Carrie's Anthropology 196m Blog

I meant to post this before, but I forgot...Group 4 gave me an idea during their presentation last Wednesday. I like how they posed the titles of their sections in a question form: "What is Consultation?" I think was one. I was thinking of my title being "Who was Joel Sheldon Cotton?"

What if we used the question format throughout the exhibit? I think it would give the exhibit a sense of cohesiveness and flow.

Thoughts?

Here are some pictures from the cemetery. I think Laura has better ones, but I wanted to give everyone a a quick glimpse. All relationships are from the perspective of our collector, Joel S. Cotton. I have some more pictures of the surrounding area, but this is a big enough post, so I'll put those up later. Enjoy!

EDIT: I tried for an hour to make captions for this post, but Blogger has decided to be annoying so here is a key instead of captions:

Photo 1:Entrance to the cemetery
2: Plaque at the entrance
3: Grandfather, originally owner of sloughhouse
4:grandmother: Catherine Rhodes Sheldon Mahone Dalton (she was married 3 times, one (Mahone) ended in a divorce in 1870). Was a mid-wife and delivered our collector and his sister.
5: maternal uncle. I believe he inherited the land after Jared Sheldon died.
6: Wife of William C. Sheldon (aunt, by marriage)
7: Maternal aunt, died at age two of drowning
8: Father, committed suicide
9: Mother, died from an infection shortly after his birth
10: Sister. I don't know much about her, except she was raised by her grandmother.

I found a fantastic website yesterday, California Digital Newspaper Collection that allows a search of many Californian newspapers, some going back at least to the 1850s.

I found the article about Jared Sheldon's murder: Horrible Riot upon the Cosumnes. It's on page 2

And this is Cotton Sr's suicide: Sacramento Items. It says his middle name is "H." and up to this point I've always seen it as "S" and Sheldon. It's bothered me that he had the same name has his father-in-law. I think attributing "S" to the senior Cotton was a mix up between the two. EDIT: even more confusing is in the Pioneer book I have, he is Joel S. Cotton. Maybe I'll just leave his middle name out of the genealogy chart?

I also found numerous articles discussing Joel Cotton (Jr.) guardianship as an orphan: Probate Court Feb 22 1877 and Probate Court April 11 1878

given to me today by Laura, who did awesome research at the Library...

I used to think that history was a thing you saw in books;

It always seemed to be there,
You never had to look.

One day I heard there used to be some History of this town
But when I went to look for it
No one had wrote it down

How do you find your History when you don't know where to look?
How do you know what happened
When there's nothing in the Book?

You start to do some asking and you really look around,
and bit by bit you dig it out
until you've got some found.

You listen to the old folks and you study the artifacts,
and you put the bits together
'til you see just how the stack.

And, finally you get a story even though it's not that much;
as long as you can reach it, then
It's History you can touch.

You find the gentle Miwoks with their acorn grinding stones,
and the people who dug their graves up
Just to rearrange their bones.

Michigan Bar and Sloughhouse, where the stagecoach made its stops
where they carried all the gold out
through the valley of the hops

You find out who lived in Wilton and in Franklin and Elk Grove.
And you get to know a lot about the Sheldons, Kerrs, and Rhoades.

It is written on the tombstones and it's buried in the ground;
It's in the memories of the old ones
that's how your History is found.

-Elizabeth Pinkerton, (from the book: Historic Cosumnes and the Sloughhouse Pioneer Cemetery by Norma Baldwin Ricketts)

I'm not sure who Elizabeth Pinkerton is, but I seem to remember that surname in my research somewhere. Anyways, I thought it was cool, especially since it mentions our collectors grandparents (Sheldon and Rhoades).

Here's my first draft of the Cotton kinship diagram. Sorry it's so small, it's as big as blogger will let me make it. Hopefully you can still get the idea, you can see a somewhat larger image if you click on it.

I'm thinking on the wall, we can put the kinship chart up and have important documents around it (like the Diseno, newspaper clippings, census info, etc.). I color-coded the people that are important to our story, and I'm thinking we can post each of the side panels in corresponding colors so visitors can follow which info belongs to which person.

Another, different, idea I had was putting the documents directly under each name, though I think it would make the kinship chart really big and maybe harder to follow...I guess we can work those kinks out later!

Lab: 2.5 hours

EDIT: I put the wrong date of death for Jared Sheldon. it's 1851 not 1857. It's fixed in my original.

finally, I have proof enough that Jared Sheldon and Joaquin Sheldon are one in the same (woo hoo!). check out these links:

Placer County archives and office of historic preservation I've also found this great bio of his, note: there is an error in the date of his death, it's suppose to be 1851 not 1857.

I've been checking out the inventory lists and I think we should start seriously narrowing down our possibilities for a basket to follow through the exhibit and get something picked ASAP.

I really like Mary's idea of using the McCloud Area Burden Basket. It would give us a good opportunity to compare a well-worn used basket to one that wasn't used. I think this basket has a lot of potential for telling a good story.

Another idea is to pick a basket that has a known maker. If we could find some information about the maker, that could also tell a really good story. That leaves the 'Widow's cap made by Metaha from Requa, near Eureka' as a possibility.

Or we could use the "Shaman's basket" that Dr. C mentioned. Which one is that on the inventory list? Is it the trinket basket or maybe the elongated bowl with feathers? Is it OK to display something that may need NAGPRA consultation in the future?

What do you guys think would be best? I think that's all the ideas I have for now. I'm off to enjoy the rest of my Sunday and watch the USA-Canada hockey game =)

After my exciting afternoon at the state archives I hopped over to the California Museum to check out their baskets. It was a really beautiful exhibit. I thought it was interesting that they presented the baskets as art, by calling the show American Masterpieces, but they also gave some focus to the weavers and on the making of the baskets, I especially liked the display of a basket in the process of being woven, it was so cool to see the intricate design in the center with all the loose fibers coming out of it. It gave me a new appreciation for just how difficult it must be weave.

I really like how they had the raw materials available to see. If we can swing getting some of the plant material that our basket (when we pick it) was made of, I think it would really add some context to the first part of the exhibit.

I also liked how they numbered the baskets and then used those numbers to refer to the baskets in the larger narratives about the weavers on the wall. That might be a good way for us to refer people to other baskets as they are follow our "basket lifeway."

On a side note, the total geek in me got a thrill out of seeing R2D2 and C3PO on the first floor of the museum =)

Wow, the state archives are so cool! I went today to try to get the Slough house land grant. I did some research prior and found that it was likely first bought by a Jared Dixon Sheldon. He wasn't listed in their records, but a Joaquin Sheldon was for the correct year and in Sacramento County. I'm not sure if it is the correct land grant, but if it's not I'll do some more digging and see if I can find what we need. It's difficult to read, but I will bring it to class tomorrow so we can all check it out.

P.S. I found this great article from the Sac Bee in my Research: Sloughhouse wasn't always quiet, Enjoy!

I've been thinking this morning about how to organize ourselves as we start putting the exhibit together. I feel like we are all coming up with great ideas, but that everything is a little jumbled together. Some of us are excited about the Cottons and accessioning while it seems others are more interested in the NAGPRA side of things. Which I think is fantastic, but I worry that each of us may lose the big picture as we focus on our own points of interest.

So, with that in mind, I was thinking if we take the exhibit and break it up into parts it may become more manageable. The parts could be 1: before an object comes into the museum. the weaver, the materials, how was collected (could also have some focus here on was it made to be sold or to be used). 2: What happens to a object once it enters a museum 3: How does it leave the museum (NAGPRA).

We could create teams each working on a part of the exhibit, brainstorm ideas, come up with label copy, etc. There would, of course be a lot of communication between teams, but each of us would know what to focus primarily on...

Team 1: focus on the making of a basket, the materials and the weavers, the Cotton's, how he did the collection.
Team 2: explain how it came to the museum through a donor (would probably require some help from team 1) and focus on how an object gets accessioned, how it's inventoried, etc.
Team 3: how an object leaves the museum. NAGPRA, de-accessioning.

this is just one example of how to divide the exhibit, there are many other ways that may work better. Or Dr. Castaneda may have a way all planned out already, but I wanted to get my idea out there. Any thoughts?

So, I got a cold and kinda fell out of the loop the past few days, but I'm back and wanted to offer my (delayed) two cents into the exhibit organization and title brainstorming...

Amanda mentioned in a comment to my post last week that her and Mary were talking about juxtaposing the process of accessioning an artifact vs. de-accessioning because of NAGPRA. I think this would be awesome. I'm thinking it would be great if we can follow how an object comes into a museum and then how it can go out.

We could show how it comes in using Cotton as our prototypical collector- I like the idea someone had of displaying his journal if we have it and I think it would be good to display his book of how much each item cost. Maybe even try to display those baskets that are on the receipt list so people can see the connection. I love the idea of a map of California, maybe we could overlay traditional tribal boundaries on the map so people can get a sense of the Native population in California. Holly's question is a good one though...if we pick baskets outside of CA to display this map might not be as useful.

As for the other side of the exhibit, how an object leaves a museum, I like the idea of including CalNAGPRA in the discussion. I also think it would be good to provide a sense of how many unrecognized tribes there are in CA. I'm am excited about this NAGPRA part of the exhibit, but I'm still not sure how we're going to lay it out. Should we create a fictional example object to follow through-maybe something similar to something we have displayed elsewhere? Or can we use an actual object from the Cotton collection? What do you guys think?

I have been wracking my brain for a week to come up with some title ideas, but alas, I am terrible at titles...so, I'll list my favorites:

I like Nessa's: "Weaving life through Native California" and I also very much like Stacie's "Exhibiting Native America: The Journey from Maker to Museum Display." What about combining the two? We could do "Weaving life through Native California: The Journey from Maker to Museum" --I like that, but maybe we could add something that alludes to the object leaving the museum, though I worry that would be too wordy.

I spent some time looking over Dr. Castaneda's museum links this afternoon, trying to focus mostly on learning about baskets, since I know virtually nothing about them. Based I my perusing, I've started brainstorming some ideas for our exhibit:

I like the idea Dr. Castaneda mentioned last week about focusing on the Cottons, and on the difference between a collector and donor. We could make displays talking about how something (like a basket) goes from maker to collector, to donor, and then finally what happens at the museum--donation process, accessioning, and care. We could also have a discussion on NAGPRA. Maybe we could follow an object through the reparation process. This would be a hypothetical object, I'm not suggesting we display anything that is culturally sensitive. Do you guys think this type of exhibit would be interesting enough for the general public?

I found this great site (thanks to our professor!), and I was thinking maybe we could focus on the collection of objects, with the Cotton collection in particular. Maybe we could do something like a compare/contrast of objects (baskets) made to be used and those made for collectors and tourists. In that same vein, we could also focus on baskets as objects to be used verses as art (function vs. form). I haven't seen any of the Cotton collection yet, so I don't know if this idea would work at all, but it was floating in my head so I figured no harm in throwing the idea out there!

Alright, that's all I have for now. Have a good evening all!