Makah Riches On View In New Museum Annex

Members of the Makah Nation will dedicate a new annex to the Makah Museum at Neah Bay next Saturday, and you're invited. Dedication ceremonies will begin at 1 p.m. Visitors are invited to stay for a community dinner, with singing and dancing, immediately after the dedication.

The free-standing museum annex will provide storage and curatorial space for the rich archeological treasures the Makah call "a gift from the past."

Once, five Makah villages stretched along Washington State's northwest coast. Only Neah Bay is left.

A dozen miles south of Neah Bay at Lake Ozette, another Makah village once perched at the ocean's edge, in a prime position for hunting during annual whale and fur seal migrations. A few hundred years ago - no one can say with certainty just how long ago it was - a mudslide engulfed five of its longhouses, freezing in time the baskets and toys inside, along with looms, canoe paddles, and other bits of everyday life.

Archeologists began recovering those bits in 1970, after a winter storm washed away a bank above the beach at Lake Ozette. Long-buried treasures began to emerge from the eroded surface. The mud had kept them astonishingly fresh. Baskets and house planks still bore vivid decoration.

By a stroke of luck virtually unmatched in the history of archeology, some Makah elders, from families who came from Ozette village, were able to provide Makah names for artifacts, and describe how and when they were used. It wasn't always easy, especially in the case of objects such as a curious "whale saddle," carved from wood in the shape of a whale fin, inset with sharks' teeth.

The dig closed in 1981, partly for lack of support and money, and partly because of a sobering reality: Once artifacts are unearthed, they must be cared for. Light and air can prove devastating to fragile fragments once protected by the earth.

The Makah Museum opened in June 1979 to house the treasures. But it wasn't enough, as it stood, to store and care for all that had been found at Ozette.

"We really needed a good storage building before the museum," said Kirk Wachendorf, interpretive specialist at the Makah Museum. The museum was built as a display space, with very limited storage, Wachendorf said. "Everything has been stored for 23 years in an old tin building."

A fourth of a mile down the road from the museum, next to the Tribal Council office, 50,000 artifacts from Ozette, and 60,000 more from a dig on the nearby Hoko River, sit on cafeteria trays on shallow shelves. Boxes of uncatalogued objects lie along the walls.

Many of these fragments aren't glamorous - bits of wooden tools and bone. Some of what's stored are "level bags," in which all remains pitched into a midden, or refuse heap, from a given level are bagged up. No one expects the bits of bone and shell to yield treasures, but the evidence of what the Makah were eating could prove important in settling claims about historic and customary practices.

Many of the stored objects are wood and basketry. They're fragile, highly perishable. Yet the building has no climate control, aside from an inadequate heater.

Soon, the trays will be slid onto wheeled carriers, rolled onto a truck, and transferred to the museum's new $700,000 annex, designed by architect Eric Anderson of the Seattle architectural firm Makers.

Anderson designed the annex to house a conservation lab, office space, and a computer area where all of the artifacts eventually will be recorded on ROM disks. In a fumigation room, pieces will be "debugged" by freezing rather than the usual way of gassing with pesticides.

Two-thirds of the building's 8,100 square feet is set aside for safe storage of artifacts. Pre-contact metal artifacts will be stored in a 500-square-foot "dry room," where humidity goes no higher than 20 percent. The building's biggest area - 5,500 square feet - is for "wet" storage of wood and basketry objects, at 45 percent humidity. Both storage rooms are designed to be kept at a steady 60 degree temperature.

Anderson said the building's storage can be tripled by putting in an already-designed mezzanine and motorized shelving.

It may be a while before additional space is needed. Although Wachendorf reckons that more than half of what was buried by the centuries-old mudslide is still there, he says, "The tribe has no interest in reopening the Ozette dig and possibly exposing sacred objects."

If you go: Dress casually. Be courteous. Don't let kids run loose while people are peforming. And be respectful enough not to photograph or tape record peformers if you're asked not to do so. Many songs and dances are the exclusive property of their performers, and are not displayed casually.