BROWNING — The Museum of the Plains Indian was a respected
research center that helped numerous historians and authors complete
their work.
Even today, after decades of financial neglect, the museum houses
a wealth of information, artifacts and photographs.
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"They have some very good
research collections, a wonderful collection of photographs and a
number of artifacts that are unique in themselves," said writer and
historian Hugh Dempsey, a professor emeritus at the University of
Calgary and the curator emeritus of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
"The average public doesn't get a chance to see them because the
funding has been cut and there is not enough money to change
exhibits," Dempsey said.
The museum was constructed in 1938-39 and opened in 1940, but as
early as 1954 there were funding threats to the museum.
In the museum's prime, its director and curator frequently was a
trained archaeologist who conducted research and archaeological digs
on the reservation, according to Darrell Norman, a Blackfeet artist
and Browning native.
Famed archaeologist Thomas F. Kehoe joined the staff in 1952.
William Farr, former chairman of the University of Montana
History Department and associate director of the O'Connor Center for
the Rocky Mountain West, researched two of his books at the Museum
of the Plains Indian.
"I used the archives this past summer," Farr said. "I was doing
photographic research.
"It is a very nice facility. John C. Ewers of the Smithsonian,
who wrote 'The Blackfeet, Raiders of the Plains,' was the first
director of the Plains Indian Museum," Farr said.
Farr identified Ewers as the "grandfather of Blackfeet studies"
and said his successor was Claude Schaeffer, who served two
different stints as director of the museum.
"Just an amazing amount of work was done there," Farr said. "It
has slowly been downgraded, its funding threatened and that has been
a chronic problem until about 25 years ago when it sort of went into
abeyance," he said.
At that time, large portions of the original Blackfeet archives
were sent to the federal records center in Denver, which is part of
the national archives.
"It has been a rocky road. It has not had the support that it
deserves," Farr said. "I am sorry really to see that it is in such a
state."
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