Most Fun

At the Oak Creek Camp School

Susan Smedes taught at the Oak Creek Camp School. These drawings by the children of the camp in the Dakota Territory are dated 1887. Smedes kept a diary detailing all of her experiences with the Indian families of the Camp.

Susan Dabney Smedes. Drawings by Sioux Indian Children, Dabney-Davis Family Papers, 1887.

"Oak Creek Camp School, April 26 1887

Last week, on Thursday, we had a hair-cutting of a little wild Indian, a child 8 years of age. He is the son of Brings-the-Pipe and is named -that-brings-the-Bay-Horse. I gave him his hands full of hard tack to eat before I said anything about cutting his hair off. The Indian Children are as fond of that as ours are of candy. While he was busy eating I piled his lap full of new clothes that the Government gives on their having their hair cut and entering school. There were more than the little lap could hold, and I made a great heap on the bench by his side. Then I brought out my scissors, feeling like an executioner. Lelia dreaded it as much as I did, and she spoke so sadly to the children who were crowding round the little fellow to witness the operation, that they slunk away, all but Wahumnuasin, a wild Indian of his age, who had lately gone through with the same thing....The braids were the longest and most beautiful that I have yet seen ...."

This collection also contains a few unidentified photographs of Sioux Indians, like the one shown here.

F.J.

Mark Twain. "Memory-Builder, A game for acquiring and retaining all sorts of facts and dates." New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1891.

Mark Twain’s Game

Mark Twain created this game as a means to help his daughters learn history. The game includes a pamphlet of historical facts, covering Kings, Emperors, and Presidents. The game was played by pushing the pins directly into the board.

F.J.

Hubbard, Elbert. Essay on Silence. New York: The Roycrofters, 1910?.

Essay on Silence

Hubbard, an author, publisher, and editor, established the Roycroft Shop in 1895. The shop was composed of various artists and craftsman that produced and sold objets d’art. He also founded Philistine, a controversial protest magazine. His best known works include A Message to Garcia (1899) and the posthumously printed Scrapbook (1923) and Notebook (1927). Essay on Silence is a cleverly bound work of blank pages. Mr. Hubbard died in the sinking of the Lusitania.

F.J.

Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Chicago and New York: Geo. M. Hill, 1900.

The Wizard of Oz

First edition, signed by Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion in the movie. This author’s best known work and one of the greatest stories in children’s literature. This early work has colorful illustrations by W.W. Denslow.

F.J.

Original drawing by Walt Disney.

Snow White and the Witch

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937, was Disney’s first feature-length film. In it he employed his technique of painting characters on sheets of celluloid and superimposing them on a water color background. The frames were then filmed with a multiplane camera that created the illusion of a third dimension. In addition to the drawing shown, there are two other original drawings on acetate in the Bernard Meeks Collection. A fourth drawing in the collection features Donald Duck.

F.J.

John Moffitt. "The Famous Blackwell-Nutt Family."

Nutts

Included in this collection are drafts of Moffitt’s published and unpublished writings, correspondence, poetry and prose. Within the family correspondence is a collection of walnut figures made by Moffitt to accompany an unpublished children’s story he had written. Moffitt decided that the progenitor of this clan would be John T. Nutt:

"John Tecumseh Nutt m. Flora Blackwall

John Tecumseh Nutt whose father landed with the first Jamestown settlers and whose mother was a full-blooded Cherokee Maiden. John Tecumseh is clad here in a bear skin shawl to indicate his aboriginal origins.

Despite these humble beginnings, John often mingled with the Virginia high society and as a result, met Flora Blackwell, the daughter of the colony’s first governor. The gold ribbon which adorns her neck artfully suggests her aristocratic background. With their marriage, so began the Blackwell-Nutts!"

F.J.