As our journey takes us from place to place, we are constantly traveling through American history. Be it in Manhattan which stands for so many chapters of older and recent American history or the Seattle and Puget Sound area, representing the end of the frontier and settlement of what today is the USA, or be it Astoria and so many other places along the Oregon Trail on which approximately 350’000 settlers traveled out West, or the Indian Reservations or what used to be Native American territories that raise so many questions about entitlement and reconciliation. I have previously sketched out our thoughts on the Quileute in the Pacific North West and on Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé in the East of Oregon.
Juliane’s host father Stephen, who is a full-hearted elementary school teacher and passionate biologist and archeologist with a cattle ranch farming background, in concert with his wife Nancy who also used to be an elementary school teacher for over 40 years, provides us with some extra precious insights into ancient and more recent American history during our stay in Homedale.
I already mentioned our visit to Celebration Park with the petroglyphs and the atlatl-activities. What I didn’t mention yet was the wealth of literature on Native American history that Stephen and Nancy keep at their house, and, most impressively, the morning before our departure, where Stephen gives us an extra history class.
He starts with fossils of all kinds that he and his father found in Owyhee County, various shellfish and snail fossils that are several ten thousand years old, and then shows us ancient Native American tools and armor, including spearheads and arrow heads made out of various materials, including volcanic rock. He also displays old coins depicting various Native American motives and personalities, including Sacagawea, a famous Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark across the Rocky Mountains on their quest for the Oregon Trail. Stephen gives Oda and Leo some of those objects as a gift, and they are to be kept in little Altoids treasure boxes.
Further exhibits of Stephen’s history collection include a civil war cavalry sabre and a 100 years old 1894 model Winchester repetition rifle.
We wonder what stories all of these objects would likely tell us.
claudia hollander-lucas
19 July 2017 at 2:46
sacagawea saved the Lewis and Clark “Corps of Discovery” so many times during their journey. she is a hero of mine-saddled with a useless alcoholic husband, a tiny baby, and got deathly ill herself during the journey. She guided the Corps humbly, and she was only 15 years old at the time! unbelievable.