Idaho, Part 7

Two of my main interests are wildlife and Native American culture. Having just finished our tour of the Wolf Education and Research Center, we spent part of the next day at the Nez Perce Indian Heritage Center outside Lewiston, Idaho. (There is a nearby town called "Clarkston", too. Guess what this part of Idaho is famous for....)

The Heritage Center (left) hosts a set of displays with traditional Nez Perce regalia, artifacts, and information, as well as a theater for a short film about the tribe's history. The people call themselves the Nimi'ipuu, which means "The People"; "Nez Perce" comes from a word meaning "those with pierced noses", a name given them by people outside their tribe.

The Nez Perce met the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, provided them with food, shelter and medicines, and sent them on their way. Today the Nez Perce nation is one of the largest employers in the area; they own a casino and many of their people work in the local industries.

I have no pictures of the heritage center displays (flash photos are usually discouraged in museums, although the woman at the receptionist's desk said I could have taken pictures if I'd wanted to). I did spend a fair amount of time to talking to the receptionist about an item in the cases called a "woman's calendar". It looks like a ball of string with knots tied at intervals. The receptionist explained that the string was given to a girl at puberty; she tied a knot in it each time she experienced a significant event in her life (got married, had a child, survived an attack on camp, etc.) In that respect, the receptionist and I agreed, it was more like a journal than a diary.

The receptionist explained that up until about 20 years ago, anthropologists had been more concerned with finding information on the chiefs and warriors -- in short, the male members of the tribe. However, they were discovering that they were missing large portions of information on tribal life and various activities. Now they are interviewing women to get the stories told to them by grandmothers, mothers, and aunts -- the female members of the tribe. Better late than never, I suppose.

After leaving Lewiston, we stopped at Cataldo Mission (also called Sacred Heart Mission) is the oldest standing building in Idaho. Run by a Jesuit order, the first church was orignally founded at a site about 35 miles away in the early 1840s. The mission was relocated here around 1848, when a new church was erected here, just outside Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho. You can take a walking tour of grounds, which include the housing for the Jesuits (now the Welcome Center and museum), plaques describing the area and history of the church, a garden, outdoor kitchen, and the mission's bell.

On either side of the church's altar are two rooms with displays of the vestments warn at various times in the church's history (at right).



This is the altar itself. Services are still held here.






After a couple nights in Lewiston, we headed out for the last (we thought) pair of sites on our vacation. One was a gold mine tour in Kellogg. The Crystal Gold Mine is no longer a working mine (no one has dug there for nearly a century), but a lot of the equipment used for mining a hundred years ago is still in the mine, and our guide described the techniques as we walked along the path.

For example, at right is a candle holder that would fit on the side of a miner's hat. No hard hats here -- just a general hat that apparently had seen plenty of candles in its time.

At left is a quartz vein running along the mine walls. Miners looked for quartz because gold was often found in the same vicinity. Quartz comes in a number of different colors; this vein happened to be white.












Yes, that's us. No, we didn't strike it rich. Maybe next time....








In Wallace, we toured a the Sierra Silver Mine, which is still up and running, although the section we toured was not active. At left is our guide, who started by explaining various kinds of safety equipment. Back in the 1970s, the mine suffered a major fire, and some of the equipment in the picture was used for rescue, including the oxygen tanks and pump. If the wire near the top of the picture looks like a bird cage, that's because it is. Birds really were used as an early warning system for toxic gases in the mine.


At right is a simulation of rock blasting. The length of fuse on the dynamite determines the amount of time miners had to get out of the area once the fuse was lit. It could also be used to control the blast itself by cause different parts of the wall to explode at different times, essentially causing the shock waves to channel or limit the explosion. The white dots in the picture are just lights set into the tunnel wall; instead of an explosion, we just say flashing lights symbolizing the explosion.

Once the blasting is over, motorized equipment rakes the stones into a cart that then carries the stone where it can be separated. Stone containing the silver is sent off to be processed; stone that won't be used is sent back into the mine, where it is sealed up along with left-over stone and chemicals from the processing. This waste often contains hazardous chemicals and is sealed up to keep it out of the local water supply.

At right is what silver looks like just after being removed from the surrounding rock.



While in Wallace, we discovered the former local train station. This had been moved from its original location when the new highway had been put in (part of the deal with the DoT for allowing the new highway), and was used to display railroad items and other materials from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

At right is the station itself. At left is the station master's office, complete with his hat. The staff at this station often stayed right on the premises, so bathing and sleeping areas were installed.

Below is a sampling of the tools used to build and maintain the railroad.