperature and humidity levels for the collections through the winter, the Rose building served as the park's museum storage facility until the collections could be moved to the new visitor center in 1981. [264]

Under Shawley's guidance, the Park Service sought to acquire more items of Nez Perce traditional material culture to improve its exhibits in the visitor center. Out of a total of some 30,000 items held by the park, approximately 85 percent were of relatively recent vintage and would be of little use outside the Watson's Store exhibit. Shawley noted many categories of traditional material culture were inadequately represented: toys and recreation devices, hunting and fishing implements, ceremonial objects, women's dress, horse technology and accoutrements, native medicines, and household tools. Superintendent Morris requested $10,000 for the purpose of purchasing such artifacts. [265]

That same year the NPS arranged with the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) for the loan of the Dudley Allen-Henry Spalding collection. Henry Spalding, like other nineteenth-century missionaries, used the trade in native artifacts to help finance the operation of their missions. This remarkable collection, which included clothing and horse gear used by the Nez Perce Indians in the 1830s and 1840s, had been assembled by Henry Spalding and shipped by riverboat down the Snake and Columbia rivers to Fort Vancouver, thence by ship via the Hawaiian Islands and Cape Horn to Boston, and finally overland to Dr. Dudley Allen in Kinsmen, Ohio. In 1893, Dr. Allen's son donated this collection to Oberlin College, and in 1942, the Allen-Spalding collection was loaned to the OHS. In the late 1970s, the curator of Northwest Indian Art at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Bill Holm, learned of the existence of this collection and brought it to the attention of park officials. The park obtained the Allen-Spalding collection on the basis of a one-year renewable loan in 1980, and a generous selection of items from the collection became the focus of the visual interpretation of Nez Perce material culture in the new visitor center in 1983. [266]

While Shawley showed considerable acumen as a collector, he had little experience in designing museum exhibits. He was resourceful in expanding the exhibits in the temporary visitor center and in refurnishing the Watson's Store. However, when it came to planning the permanent exhibit in the new visitor center, Shawley encountered difficulties. Despite two years of collaborative effort between the park, the regional office, and Harpers Ferry Center, many problems developed in getting the permanent exhibits in place inside the new facility. The problems stemmed from a combination of inadequate planning and poor workmanship by the contractor. In September 1982, Harpers Ferry Center contracted with Promotion Products, Inc., to fix the myriad problems in the museum area. Regional Curator Kent Bush worked with a professional crew to plan the modifications, while Shawley was relieved of that duty. [267]

Shawley got into serious trouble as he resumed the task of cataloguing. During the period that the visitor center was under development, he had neglected his cataloguing duties and had allowed some of the collections to become mixed together. Other collections lacked adequate documentation to show whether the Park Service had acquired them by purchase or loan. By the end of 1981, Shawley had catalogued 700 objects and had properly completed 500 museum cards, while consigning numerous other items to museum clearinghouse lists. This headway notwithstanding, Superintendent Whitaker could only describe the park's museum records as a "quagmire." [268]

Whitaker was increasingly concerned about Shawley's job performance. Indeed, as the large backlog of curatorial work festered, Whitaker's trust in Shawley's professional integrity eroded. When one notable item disappeared and then reappeared, it raised suspicions. Shawley's former professor, Dr. Roderick Sprague, confided to Whitaker that he had concerns about Shawley occupying such an official position. In Sprague's estimation, Shawley had approached the study of anthropology at the University of Idaho from the perspective of a dealer, specializing too early in his hobby interest of Nez Perce material culture. The son of missionaries, Shawley had grown up with Nez Perce Indians and had a firsthand knowledge of their traditional material culture. As park curator, he had maintained his contacts with dealers of Indian artifacts. He was secretive and tended to treat the park collection as his own. [269] This raised the issue of whether Shawley possessed proper credentials to be a park museum curator. Professional standards for museum curation in the national park system changed significantly during the 1970s and 1980s; what had once been a field dominated by collectors was becoming more and more a field for the specialist with formal training in museology. [270] Shawley's background was no longer a good fit with the Park Service.

It took an additional two years for Whitaker to resolve this personnel problem. In 1983, Whitaker put Shawley under the supervision of Art Hathaway. The next year, she asked for a performance review of the park curator by the regional curator. Finally, in 1985, she requested an audit of museum management in the park by the Office of Inspector General (OIG). Both the performance review and the inspector general's report found major weaknesses in the park's internal control system for museum property. The OIG report presented nine separate actions for correcting these deficiencies. Under threat of indictment for theft of missing items, Shawley resigned in 1985. [271]

The two succeeding park curators, Susan Kopcynski (1986-1987) and Susan Buchel (1988-1994) implemented the OIG report's recommendations and began re-cataloguing all of the park museum holdings according to National Catalog standards. The latter was accomplished mainly through contracts with the University of Idaho Anthropology Laboratory. The regional curator wrote and administered the contracts while the park curator monitored the cataloguing operation on-site. By 1994, all objects had been adequately documented in the National Catalog, but accession records from 1965 to 1986 still contained many gaps in documentation. [272]

As the park's collection management program emerged from the morass in which the OIG found it in the mid-1980s, one of the outstanding problems concerned the future of the Allen-Spalding collection. This collection, with an appraised value of approximately $583,100, accounted for nearly a third of the total value of the park's museum holdings. More importantly, it formed the core of the park's collection of Nez Perce artifacts. As Superintendent Weaver explained to the Director of the Ohio Historical Society in 1988,

These early nineteenth-century objects serve not only as the focus of the visual interpretation at our park museum, but form the heart of our research collection. They represent the oldest known examples of historical Nez Perce material culture aside from the articles acquired by Lewis and Clark and exhibit cultural style, and decorative techniques long since lost. [273]

Weaver suggested that the OHS and the NPS negotiate new terms for this important accession, such as a long-term loan, donation, exchange, or purchase. The OHS did not respond to Weaver's letter, but simply renewed the yearly loan agreement.

In the spring of 1993, the park received a letter from the OHS requesting that the collection be returned to Ohio within three weeks. The OHS offered no prior warning nor any explanation. Park officials protested that they needed more time to package the materials and arrange for new exhibits in the visitor center; OHS representatives misunderstood and thought the park was refusing to cooperate. [274] From the ensuing discussions, it gradually became evident that the OHS was willing to sell the collection as long as it could recover something close to the collection's appraised value. The NPS, for its part, wanted to work with the Nez Perce Tribe as the most appropriate and desirable purchaser of the collection.

In September 1993, the General Council of the Nez Perce Tribe voted in favor of forming a committee on the Allen-Spalding collection comprising four tribal members, one member of NPTEC, and one NPS official. According to committee member Richard Ellenwood, the Park Service backed the tribe's efforts "110 percent." Negotiations proved rather delicate. The OHS's negotiating position appeared to change according to the internal politics of its board of directors. The Nez Perce Tribe, for its part, appealed to public opinion in support of its claim that the articles properly belonged in Nez Perce country, pointing out that Henry Spalding obtained the items for a tiny fraction of their present value. The tribe did not limit its appeal to Idaho citizens, but obtained radio air time in Ohio and contacted the Ohio governor to press its case. [275] By November 1995, negotiations had deadlocked. The Park Service removed the items from display in the visitor center and announced that it would soon begin packing the collection for shipment to Ohio. [276] In December the NPS, the tribe, and the OHS reached an agreement: the tribe would have until June 1996, to raise $608,100 with which to purchase the collection. The final price was based on the earlier appraisal and the addition of a cradle board which was part of the collection but had not been loaned to the NPS.

After six months and a national effort the tribe raised the necessary funds. On May 28 Tribal Chairman Samuel Penney and NPS Curator Robert Chenoweth went to Columbus, Ohio to deliver a check and receive the cradle board. The collection was welcomed back to Nez Perce country at ceremonies during the Chief Joseph and Warriors Memorial, at a special service at Spalding Presbyterian Church, and at the Park Headquarters. The collection was returned to display in June. It is owned by the Nez Perce Tribe and cared for and displayed by the NPS under a joint agreement.

Another collection that began to receive more staff attention in the late 1980s was the park's historic photograph collection. The collection was in disarray, with original and copy negatives and prints and snapshots attached to cards that usually had no identifying information. Hundreds of negatives located in the park files had never before been catalogued. The photograph collection provided an unusually intimate view of the Nez Perce people and received a growing amount of use from researchers outside the Park Service. Museum Curator Susan Buchel initiated an organization of this material in 1988. Tribal elder Allen Slickpoo, Sr., employed as a museum aid, identified many of the previously unknown people, events, and locations featured in the photographs. Slickpoo took some of the photographic images to knowledgeable sources in the community and to senior citizen centers in Lapwai and Kamiah. Two other Nez Perces on the park staff, Kevin Peters and Calvin Shillal, also assisted with the project. Elders of the Chief Joseph Band in Nespelem identified photographic images in 1990. After they were identified, all photographic subjects were cross-referenced and entered into a computer database, and the personal name index came to include more than 1,000 entries. The photographs continue to be one of the most heavily used resources among the park's collections. [277]

Surprisingly, problems relating to museum storage space were not entirely alleviated with the completion of the new visitor center. The building contained three large rooms in the basement for museum storage, but these filled up quickly. Several large furnishing items that had been stored in the Watson's Store were moved to the new building along with all the other collections that had been held in scattered locations. Moreover, the building's heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system were housed in the same space as museum storage. Indeed, one of the rooms, Vault B-3, was flooded in December 1983, and about 250 objects came in contact with water. Regional Curator Kent Bush recommended $18,000 in improvements to the ceiling, walls, and floors of these storage rooms to bring them closer to museum standards. The park staff was provided with guidelines for preventive maintenance to safeguard against future problems with the HVAC system. [278] Flooding problems in Vault B-3 have persisted.

Adequate storage, not just for the museum collection but for various supplies associated with all phases of park operations, became more acute over time. As a result, the park administration built a new storage building in 1995. Measuring 90 x 40 feet and located by the maintenance shop, the building would provide storage area for supplies and equipment related to interpretation, maintenance, visitor protection, and administration, together with a few large objects from the museum collection. It would also house the park's fire truck, heavy maintenance equipment, and riding mowers. This new structure alleviated storage problems in the basement of the visitor center. [279]

In recent years, two staff reorganizations have had a significant effect on the collections management program. In 1988, Superintendent Weaver sought to increase the level of resource protection in the park with the establishment of two new divisions for natural and cultural resources. The position of park curator was reclassified to include management of the Cultural Resources Division. In 1991, responsibility for the park library was transferred from the Interpretive to the Cultural Resources Division. While the staff reorganization increased the level of protection for cultural resources as a whole, it reduced the amount of staff time available for collections management. To correct this deficiency, the park gained a full-time Museum Technician position and a part-time Librarian position. Under the new organization, the library grew from an interpretive staff resource into a public-service research facility. The library received additional funding through the regional office and donations from the Northwest Interpretive Association for the collection of dissertations, theses, rare books, and other items. [280]

In 1994, Superintendent Walker introduced the unit organization concept in Nez Perce National Historical Park and obtained approval of a revised organizational structure/position management plan (Chapter 8). That plan called for a Cultural Resource Management Specialist, Museum Curator, Museum Technician, and Library Technician to staff the Cultural Resources Division within the Park Support Unit based at Spalding. In March 1996, the Cultural Resource Management Specialist position remained to be filled. [281]