COLLECTING ARROWHEADS LIKE these, with his great-grandmother, was the beginning of Jeff Smith’s fascination with Native American Indian artifacts. Today, Smith’s extensive collection draws visitors from throughout the Pacific Northwest. Smith is sharing a part of his collection with the La Center Historical Museum, at 410 W. 5th St., La Center. The museum has limited hours. For more information, visit www.thelacentermuseum.org.
LA CENTER – Still recovering from the loss of their longtime president, Dr. Barbara Barnhart, who stepped down in September citing health issues, the La Center Historical Museum’s Board of Directors is stepping up the little little museum’s displays and constructing a new “Museum Annex” in the hopes of attracting new members and out-of-town visitors.
“We always need new members and volunteers,” said Tom Wooldridge, the museum’s acting board president. “We are always looking for people who want to help.”
One such person is Jeff Smith, a Clark County history buff who has been gathering local Native American Indian artifacts since his great-grandmother, Chloe Royle, first showed him how to find arrowheads on the family’s sheep and filbert farm, when Smith was just a young boy.
Today, Smith’s collection of native artifacts draws interest from historians, archeologists and researchers of Chinook and other local Native American artwork and culture. Some pieces are leftover from Smith’s early digs with his great-grandmother, but most are pieces he’s purchased from other collectors.
“I want a clean collection,” Smith says, acknowledging that the issue of collecting Native American artifacts is a sensitive one. “These were all legally obtained … and I believe this history is for everybody. I’m a keeper of it, for now.”
Smith often shares his collection with local school groups and homeschool children. He shows the students the huckleberry baskets, arrowheads, shell bead jewelry, pipes and clay figures he’s curated, and shares what he’s learned from a lifetime of reading and researching the local native tribes that lived in Clark County.
The museum has approached him before, Smith says, but when his good friend Wooldridge took over as president, he decided to bring a small portion of his collection to the volunteer-run La Center Historical Museum.
“This is about five percent of my collection,” Smith says, pointing to the glass cases filled with artifacts like an impressive mortar and pestle, handwoven baskets, bead and shell jewelry, arrowheads from several different time periods, and even two pieces of Smith’s prized shoto clay figurines, which are also known as Lake River ceramics.
The collection will be on display through October, and possibly into the winter months. Visitors can use the guide Smith has posted above the artifacts to learn more about the individual pieces as well as the native tribes that once lived in the La Center area.
Wooldridge says he’s pleased with the new display and looking forward to the museum’s new Annex, a donated garage building that the board of directors are converting into a “grandma’s kitchen and grandpa’s tools” collection. That display will feature a variety of blacksmith tools, old-fashioned tools and a collection of kitchen gadgets from yesteryear. The board hopes to open the Annex in six months, Wooldridge says.
The history museum is located at 410 W. 5th St., in La Center, and is open from noon to 4 p.m. on the first and third Saturdays of each month, as well as by appointment on Wednesdays. For more information, visit www.thelacentermuseum.org.
