Over 105 degrees once again today. There was a little rain last night over some of the surrounding area. It was a welcome relief to the areas that received some moisture, but the lightning that came with it also managed to spark several fires around the Chadron area. As far as I know all of those were found and extinguished before they became very big, but there are still several east of here near the town of Valentine that are still out of control. One prairie fire had consumed more than 100,000 acres, (140 square miles +/-), by yesterday evening.

    Spent a lot of yesterday afternoon in the air conditioned coolness of McDonald's and will most likely do the same thing for a lot of this afternoon. Not really what I prefer to do, but it is amazing how uncomfortable it is outside in the heat. It would be a lot better if I was on a river trip somewhere. At least then you could get into the water and cool down.

    My nephew, Brian, and I decided to take a drive along the 'Nebraska Forest', west of Chadron yesterday evening. We saw tons of deer of course and many, many, turkeys out hunting grasshoppers and seeds. The little one's all seem to be big enough to fly somewhat now so they have a better chance to survive from now on. We continued our drive on over to the east side of Chadron later in the evening while it was starting to rain a bit. Lot's more deer of course, a few antelope, but only one elk for the evening.

   Brian and his girlfriend Liz invited me over for pizza and beer after our drive. Two of my favorite food groups, so that was a no brainer. I spent the rest of the evening, until it cooled down enough to sleep, loading up some music files for Brian from my collection. Turns out he kind of likes some of the Contra music I had on the stereo on our drive. He also seemed to be somewhat impressed with a couple bands that I showed him on some youtube videos.

    In the meantime; here are a bunch of pictures from our visit to the 'Museum of the Fur Trade' a couple of days ago when Marge and George were still with me. This museum explores the whole world wide fur trade rather than just the 'Mountain Man' years that many feel are the most important and romantic era. This is maybe the 5th time I've visited here and it just never grows old. There is always something new to see and in this case there were several new displays to look at and read about.

Some of the tools of the trade. Guns of course for hunting food, protection against wild people and animals and a few other tools. The map in the upper right corner is what was really interesting to me. It shows the English held fur trading forts in red and the French in blue untill after the French-American war.

Some additional tools, but in this case what caught my eye was the material in the far corner that looks like a stick with rope wrapped around it. What it is really is 'twist tobacco'. Used as a trade good, it was much easier to transport in this form than it was to transport loose leaf tobacco.

On the right are a few leg hold traps used for fur bearing animals such as beaver, mink, badger etc. The fork looking things on the wall are sturgeon spear points and the metal basket thing on the left was used to hold lit pine knots to attract fish at night.

A display showcasing the beaver, one of the animals most associated  with the fur trade. A unique animal on it's own, it has developed many anatomical traits that make it suited for the life it lives.

A new diorama showing a bunch of French Voyagers packing a load of trade goods into the wilderness of Canada and Northern U.S. via canoe. This shows a larger, but by no means largest, canoes used in the fur trade. Heavily loaded some of these boats could carry as much as 8,000 lbs of goods and people.

Some of the equipment used in the Alaskan fur trade including both American and Russian rifles. The boat models show Eskimo badarika's and kayaks. On the walls are pelts of sea otter, beaver and ?. The metal piece on the bottom shelf is a Russian tea samovar.

A display showing some of the many types and colors of trade beads. Many were some form of glass bead, though a few were also ceramic. They were highly prized by many indigenous people and though we sometimes question the idea of trading highly valued furs for 'cheap' beads, we (me), often forget that such thoughts come only from our sense of what is valuable.

A display from the far north of Canada and Alaska. On the wall are models of several types of Ulu (sp), knives. The basic butchering knife of some tribes. On the main wall is a white fox fur, polar bear and on top, a waterproof coat made out of the intestines of seals. Made and sold by the thousands to Russian traders for use by their crews. I wonder what one of those would of smelled like once it was wet.

Many types of knives used in the fur trade. Romantically we picture these men as using these huge 'Bowie' style knives for everyday use, but the reality is that the knife used most often was more than likely more like the ones on the bottom shelf.

Here we see some of the types of moccasins Native Americans made and used as well as a ceremonial headdress.

A Plain Indians dress shirt and gloves as well as a leather saddle pad.

Trade blankets were traded according to size and size was shown by putting a certain number of lines, called points, on the side of every blanket. A standard men's personnel blanket was usually a 3-point blanket, a women's, 2 1/2 pts. They would go up to as much as 8 points, more than big enough to cover any King size bed today.

More Native American clothing on display.

A women's ceremonial dress with over 4,000 separate dentalia shells attached. These shells would of been traded from natives who lived along the western ocean and then transported several thousand miles inland.

A beaded shirt. This needle work was just stunning.

A birch bark trade canoe. At about 25' long it would carry 8-10 men and 2,000-3,000 lbs of trade goods and furs.

One of the last grizzly bears killed in Nebraska. When you look at the teeth and claws on this animal you feel some relief that they don't roam a lot of the country any more. On the other hand it is sad that you don't see many of these in the wild anymore outside of a couple small parks.

A smaller birch bark canoe. At about 18'-20' it is sized for 1-4 men and their gear. It still astounds me that you can actually build a well functioning and beautiful boat out of nothing but bark, tree roots and pine pitch.

A close up of one end of the larger canoe in the museum showing the detail of the stem and the attachment of the wooden gunnel's.

A diagram showing the amount of gear and trade goods that could be packed into a large canoe along with the 10-12 men who would paddle and portage it up to 2,000 miles. Most goods were packed into 90 lb packs for ease of carrying them when everything had to be portaged, carried, around river rapids and from one watershed to another. All 'voyegers' were required to sign contracts at the start of the year that, among other things, would spell out how many packs you would have to carry at every portage. I thought 90 lbs was a pretty good load to carry over a portage that could be anything from a few hundred yards to, in one case, 46 miles. So I was surprised to learn that in most cases a load consisted of at least two packs, or bales, at a time, and sometimes three. So at least 180 lbs at a time, usually more than a man of that era would actually weigh, and they would do a portage at a trot. Now these were real men.

Where the museum now is was once an actual fur trading post. Here is the original dugout where the trader and his life lived and worked out of for many years.

There has been some upkeep in the past year, the first I've actually seen done in the years I've been coming to visit. In this case someone has reapplied some new mud and grass chinking between the log walls.



Another view of some of the new chinking. This is at the point where the ceiling rafter logs tie into the top of the walls.



A small storage dugout near the main building. I like the cactus on the top of the roof. It looks neat but also keeps people and animals from walking over the top and falling through the roof at a bad time.

The back doors to the museum. I just liked the look of these doors with their hand hewn raised pine panels and the hand wrought door hinges and hardware.