|
Post by Diane Merkel on Aug 5, 2007 18:51:14 GMT -6
The BB Historical Center has received the Paul Dyck collection: Almost all of the objects in the collection are in remarkable condition. There are rare ceremonial shirts finely decorated with trade beads and porcupine quills colored with natural dyes; bear claw necklaces with the long, broad claws of vanished prairie grizzlies; dolls of such delicate craftsmanship that the devotion of mother to child still resonates.
There are eagle feather war bonnets with trailers several feet long, and artifacts that research may connect to Sioux leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, to Crow Chief Plenty Coups and to White Swan and Curly, Custer's Crow scouts at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Weapons and other items that were used at the battle are also in the collection. Dyck told Rokita that when he married his first wife, Fawn, daughter of Sioux holy man One Elk, 26 Lakota who were at the Little Bighorn attended his wedding.
Dyck saw the 1876 battle as a watershed in history, Rokita said. It marked the end of his beloved Buffalo Culture. After Custer's defeat, the government determined once and for all to put an end to the free-roaming ways of the Plains Indians. Within a few years, the buffalo were gone and the Indians were confined to reservations. Article: www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/08/05/news/wyoming/22-codymuseum_z.txt
|
|
|
Post by Diane Merkel on Aug 8, 2007 9:48:30 GMT -6
Here's an excerpt from another article about the collection: The fact that Paul Dyck helped design the Plains Indian wing of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center was among the key reasons it was chosen. Its location was important, too.
"My dad worked 30 years to build a museum at the (Little Bighorn) Battlefield," John Dyck said. "That was just not going to happen. The museum was closest to the battlefield, and they are very devoted to Native Culture."
The foundation was also concerned that sacred objects Paul Dyck had been given for safekeeping, mostly by adoptive relatives among the Plains tribes, be handled properly.
"They have the right people in place to do that," John Dyck said. "It really is a good museum - as good as I've been in. They have the right people in the right places."
In the late 1960s, Simpson said, Dyck had talked to the Cody museum board about taking the collection. But it would have come with conditions the museum couldn't meet. That's when Dyck decided he wanted to build a museum at the battlefield.
"I think it was always a bit of a disappointment to him that it didn't happen," Simpson said.
Although many people know about the collection - scholars, collectors, traders and museums - most of it has never been viewed by the public, said Rusty Rokita of Hardin, a longtime friend of the collector and a member of the foundation board. Article: www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/08/05/news/wyoming/18-codymuseum_z.txt
|
|
|
Post by Scout on Aug 8, 2007 12:05:09 GMT -6
Thanks Diane...sounds like a fabulous collection
|
|