Christmas 1873

What do you think Christmas was like 150 years ago? Compare your vision to the account, excerpted below, from the Helena Weekly Herald.

Any surprises? I was struck by how communal Christmas was, with public balls and presents (even friend to friend) distributed from trees at various churches. I was also surprised that people were shopping on Christmas Day. Finally, I was surprised by the expectation of Christmas Eve mischief. (Things were much worse in 1868, when the newspaper reported excessive drunkenness, fights with "many torn garments, black eyes, bloody noses," broken windows, and people who threw lit firecrackers under dancers' feet at a local hurdy-gurdy house.)

"Christmas Times," Helena Weekly Herald, January 2, 1873

Christmas eve found the citizens of Helena with good sleighing and moderate weather to begin with, and from the continual jingling of sleigh-bells, we are of the opinion that every had his wife, and every bachelor his "girl' out riding. At the different churches assembled the teachers and children of several Sabbath Schools, and all were made happy by presents from off the respective "Christmas trees."

At the Bazaar hundreds flocked in and out during the evening, feasting the eye upon the many beautiful things wrought by the hands of Helena's fairest daughters for this special occasion....

No fights or unduly boisterous merriment were indulged in ... yet some mysterious changes of signs ... were made during the night, causing confusion ...

Long before noon [on Christmas morning] the streets were full of life. ... Past all pedestrians [shopping] go whizzing jolly parties in cutters, bob-sleds, and long sleds, the most of whom are recipients of numerous snow balls from the many mischievous urchins posted at convenient distances.

The Bazaar was not forgotten by any means; for at the dinner hour there appeared score upon score of men, women and children to partake of the good things there set forth.

Delicious egg-nog was set out at the principal hotels and saloons ... The Helena Brass Band was out in the forenoon, dispensing enlivening music on every corner. The new "Cornet Band" was also out...we must say that the noise was terrific--a cross between an earthquake and a Chinese New Year. ...

On repairing to the Broadway M.E. Church at an early hour in the evening, we found that edifice densely crowded with the Sunday School scholars, their parents and friends. The services were opened with singing and prayer, and then from the branches of two gigantic Christmas trees were dispensed innumerable gifts, to gladden and make light-hearted the one hundred or more children of the school. Many of the presents, gifts from friends to friends, were elegant. Later in the evening our reporter visited the Ladies Bazaar, at the Masonic Temple, and found the ball crowded. Business was lively... Many of the fancy articles were disposed of at private sale, and the balance were sold at auction. 

Looking Ahead to 2024

Teaching Montana History won't come out during the week between Christmas and New Year's, so I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone happy holidays. I hope your Christmas plans don't include throwing firecrackers at anyone's feet! But I do hope you'll sign up for Finding Primary Sources Online, our January 8 Monday Meetup. Join us online from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. to earn one OPI Renewal unit. See you in 2024!

Christmas, 1910

 For the holiday, I’m changing it up with two posts that invite you to compare Christmas past with Christmas present.

If you have a Christmas tree, how do you decorate it? And if you have a traditional Christmas dinner, what do you eat?

Here’s how Edna Patterson, who moved with her parents into a homestead cabin north of Glendive, remembered her 1910 Christmas. (Taken from Dave Walter’s book, Christmastime in Montana).

We were going to get a cedar tree for Christmas. We went up about half a mile or more from the house, and we found two little cedar trees in the coulee. That’s all we found. They were too precious to cut for our Christmas tree so we cut down a bullberry bush, and we took it home.

Mother had a couple of newspapers…she let us cut them into little strips, and she made us some flour past. We made those strips all into chains, paper chains. Then we decorated the bullberry bush with the chains. It was a sight to behold, I tell you….we had some crayons that we had brought from Iowa with us—some color crayons—so we colored some of those pieces of paper…

For Christmas dinner, Mother had put this big prairie chicken pie in the oven to bake. And she had baked cookies the day before, so there were lots of cookies.

 

Turning Points in History

I recently listened to A.D.A. Now! from NPR's Throughline, an incredible podcast that explores, through first-person stories, the history of how disability came to be seen as a civil rights issue, how the Americans with Disability Act changed American society, and what the disability community is still fighting over 30 years later.

It occurred to me that exploring how the ADA impacted (and continues to impact) your local community--and what life was life for disabled people before this landmark legislation passed--would be a great class project.

It would also make an amazing National History Day project for an individual student or group of students, especially because this year's theme is Turning Points in History, and the passage of the ADA is nothing if not a turning point.

What's National History Day, you ask? It's a program that has grade 6-12 students conduct in-depth research to develop projects around annual themes before sharing their findings in one of five presentation categories (papers, performances, exhibits, documentaries, and websites). This can be an exclusively classroom-based experience, or students can also enter their projects into History Day competition. This year, regional competitions will be held in Helena and Miles City in February. The statewide competition will be held in Bozeman in April. Winners at state can go on to compete in Washington, D.C. Visit the National History Day in Montana website or email nationalhistorydaymt@gmail.com for more information. 

It's not too late to get your students involved in National History Day, but if you are unsure whether you want to take it on, I'd encourage you to sign up to judge at one of the competitions. That's the best way to see how powerful the program can be, and NHD in Montana is offering OPI renewal units to teachers who judge. Sign up to judge at the contest closest to you: 

• Western Regional: Capital High School, Helena, Saturday, February 3, 2024
• Eastern Regional: Miles Community College, Miles City, Saturday, February 24, 2024,
• State Competition: Montana State University, Bozeman, Saturday, April 6, 2024.

Every Month Should Be Native American Heritage Month

 For Native American Heritage Month the National Council for History Education created a curated list of websites for teaching Indigenous history and heritage. But since every month should be Native American Heritage Month, I thought I'd share two items on their list that particularly caught my eye: 

National Archives Citizen Archivist Mission

The National Archives has a special Citizen Archivist Mission to make the records it holds on various Indigenous communities more accessible to researchers. This is a crowd-sourced project (using search strategies they outline) to find relevant documents and then tagging them with terms that will make them easier for future resources to find. Could this be a class project? (If you've ever had your class work on a citizen archivist mission of any kind, I'd love to hear from you!)

Native Knowledge 360°

The material created by OPI's IEFA unit is so good, it's easy to stick to their offerings, but if you haven't explored the National Museum of the American Indian's Native Knowledge 360° site recently, I highly recommend you make a little time. Among the material I just found was a really interesting 9-12 unit called How Do Native Americans Experience Belonging? It asks students to explore four case studies: Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and the Three Affiliated Tribes (Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara) to answer title question as well as three supporting questions:

• What gives Native Nations a sense of belonging to the land?
• How do kinship systems work to create a feeling of belonging? 
• What are the rights and responsibilities of belonging to a Native Nation? 

This is just one of many units, including a dynamite one on treaties, to be found at NK360°, which also has videos, exhibits, FAQs, teacher workshops, and more. They have materials relating to all subject matters, including STEM, social studies, art, and ELA. Did I mention that their resources are all sortable by grade level, subject, nation, region, format, and topic? Do yourself a favor and check them out.

  

 

Find the historic photos you want online

 The Montana History Portal is both incredible and intimidating. Incredible because there are so many digitized resources available on the site. And intimidating for the same reason: the sheer quantity of resources can make it difficult to find things. 

Here are a few hacks for making the site more manageable as well as cool things you might have missed if you've given up on the site. 

1. Adventure Lab

The Montana History Portal teamed up with Geochaching Adventure Lab to create walking tours/scavenger hunts of historic Montana places. Adventure Lab is a free-to-use mobile app that allows users to roam locations using GPS coordinates to make their way to specific locations. Can't make it to a particular site? The tours (including some present-day street views) are also posted on the Portal in the Places exhibits Page. The Adventure Lab entries all have "A Walking Tour" as the subtitle, but there are exhibits of other places too (for example, check out this exhibit of the construction of Hungry Horse Dam). 

2. Exhibits

These online exhibits are basically small, curated sets focused on particular people, places, and events.  I've already mentioned the Places exhibits above. The People exhibits include exhibits on topics as varied as eastern Montana photographer L. A. Huffman and the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps. These African American soldiers were tasked with testing if bicycles could serve the military as a substitute for horses. (Spoiler alert: They could not.) 

Events exhibits include Montana floods and the 1972 Montana constitutional convention. 

Possibly the most useful exhibits are included under Research Guides and Teacher Resources. These exhibits include not only text and images, but also guiding questions. Check out this one on logging!

3. Find What You Want by Narrowing Your Search

Many people hit the Montana History Portal home page, type a search term where it says "Search Our Database," and then throw up their hands when the Portal comes back with a huge list of (often unrelated) items. Don't let this be you.

Instead, narrow by item type (e.g., image, for photographs) and (if relevant) by date range and additional keywords. Here's an example:

I'm interested in finding pictures of women homesteaders. Typing in the word "Homestead" gets me 3,657 results, including many pages of Evelyn Cameron's diaries, in which she used the word. Narrowing it by “Image” gets me 391 results. Narrowing it by “Date” (I chose January 1, 1909, to January 1, 1919--the height of the homesteading boom) results in 184 images. That's still too many for me, so I'm going to click on "Refine Search Terms" and add a keyword: "women" and "Update Search". Sixteen results found. Now that's manageable.

Note: Starting with the phrase "women homesteader" and narrowing it by image only got me two pictures. That's why I always start with one word in the main search box and then use the "Refine Search Terms" button to add keywords. 

One last note: Don't be afraid to play around with search terms. I would have gotten different (maybe better) results if I had used the word "homesteader" or "farm" instead of "homestead" or "woman" instead of "women."

4. Browse (or Search) Specific Collections

Want your students to find a photo to use as a prompt for a story, to create a meme, or create an exhibit? Interested in having them explore a particular topic or the work of a particular artist or photographer? Consider having them browse specific collections.

This just got easier. The Montana Historical Society has posted over 11,000 images and counting on the Portal. Until recently, all of these photos were maintained in a single large collection on the Portal. Now many are broken out into smaller collections of significance to make it easier for you to find the images you are looking for. The five new collections are:

• Bud Lake and Randy Brewer Crow Indian Photograph Collection (over a thousand images, mostly documenting people, places, work, and regalia of the Apsáalooke [Crow] Nation.)
• Evelyn J. Cameron Photograph Collection (660 photos by Evelyn Cameron, who moved to Terry, Montana in 1893 and helped support herself and her naturalist husband with a photography business.)
• Haynes Foundation Photograph Collection (a massive, and still growing collection of photographs by F. Jay Haynes, the official photographer of the Northern Pacific Railroad, who also established the first photo concession in Yellowstone National Park, and his son Jack, who inherited the Yellowstone photo business.) 
• Henry B. Syverud Scrapbooks Photograph Collection (over 1,500 images taken by Henry Syverud of his friends and neighbors in northeastern Montana between 1909 and 1965).
• L. A. Huffman Photograph Collection (740 images of eastern Montana, especially the Miles City area, taken between 1879 and 1931.)

Want to search within these collections? Type the collection name in the main search engine, select the "Search For" button, and choose "Exact Phrase." Then, after your initial search, chose the "Refine Search Terms" button to add or restrict keywords.