Housecleaning at Tacoma museum leaves ‘single moccasin’ looking for a new home
The search for “single moccasin” took me to Point Defiance Park and the Fort Nisqually Living History Museum.
Once there, I was accompanied by Jim Lauderdale, the museum’s supervisor, and Caitlin O’Connell, its curator, to a locked, climate-controlled room.
The temperature inside the room was in the low 60s, like it always is, with relative humidity between 50 and 55 percent, like it always is.
Actually, I take that back. If the humidity inside the room gets too high — as occasionally happens, like on particularly rainy days — an alarm sounds. People presumably come running. Something like a burst pipe could be catastrophic.
The room is home to Fort Nisqually Living History Museum’s permanent collection, which includes more than 1,700 items from the mid-1800s. Cycled through exhibits and available for researchers by appointment throughout the year, taking care of that unique collection is serious business, Lauderdale and O’Connell told me
For the last 40 years, that work has included caring for “single moccasin,” as it was succinctly and unceremoniously described in an Oct. 24 memorandum to the Metro Parks Tacoma board of commissioners.
That’s no longer the case. By a quick vote of the park board, single moccasin — along with more than 125 similarly labeled items — were “deaccessioned” a few days later.
That’s official museum-speak for removed from Fort Nisqually’s permanent collection.
It won’t be easy saying goodbye to “single moccasin,” or “candlesnuffer,” or “churn,” or “dagger” or “child’s chair,” O’Connell told me, but it was necessary work.
She was wearing a pair of powder-free nitrile gloves, preparing to delicately pick up the shoe — which she would soon tell me suffered from “questionable provenance.”
“We don’t know where it came from,” O’Connell said matter-of-factly. “Also, it’s in a little bit of rough shape.
“And it is just one single moccasin.”
So it was.
Curious about the memo, and the list, which crossed my desk a few weeks ago, I had come looking for single moccasin. I wanted to know where it came from and where it was going.
Lauderdale and O’Connell were polite enough to play along.
After touring the grounds and learning Fort Nisqually’s unique history, we entered the building that’s home to the museum’s special collection, which is typically off limits to visitors.
Single moccasin had been placed on a table, along with a shallow woven basket that also was soon to be sent away.
There also was the original key to Fort Nisqually’s granary, dating back to 1843, a necklace made of glass beads and dentalium shells and a box of vermilion, which Lauderdale explained was used as body paint by Native Americans in the 19th century.
These items, I learned, would be staying put. They clearly belonged, I was told, with documentation to prove it — as opposed to single moccasin and the basket.
It was all part of the process, O’Connell said.
O’Connell described inventorying Fort Nisqually’s permanent collection — along with its separate living history collection — as a regular part of good collection upkeep and maintenance.
The task allows the museum — which is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums — to assess the items and make sure they fit the scope of the collection. The collection focuses on the fort and life around it between 1833 and 1869, including the Hudson’s Bay Co., the agricultural subsidiary that followed it and the Salish tribes and early white settlers that would have frequented Fort Nisqually
With limited space and a limited capacity to care for the collection, taking stock is simply part of the job, O’Connell said, though the last time it was done was more than 15 years ago.
Ideally, a new home is found for items that no longer fit. Sometimes, items are instead transitioned into the museum’s living history collection — which has a less precise criteria.
Either way, there are a code of ethics and procedures involved, O’Connell told me, before promising that nothing goes to Goodwill.
Much of the museum’s collection dates back many years and a time when it “was common with a lot of museums to … just kind of to take everything that people brought you,” Lauderdale explained of the dilemma.
“Now, obviously, we’re very full in here,” Lauderdale added. “So if we want to continue to add to our collection, we’re going to have to create some space.”
Like in the case of single moccasin, removing an item requires a lengthy bureaucratic process and a vote of the parks board.
Meanwhile, O’Connell gets to play detective.
So far, O’Connell has had more luck finding a home for the basket. Originally donated in 1975, she said documentation shows it belonged to the Tohono O’odham Nation — a Native American tribe from Arizona.
O’Connell has made contact with the tribe and hopes to send the basket to Arizona soon.
Tracing the precise origin of single moccasin has been more difficult.
Donated in 1977, O’Connell knows it’s 10-1/4 inches long and 4-3/4 inches wide, though the archive notes that it’s “lost its shape over time.” The moccasin is for the left foot and made of leather. It’s adorned with green, pink, blue, yellow, purple and white beads in a flower design that extends around the ankle.
The moccasin is “believed to have been made around the turn of the century by an Indian of the inter-mountain region,” according to the museum’s archive.
A subsequent note in the file notes that the moccasin has been “confirmed as being from the plateau area of Eastern Washington or Idaho and possibly Nez Perce.”
That’s as much progress as O’Connell has made. Eventually, she hopes to reconnect the moccasin with its rightful owner or identify a museum that might be better suited to house it.
The same goes for many of the other items recently deaccessioned at Fort Nisqually
“I wear many hats. I protect the collection. I do collection management. I do archives. I do research library,” O’Connell said. “But my primary job is just protecting the collection and making sure that … we’re keeping it at the highest standards.”
No one said museum work was for the sentimental, I guess.
So, so long, single moccasin.
And safe travels.
