I met the history museum today, and they have a really interesting exhibit that's happening, and I have Emily with me, who is the exhibit coordinator.

Thank you so much for joining me.

And you've put together a beautiful display.

And what I especially love to soon as I walked in is we have some big stuff on the floor here, right?

Yes.

We have quite a few big items, not only two wagons, one of them being a full sized 1800s farm wagon, but we also have a birch bark canoe, as well as a recreated trading post counter to kind of showcase what it was like for early pioneers in this area.

And that's what we're talking about.

So first people's first settlers, what kind of range is this?

Expand.

So this expands pre-European contact.

Before LaSalle came here in the 1600s with the Native Americans, primarily the Potawatomi that lived in this area up to just before the Civil War was really getting settled where people were living here, schools were being built, banks, blacksmiths, all types of things.

That's fantastic.

I mean, we're really we're bringing it right back on here, right?

And why is it important for us to talk about that here at the History Museum?

I mean, this is this is where our roots were developed.

So when we were discussing the America 250, we kind of struggled a little bit.

We're not a 13th colony state.

So we were like, well, how can we showcase our area?

And so we thought, what was it like here at the time period just before the Civil War and what it was like after the Civil War, as this land started really becoming settled, as people were able to come out this way, because before the Civil War, people weren't allowed to move out west past the Appalachian Mountains.

I was actually one of the kind of key things that a lot of early pioneers fought the king for.

They didn't want them to move out here because of the Native American tribes.

So that was one of the key contenders for the war.

And once the war was done, people were able to make their way out this way.

And we're talking about the first people who were here, the Native American Indians.

Right.

And we're talking about the Potawatomi tribe specifically.

Specifically, yes.

Okay, okay.

I mean, you guys have some phenomenal artifacts.

Can I ask, how do you get stuff like this?

Sometimes this stuff is donated to us.

Other times, like our wigwam here.

If we want to walk this.

Yeah, yeah, let's see it.

Yeah.

So this is a model wigwam.

These model.

Okay.

Did you build this?

I like, ten years ago.

Not for this exhibit.

Okay.

This has been in our collection for for a little bit at a time, but this is kind of a scaled down version of what a Native American, primarily a Potawatomi home, would have looked like.

Okay.

Wood frame, dried straw over top and then furs skin to kind of keep it warm or waterproof.

So this we worked with the Pokagon tribe that still lives here today.

Yeah.

Recreated a scaled down version so people could see what one of those homes would have looked like.

But our birch bark canoe.

This is this is.

This is real.

This is.

This is real.

This is 200 years old.

Very, very delicate.

But this is how Native Americans would have traveled on the waterways.

So they would have gone to other tribes in the area.

The Potawatomi were allied with the Ojibwe and the Ottawa and kind of the Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan area.

So they would have traded with those people, and this is the primary way that they would have traveled, because this is much quicker than walking across miles and miles of land.

Yeah.

And what did the river look like back in the 1800s and prior to that?

Lots of trees.

Not as much as like we got like, obviously today it's you can see the river very clearly, but oftentimes to get to different rivers, you would have to actually pick up your canoe and travel across the land just a little bit to get to another river to then continue that way.

Okay.

And that was one of the main reasons for LaSalle coming this way.

He wanted to get to the Mississippi, and the Saint Joseph River connects via Portage.

So people pick up their boats, walk across the land through the Kankakee Marsh that is no longer around, and then travel down the Mississippi all the way south.

Okay.

And so I have to ask, I mean, do you do tours in here because you are full of knowledge.

I love this.

Yes.

So I mean, this is kind of primary what our voyages exhibit is like on a much grander scale.

Artifacts we don't normally bring out, like our canoe or wigwam, or even we have the portage log that marked where early Europeans would get out of their boat and take it across land.

This log is it?

No, it is over that way.

You guys have a log here too?

I love this.

I mean, this is really interesting.

We wanted to kind of make it an immersive exhibit.

So we added these elements where, you know, sit on it.

Yeah, you can sit on it.

Yeah.

It is a real log.

Real.

Don't bring your accent here though.

We're not stopping anyone here today.

No, but we have our little fake fires throughout the exhibit.

So people could really feel immersed in what life was like at this time.

And I'd love that.

You guys have a lot of interactive elements to, especially for the kiddos you want to talk about, like especially the wall there where they can figure out what do they need to survive.

Yeah, so pioneers would have to would take months to come out this way.

And you don't have whether like com or whatever to tell you what the weather is like or you don't know what the lands are going to be like.

There is really writings that kind of taught you what to expect.

Okay.

Very unreliable and you don't know what you're going to happen.

So you may have to pack wagon parks, your wagon you could break down along the way.

Hunting rifles.

You can't carry the amount of food you need to get all the way there, as well as once you get settled, but also woodworking tools, which we do have on display.

So let's go see some of that stuff too, because I see over here, I mean, you have a whole trading space, if you will, right?

Yes.

And selling pelts is a big thing that.

Yes, you know, it's kind of traditionally based in this region, if you will.

Yeah.

So the early French came this way not to settle the land.

They didn't want to build a town or anything.

I mean, they had a fort, but it was primarily for trading with the Native Americans.

And one of the things I was very highly valued was for palps.

This is amazing.

So can I touch these?

Yeah.

These are real pelts that people can touch of animals that they would have found in this area.

So badgers, beavers, foxes, even muskrats.

This looks like a skunk.

It's a badger.

It's a badger.

Yeah.

Wow.

I love that you have something like this so the kids can feel.

Yeah.

And some of these you might be a little bit familiar with or like deer skins, but we do also have a buffalo skin.

So that is a real buffalo giant.

Yeah.

So that's a little buffalo.

Buffalo were much more populated at this time period.

Quantitative virtually extinction out here.

But they're kind of solely repopulating in the back.

So we wanted to make sure we had a buffalo because people see them at the zoo, but they don't know what a buffalo feels like.

And this would have been can't get close not to touch it there.

Yeah, sorry, but this would have been used for like, blankets or like clothing to keep yourselves warm during the winter in a time where you don't have heating.

Yeah.

So you're primarily relying on fire and for.

Okay, let's let's head over here to because this is really cool.

There's even stuff you can smell in here, right?

Yes.

Okay.

What is this?

So we have tea which came in a brick at this time period.

Like the coffee that is raw coffee.

So coffee has to be ruby.

Coffee has to be roasted.

So people will look at this and see that it's green and think, that can't be coffee.

But this is what raw coffee looks like when you get it from Starbucks.

It's pre roasted and created for the same, not the same.

We have fake gunpowder.

Real gunpowder would be too dangerous to have in here.

Absolutely.

But it is an artificial sense that people can smell and smell.

Okay, good to know because that is something you would have bought at a trading post or brought with you on the trail.

And I love that you guys even have here to like you can see what people are buying.

So I mean, is this original in here or this is a photocopy photo scanned Lazar Taylor's journals.

He's one of South Bend founders.

And so we have several of his ledgers and we've scanned them.

And you can see what people are buying and for how much.

He traded with all types of early pioneers, but also Native Americans as well.

So you might find some Native American names in there as well.

So you need to know cursive.

Yes, yes, maybe the younger kids aren't going to know.

They might have to rely on their parents or guardians to read it for them.

But how long is this exhibit going on for?

This closes on January 30th.

Oh, so still a while.

Yeah, yeah, we just opened in July.

Right.

So yeah, quite a bit of time to come and see it.

And there's more.

I don't want to show you guys everything because you got to see this, but maybe we'll peek a little bit at the wagon to because that's very cool.

But where do you guys store stuff like this.

So we do have an offset storage building as well as some storage on site that we store a lot of these things, some things we've recreated, like some of the like we've purchased spices and stuff for display because I actually have those jars.

Yeah.

So there's definitely some things in here people might recognize that they've kept in their family, but we do have offsite storage that we're able to kind of keep some of these bigger items.

This we recreated just for this exhibit.

Yeah, this is but people locally to have contributed to this.

You wanna talk about that.

Yeah.

So we have a lot of items from the handle Little Children's Museum from Mishawaka no longer around.

We incorporated their collection.

So a lot of the stuff you're seeing here came from that collection.

We also bought the wagon from a local person who lived in town.

It's been in his family for 200 years.

Yeah, they had no use for it anymore.

And we were like, hey, we're looking for a wagon.

And so we got that wagon on display.

And do you guys still have the wagon in the kids area downstairs?

You do?

Okay, because I think that's a great way.

So we're coming up to see there's some interactive stuff.

But if they want to play with the little kids downstairs space.

Fantastic.

If you haven't been here yet, you got to check that out I love that.

Okay, now this exhibit goes through January, but you have another one that's going to be coming up too.

Right.

I know we can't see it right now, but it's coming up right now.

But August 8th Revolution on the frontier opens.

And so that talks about the you know, a little bit about what we do know mostly about the Revolutionary War from our curriculum when we were in school.

So the Stamp Act, Boston Tea Party, Boston Massacre, those big events that led up to the American Revolution, but also the western frontier of the war.

So not a lot of people know that there was battles west of the Appalachian, even as far south as Kentucky.

And southern Indiana had some battles, as well as just like little skirmishes throughout what is now the state of Indiana in Illinois and even up into Michigan.

So we wanted to make sure we highlighted kind of our region's history in the American Revolution.

Not a lot of people know that that was a thing.

History is so cool, and it's really good to understand exactly like the ground that we're standing on what came from it and, and just experience this.

So thank you for putting this exhibit together.

And how can people come and see everything.

Yeah.

So they can come to the history museum and they can either purchase a singular mission to visit us, and they can even tour the Oliver Mansion that we have on campus, but they can also do a joint campus wide ticket and visit the Studebaker Museum as well.

That has some America 250 things as well, and or purchase a membership.

Yeah.

Or purchase membership.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

I'll see you here.