History Piece Pictures

Here are two pics that show the scale of the piece spread out on the railroad tracks.

Formal Piece

For my formal piece, I chose to respond to an exit sign that led into the student lounge. I felt that this was a strange location for an exit sign, as it was the entrance to a secluded part of the student lounge. I wanted to make my sign opposite to the exit sign in several ways. First of all, I says "enter." The word "enter" is upside down on the sculpture. The letters are also red so that they are  once again the opposite of the green letters in the sign.

This piece was constructed of a pvc cap for a base, a broom handle for the sign post, and three layers of particle board shelving that were cut to size and glued together. The letters were carved into the particle board with wood chisels. This made the top very heavy and unbalanced with the base. To remedy this, I loaded the bottom full of scrap metal and a few sockets. With the ballast in the base, it balanced well. I spray painted the entire sculpture white and then applied red reflective tape to the letters.

Response to comparison to yellow brick road project

My yellow brick road project was a celebration of education. Education was going to be my yellow brick road. College would be the vehicle that carried me to a better life. The transcontinental railroad through campus was a visual symbol of this. It was made of bricks, and I colored them yellow with sidewalk chalk. Getting permission for that assignment was difficult, because they did not want me drawing on the campus like that. But as sidewalk chalk washes away and the message was positive, they allowed me to complete my installation.

I have used the transcontinental railroad in a much different context in the Native Americana piece. It is a vehicle for carrying settlers and land usurpers from the East. Honestly, by the time the railroad was complete, all of the Native Americans in Washington were already reservation bound.

Railroad vs Native Americana

This piece is about an issue that I feel strongly about. The way in which the lands all across America were obtained for European settlers' use were underhanded and often violent. I chose to show the end of the transcontinental railroad as a site where many settlers passed through on their way to use the ill-gotten lands. 

I was really focusing on process during this project. I made all of the artifacts in my display from natural materials that I gathered. I also used glue and some hemp string, but everything else was collected. I used a band-saw a couple of times, but most things were crafted using hand tools. I used a draw knife extensively while making the bow. I also used a hunting knife for almost all of the rough carving on the items. I did this because I felt that a native would have had limited tools and also limited resources. I wanted to really feel the attachment that a native would have had to such items. After making the artifacts, I smashed them with a four pound sledge hammer. I felt that this would be as close as I could get to a train running over them. The war club took quite a while to break in half. I felt sad about crushing the items because I really got into making them. 

The war club represented warfare. I wanted to show with this one that not everything that was taken away from the natives was completely negative (although the point can be made that their original warfare was much less violent than the warfare that was used in obtaining their lands). There is a bison head carved on the war club. While there were no bison in the Puyallup River Valley, there were extensive trade routes not only to Eastern Washington, but across the continent. The bow was a fairly generic stick bow that might have been used for hunting or warfare anywhere in North America except the arctic regions. It was a super light weight bow that would have been useless for hunting, but it did fire the arrow once before I broke it. The bow and arrow were meant to represent hunting and other food gathering. Finally, the dream catcher was made out of a green birch twig that I bent into a circle and tied with hemp string. I then tied the center area with the same twine and finished it with a carved bear claw, a goose feather, and two seagull feathers. This was meant to represent native mysticism. This was a challenge to smash in half. I was concerned that the birch twig would return to a straight line when I broke it. It remained a little curved. I also cut the string in the middle right before placing it in site.

History Paper

I have chosen to work with the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks that lead through campus. These tracks have a long history in the City of Tacoma. They were the beginning of convenient travel from the eastern part of the United States to the Puget Sound. Before the railroad was completed, one would have to take a covered wagon and walk most of the way. This railroad made the journey much easier. The return journey to the East was also simplified. This meant many more people came to Washington State. Many more people of European descent, in any event. What effect would this have on the indigenous population? Not a positive one.

            Europeans began settling in Tacoma very early. The first was a Swedish American named Nicolas Delin in the mid-nineteenth century (historylink.org). He was followed by many others. Tacoma really began a population explosion when the Northern Pacific Railroad chose it as the terminus to the Transcontinental Railroad (ibid). The population grew from about a thousand in 1880 to 36,000 in 1890 (ibid). This was great from a white, development minded, perspective. The indigenous people surely thought otherwise.

            From the beginning of white settlement in the Puget Sound region, there were conflicts between the settlers and the natives. Isaac Stevens, first governor of Washington Territory, forced the tribes into unfair treaties (Richards). Stevens toured the state with his military contingent getting tribes to sign away their lands in massive multi-tribe affairs. Dissenters were killed; an Indian War ensued (ibid). While one of Stevens’ main objectives was to secure the land for American settling, he was also meant to survey the lands for a transcontinental rail route. He had engineers exploring the possible passes. Railroads have long held a negative relationship with the natives.

            Railroads did cause problems for other ethnic minorities as well. The Chinese were run out of Tacoma in a spectacularly violent way. This expulsion culminated in the still unexplained explosion of part of their living quarters (Morgan). Railroads have not always been a friend to the downtrodden.

            Other railways existed in Tacoma before the Northern Pacific line. There was a narrow gauge timber line to bring trees down to Tacoma to be processed into lumber. This ended at about present day South 97^th Street (Morgan). This small time railroad had largely gone bankrupt by the time the Northern Pacific came to town.

            Railroads rapidly accelerated the pace at which this area was settled. Not only did the number of settlers increase, but a new breed of settlers was coming to town. No longer did only the roughest, most adventurous, come to town. People who were used to a more civilized life rode in by rail. Whoever it was coming to Tacoma, there was sure a lot of them. This did not bode well for the already reservationized natives. White encroachment on their hunting and fishing rights led to differences of opinion that still breed animosity today.

Bibliography

Wilma, D., Crowley, W., 17, J., & 2003. (n.d.). HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. Retrieved August 1, 2012, from http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5055

Morgan, M. (2003). Puget's Sound: a narrative of early Tacoma and the southern Sound (Columbia Northwest classics ed.). Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Richards, Kent D. 1993.  Isaac I. Stevens: Young Man in a Hurry.  Provo:  Brigham Young University Press, 1979.  Reprint, Washington State University Press.