Celebrating the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum Collection

written by Nancy Carswell

Two boxes from the Shellbrook Museum collection show superb examples of First Nations points and scrapers. Comparing the two hammerheads in the photo, a binding grove in the middle and round ends suggests one was a war club and a binding groove offset from a flat end suggests the other was a flat peg hammer for pounding in tent pegs.

To celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2013, the Shellbrook & District Heritage Museum will be sharing a monthly spotlight on a segment of its collection. While the majority of items in the Museum collection are from the early decades of the 1900’s, there are some tools, including exquisitely crafted arrowheads, from First Nation people who lived in this area for thousands of years.

Dolores Greyeyes Sand says, “Thank heavens I was born in this time when I think of all the work involved in the life of a First Nations person.” Band members were very interdependent and therefore very egalitarian. The men would hunt, fish, and trap, and protect tribal boundaries, and they respected the women who gave birth, gathered and prepared food, and produced lodging, clothing, and other necessities. Young people too would have had responsibilities like gathering firewood and picking berries.

“Everybody had a job to do and it was all for the common good,” explains Greyeyes Sand. There would have been clear protocols for sharing the bounty. There are many edible and medicinal plants in the Shellbrook Canwood Big River area and it is rich in wildlife—fish, birds, mōswa (moose), wāwāskīsiw (elk), apisimōsos (deer), and other furbearing animals. This area is the northern edge of the paskwāwimostos (plains bison) historic range so they too would have been a resource.

Paskwāwimostos hunting would have been especially cooperative. The band would have constructed a circular aspen palisade called a pound. The members then would drive the paskwāwimostos in and the hunters would kill them. In the museum collection of First Nations tools, as well as arrowheads that can be identified as Duncan, Hanna, and Pelican Lake, there is one that is noticeably larger than the others. It may be for a spear point on a light throwing spear that would have been hurled with the use of a throwing stick, called an atlatl. Like all technology, the atlatl amplifies what humans can do, in this case, extending the arm. Archaeologists agree the use of the atlatl ended around 1,500 years ago so a spear point could be the oldest artifact in the collection.

The museum collection also has examples of scrapers used in tanning. Greyeyes Sand mentions that Cecilia Masuskapoe at age 95 is still making birch bark baskets, harvesting sweetgrass and wīhkēs (rat root) with her grandchildren, and up until a decade ago she was preparing hides in the traditional manner. Tanning hides is hard work and enormously time consuming.

Scrapers for tanning and other tools would have been very valuable and obtained through a trading network. It is probable that some tools in the collection are from the Cypress Hills area and further south into the United States. One arrowhead looks like a Knife River flint from North Dakota and another could be Obsidian from the Yellowstone River in Wyoming.

The Museum Committee and Friends of the Museum are investing energy in inventorying the collection this winter. The inventorying process is the first step as the museum moves from storing artifacts to telling their stories. If you would like to help, please drop in to see Alanna Carswell at the library or call Marlene Fellows at 306-747-2475.