Travelling Trunks

Box 1

1. wash board

2. cloth ball

3. railroad spike

4. horseshoe

5. hand bell (wooden handle)

6. harness

7. 4U brand

8. brand (?—check original)

9. hay bale hook

10. animal horn

11. tomahawk

12. picture

13. metal piece (RP2008.147.2)

14. twisting tool

Description

The story of the nineteenth-century residents of Arizona can be told, at least in part, through the tools those people used and the items that they possessed.  This trunk contains a group of artifacts that give a general impression of the life of these people, both the American and Spanish settlers and the natives who were already living in the area when they arrived.  We get an idea of their everyday domestic chores through the washboard and twisting tool.  We see from the horseshoe, harness, brands, hay bale hook, and animal horn that ranching or just plain horsemanship was a large part of many of these residents’ lives.  We also see, in the presence of the railroad spike, the importance that that industry had in the local economy of the time.  Not every possession was a necessity though.  Luxuries like the photograph and purely recreational items like the cloth ball were present as well.  The tomahawk reminds us of the presence of a variety of native tribes in frontier Arizona, people whose society inevitably gave way to the encroachment of Europeans.

Box 2

1. bag of wool (checker-pattern bag)

2. wooden spoon

3. 2 forks (metal with wooden handle)

4. knife (metal with wooden handle)

5. shard of pottery

6. 3 soap chunks

7. wooden pestle (RP0050)

8. butter mold (RP93.13.12)

9. wooden man toy

10. darning tool (wooden)

Description

This trunk contains items that the nineteenth-century residents of Arizona would have used within the domestic sphere.  The bag of wool and the darning tool are two items necessary for the making of clothing, an activity that women of the time would have spent a large portion of their time on.  The wooden man toy reminds us that these people had possessions that had no practical purpose but were used purely for recreation.  We see, by the soap, that even in the dirty Western environment, cleanliness was frequently sought out and achieved.  The rest of the artifacts were used in the preparation of food.  The trunk contains various utensils from the period, as well as pieces of pottery (which would have been used, when whole, for the preparation or storage of food), a wooden pestle for grinding grain and seeds, and a butter mold.

Box 3

1. Indian pottery pot (RP2003.118.1)

2. black and white picture of someone weaving (Art Nouveau Beardsley knockoff)

3. bag of inner bark

4. basket (small)

5. pollen poppers

6. basket (large)

7. Indian corn (5 pieces)

8. bag of seeds

9. gord

10. some sticks (looks like palmetto and aloe vera)

11. 3 acorns

12. rock

13. devil’s claw

14. box containing:

a. bivalve-bracelet fragment (RP0162)

b. bracelet (shell pendants, turquoise beads, slate pendant,beads) (RP0164)

c. 3 arrow heads (RP0152, RP0153, RP0157)

d. 2 sea shells (RP0163, and the other one is un-numbered)

Description

This trunk primarily contains items used by the nineteenth-century native peoples in Arizona.  Most of the items were used in the collection, preparation, or storage of food.  The owners of these items would use the baskets to gather foods such as the corn, seeds, pollen poppers, acorns, and gourd.  They would use the arrow heads to hunt game.  The food might then be processed through the use of a grinding rock and stored in baskets, pottery, or a hollowed gourd.

This trunk also contains items used for the decoration of the body—jewelry, like the bracelets and sea shells.

Box 4

1. 1 can of apricots

2. Local Poets Book of Cowboy Poetry book

3. blue granite-wear teapot

4. Higher History of the United States book

5. blue granite-wear spoon

6. top to a kerosene lantern

7. small glass flask

8. glass Coca-Cola bottle

9. 3-prong metal fork with wooden handle

10. broken wooden handle to some tool

11. animal brush

12. hoop rolling stick

13. wooden cooking spoon

14. cloth bag

15. sugar scooper

16. modern apple peeler/corer/slicer

17. 3 rectangular sticks

18. a short dowel with hole bored through

Description

This trunk contains items used by the white settlers of Arizona in the late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries.  By this time in history, people had the luxury of conveniences such as canned foods and bottled drinks, especially helpful out on the frontier, where refrigeration was nonexistent and food spoiled fast.  The trunk contains a number of kitchen conveniences of the period—a granite-wear teapot, a granite-wear spoon, a glass flask, a fork with a wooden handle, a wooden cooking spoon, a sugar scooper, and a cloth bag.  Those who were able provided themselves with light at night by kerosene lamps, which allowed them to read such books as the Local Poets Book of Cowboy Poetry and the Higher History of the United States.  They also were able to keep their animals relatively neat and bug-free with the animal brush.

Box 5 – Scat Trunk

1. Rocky Mountain Elk (3 bags)

a. bull

b. female

c. young

2. buffalo (bison) chips

3. coyote (with a juniper berry seed in it)

4. mule deer (doe)

5. javelina

6. gray fox (no labeled bag)

7. black tail jackrabbit (no labeled bag)

8. cow

9. collard peckery javelina

[There are four unidentified bags of excrement in the box.  Two of them must be for the gray fox and the black tail jackrabbit, but we don’t know which two.]

Description

The Arizona of frontier-times contained much native fauna, and this collection of  different excrements reminds us of its variety.  Alongside the human inhabitants of Arizona, there were Rocky Mountain Elk, bison, coyotes, mule deer, javelinas, gray foxes, black tail jackrabbits, cows, and collard peckery javelinas.

Box 6 – Mining Travelling Trunk

1. bag blue and green rocks containing 7 artifacts

2. bag grey and blue rocks containing 4 artifacts

3. miniature wooden rocker

4. carbide light

5. map of Blue Bell Mine (longitudinal section)

6. license for Blue Bell Mine

7. map of mines active in Arizona

8. powder flask

9. gold panning pan (rusty)

10. gold panning pan (new)

11. brochure of mining claims and sites on federal lands

12. miner’s candle

13. blow pipe

14. pick

15. cable brush

16. broken miniature wrecking ball (2 pieces)

17. granite crucible

18. dummy explosive

19. map of the locations of the Pine Grove and Tiger Districts (rolled and laminated)

20. map of early mining in Arizona (rolled and laminated)

21. map of typical locations of mining claims (rolled and laminated)

22. baby wrecking ball

23. onyx slate

24. head of a star drill

25. handle exhibit gold dust

26. core sample of marble

Description

A packet is included in the trunk.  This provides detailed descriptions of and background on the items enclosed.

Box 7 – Skin Travelling Trunk

1. large black cow skin

2. small calf skin

3. small fox skin

4. small lynx skin

5. bag of buffalo (bison) hair

Description

This trunk should give you a better idea of the type of animal life present in the Arizona of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-centuries.  It is also an opportunity to have a tactile experience of the fur of these animals.  The trunk contains the skins of a black cow, a calf, a fox, a lynx, and a bison (usually, but incorrectly, referred to as a buffalo).

Box 8 – Bone Travelling Trunk

1. Cow hip/butt

2. Cow or elk leg joint

3. Elk vertebra

4. Cow skull

5. Deer leg

6. Fox or small coyote skull and jaw

7. Woodrat/pack rat skull/jaw

8. Rock squirrel skull

Description

This trunk contains a number of bones of different animals.

Box 9—Green Box—Indian Travelling Trunk

Top Tray Small

1. 2 ears of corn

2. bone

3. scattered  beans

4. scattered peppers

Top Tray large

1. 4 arrow heads (RP0160, RP0149, San Pedro, Northern Side Notch Archaic)

2. 2 shards of pottery

3. rock pig (RP0160)

4. bag of beads

5. knife

Center Tray

1. pit house (model)

2. Indian mended pot (RP0165)

3. bone awl (RP0159)

4. polishing stone (RP0166)

5. Jasper awl scraper (RP014?)

6. anvil or polishing stone (RP0167)

7. abraider (RP0130)

8. axe head (RP0142)

9. hammer stone (RP0131)

10. tool mal’l (RP0132)

11. scraper ((RP0145)

Bottom Tray

1. digging stone (RP0137)

2. stone weight (RP0144)

3. shaft straightener (RP0143)

4. stone shaft holder (RP0134)

5. stone ball (RP0141)

6. digging stone ((RP0136)

7. pestle (RP0139)

8. spindle whorl (RP0133)

9. paint cup dish (RP0133)

10. floor polisher (RP0138)

11. stone mortar (RP0140)

12. stone mano (RP0129)

Description

This trunk contains items used by the natives of Arizona when white people first came.  The ears of corn, beans, and peppers in the small top tray are examples of foods eaten by these natives.  In the large top tray there are arrow heads, used (as one would expect) on the ends of arrows to kill game, a knife (used to slice up game and hides), pieces of pottery that might have been used to hold food or water, a piece of stone that has been fashioned into the shape of a pig, and some beads that would have been used as body decoration.

In the center tray there is a model of a pit house (also called a dugout), a dwelling frequently used by Arizona natives that is partially made up of a hole dug into the ground and partially of a building built on top of that.  The tray also contains a number of tools.  The pot would have been used to hold food or water.  There is a polishing stone, which was used for polishing clay pots.  A bone awl, which was used for making holes in hide for the purpose of sewing.  The jasper awl scraper was used for both perforating and scraping hides.  There is an item that could have been used as either an anvil or a polishing stone.  The abraider served a file, hone, or whetstone in working other stones, shaping wood, or shaping bone tools. They’re generally made of a granular type of stone, rough to the touch, serving as an abrasive material.  The stone axe head was tied to the end of an axe and used as a general-purpose tool, for chopping wood or meat, or even in warfare.  The hammer stone was used to break off large pieces of rock for later shaping into various tools.  The digging stone was used mainly for digging different items out of the ground, primarily food items.  The shaft straightener is used for straightening arrow shafts.  It was important that they be extremely straight in order for the arrow to hit its target.  The shaft holder was used for hold the shaft as it was straightened.  The use of the stone ball is not clear, but it might have had a variety of uses.  The pestle was used for crushing, grinding, and mixing grain and other solid substances.  This was done in a mortar.  The spindle whorl was used for spinning different fibers into thread.  The paint cup dish was used to hold and mix paint, which could have been applied to different surfaces, including the human body.  The floor polisher was used to polish the dirt floor of a dwelling.  The stone mano was used in conjunction with mutates and other grinding slabs to grind grain.

Box 10—Pioneer Living Kit

Top

1. Homemade soap

2. corn husk doll

3. wooden tongs

4. big egg beater

5. little egg beater

6. granite-ware lid (RP0039)

7. granite skimmer

8. slate pencil

9. Little House in the Big Woods

10. On the Banks of Plum Creek

11. The True Mother Goose

12. The ABC Coloring Book

13. Elvin Leader Composition Book

14. overview on the Pioneer Living Box

15. Patriotic Exercises in Schools

Middle

1. quoits

2. pick-up-sticks

3. Jacob’s ladder

4. bag of clothespins

5. clothespin doll

6. wooden ball

7. wooden bowl

Bottom

1. rolling pin

2. flat weaving shuttle

3. weaving spinner

4. food masher

5. food grinder

6. miniature kitchen items

a. iron pot/lid

b. stove with stove parts

c. pots and pans with iron

d. coffee grinder

7. mini grinder (for use)

8. 2 porcelain vessels

9. whisk

10. granite-ware spoon with perforations

Description

See the “Overview on the Pioneer Living Box” for explanations of the contents.