Fort Walla Walla Days!

Wahoo! This weekend is our annual Fort Walla Walla Days! The point is to portray and commemorate the region's 19th century military and Indian heritage, and we do that in colorful, enjoyable fashion.

This year, we'll feature a Civil War skirmish re-enactment. Now you might be thinking, Huh? There was no Civil War action out here! That's true, but soldiers posted at Fort Walla Walla during the Civil War years were sent back east to serve. In our current Abraham Lincoln and Walla Walla County exhibit, such a story can be seen. You can also be sure that loved ones those soldiers left behind ... as well as anyone else living here at the time ... would have been all but desperate for news of the war. Imagine a 3-month old newspaper arriving in town in those days.

We also have military encampments representing several eras of the 19th century from the Lewis & Clark expedition through the Spanish-American War. A few years ago when one of the community's World War I cannons came to rest on Museum grounds, we began including an encampment from those days, too, as artillery training went on briefly at Fort Walla Walla in 1916. There is a wonderful photo of utility-pole cannons resting on wagons that local, enterprising farm boys used as make-shift training equipment that will be displayed in our upcoming (Friday, June 12) new special exhibit, Salute! Soldiering in the Walla Walla Region, just in time for the weekend's activities.

Regional Indian people will share their stories, too, and give good play to their ongoing cultural vitality. This includes Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, the museum of The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and a new traveling exhibit of the Wanapum people. I think the Wanapum are bringing a young dancing phenom with them, too.

We'll have an author here on Saturday, Greg Hodgen, who co-wrote The Rocks are Ringing: Bannock-Paiute Indian War, Oregon, 1878. Soldiers from Fort Walla Walla engaged in the final encounter of that sad affair at Battle Mountain, just south of Pendleton. Greg may also do a Living History presentation of Cpl. Philip Murphy, a soldier from Fort Walla Walla.

It's also a chance for us to show more of our cultural side, as we present our annual 3-day Western Art Show beginning Friday. Coordinated by artist David Partridge, it features the work of several local artists following a general Western theme.

To top things off, we'll have food available from Tinos' Tacos and Deeney's Ice Cream. Looks like a great way to spend time with the family!

Today's photos show (top to bottom( our blacksmith shop demonstraion, a beadwork demonstration at the Wanapum exhibit, General William Clark, Kathleen Gordon from Tamástslikt, and a Civil War camp.

History Comes Alive!

We take history seriously at Fort Walla Walla Museum, but we're also aware that not everyone else wants a lecture on the subject. One of the most interesting and entertaining ways of learning a little about regional heritage is through our Living History program, the first of whose presentations occurs this Sunday at 2:00 pm.

It's important to learn from our past. As philospher George Santayana once wrote, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The Museum's Living History Company, through its more than 40 weekend presentations through the season, tells the stories of real people in their 'own voice' who helped create the community we have today. I get first nod of the season as I portray Lewis & Clark Expedition member John Colter. Next week, Charles Saranto portrays one of the best stories anywhere as pioneer blacksmith & hotelier Fred Stine.

Through the season, which features performance every Sunday, plus Saturday June through August, you can enjoy Captain Mullan from Mullan Trail fame, Madame Josephine 'Dutch Jo' Wolf, early brewmasters John & Catherine Stahl, Hudson's Bay Company trader William McBean, Suzanne Cayuse Dauphin who was one of the first Indian women to own property in this region, and many, many others. Included in the bunch are special presentations during Ice Cream Social, Women's History Celebration, Frenchtown Rendezvous, and a '19th Century Party' to conclude the season. The season has been described as "a 42-week course in Walla Walla history." Maybe so, but it sure is fun!

Today's photos, top to bottom, include Rich Monacelli as William McBean, Judith Fortney as Suzanne Cayuse Dauphin, Lois Hahn as 'Dutch Jo,' Charles Saranto as Fred Stine, and me, Paul Franzmann as John Colter.

Preserving & Sharing Via Technology

The last couple of days have seen an interesting convergence of 19th century atrifacts and 21st century technology at Fort Walla Walla Museum. The first item that comes to mind is the grant we received Monday; the entire operation was done online, relating to the funding of our 1805-1806 Lewis & Clark diorama.

Another idea on the horizon is to turn a cd full of pictures of regional century+ old barns into a screen saver set for purchase through the Museum Store ... we have a couple of other notions on deck in that realm, too. These are things we can do in-house to had depth to a visitor's experience at the Museum. We have a collection chock full of interesting photographs dating way back to the community's origins; surely something can be done with some of those images, too. Ditto the several books whose copyrights we control.

All of this brings me to our mission: to preserve and share Walla Walla regional heritage. A few years ago, we acquired software that allowed us to put our entire collection records into digital format. We now know exactly how many items we have in the collection at any one time and, in theory, exactly where to locate any particular artifact. Sounds simple, but we have more than 42,000 items in the collection ... and they don't sit still.

Items are routinely rotated in and out of archival storage for displays, inter-museum loans, off-campus displays (see the exhibit case in the lobby of the Marcus Whitman Hotel & Conference center), and the always possible "other" category. Digitizing the collection was a major boon to preservation, allowing us to keep track of each and every item and devote regular periodic attention to its maintenance.

If technology allows us to enhance preservation (don't forget the digitized controls of the 'climate controlled' buildings and artifact repositories), it also helps us to share the wonderful heritage of the region's past. Being able to take a home a digital chink o' the past is a whole "brave new world" for the Museum and we'll likely move more in that direction.

Helping Hand for New Exhibit

Much of import happened while I was away yesterday! Fort Walla Walla Museum plies the grants market several times each year and we were rewarded with an announcement that one of those 'asks' had been acknowledged. It was a national-level grant that will help us move forward with some of the inside, visitor-visible aspects of Phase I construction.

Exhibit Hall I was emptied of all its various and sundry trasures over the winter and will soon be demolished (maybe starting today?). Among the exhibits housed in it was our life-size Lewis & Clark diorama. The scene depicted involved three mannequins representing Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Yellept, a headman of the Wallah Wallah people. They are in the midst of a gift exchange, Cap't. Clark's military saber for Yellept's "eligant white horse," as it was described in the journals. Behind it stood a mural representing Wallula Gap, just south of where the Walla Walla River enters the Columbia. Much of that exhibit was re-displayed in our Headquarters for this season, but we had to bid adieu to the mural.

In the new Entrance building about to arise phoenix-like from the demolished Exhibit Hall I, the diorama will be re-created. We have had preliminary discussion with a local artist of renown and acclaim to produce a new mural with seasonal coloring more appropriate to the actual time frame depicted, as well as a new view of the Gap from the far bank of the Columbia River where stood Yellept's village. As a whole, the scene will be more historically accurate, and colorwise, more pleaseing to the eye. Thanks to the new grant, we shall be able to proceed with the plan.

Stay tuned! Big things are under way!!