Young men examine the collection in the early days of the museum.
Digital Database:
These search engines provide access to all the artifacts collected by Fr. Buechel for his museum. Out of respect for the sacredness of certain objects in the collection, they can only be viewed with permission of the museum. The visitor section provides images of all the other artifacts from the collection and selected information on each piece. The Scholar section provides all the information Fr. Buechel, S.J. and others have collected on each artifact.
Visitor Database Search Engine: You may access a limited number of records in the collection (by discretion of the museum staff). Visitor mode provides the name, description and a photo (if available) of the artifact(s) searched.
Scholar Database Search Engine: You may select individual aspects of each object you wish to view from the search results. This mode allows complete access to the records. Only registered users may be granted access.
Research Permission and Access Forms:
If you are interested in accessing the full database mentioned above or if you wish to visit the museum to work with some of the objects there please fill out these forms. The museum fax number is: 605 747-5057.
Information from the museum and its associated electronic database may be used by individual researchers or research groups, but they may not be repackaged, sold, or redistributed in any form without the express written consent of the Buechel Memorial Lakota museum. If any of the data are used in an analysis or report, the provenance of the original data must be acknowledged, and the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum must be notified. All photographs are copyright © Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum, with all rights reserved. Written permission must be obtained for all uses. For information on the use of data and images, please contact Michael Marshall, Museum Director, (museum@gwtc.net). Please provide the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum with copies of any publications resulting from the use of this information.
Research Requests (Adobe Acrobat PDF) (Microsoft Word): Please print, fill out, and then mail or fax this form to the museum if you want to do research either with the virtual collection or at the Museum itself.
Research Details (Adobe Acrobat PDF) (Microsoft Word): Please print, fill out, and then mail or fax this form to the museum if you want to do research either with the virtual collection or at the Museum itself.
Rules for Handling Artifacts (Adobe Acrobat PDF) (Microsoft Word): Please print, fill out, and then mail or fax this form to the museum if you want to work directly with the artifacts during a museum visit.
Database Content:
The digital database is made up of several text and visual elements. Below is an inventory of the kinds of data that is part of each item record. Not every item in the collection has a complete description however.
Official Museum Catalogue Cards
In 1984 Mr. Peter Gibbs created a card catalogue for the Buechel Museum collection. At this time (not sure here) a new catalogue number was assigned to each item. Fr. Buechel used a letter to indicate type of object (I have a key he left for the meaning of each letter) and a sequential number. For multiple examples of an object he used a letter after the number (such as for his collection of snow skates S6a to S6g). The second set of numbers is sequential with a prefix of “BMLM/” for “Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum”. The number follows Fr. Buechel’s sequence although the cataloguer sometimes groups several objects under one number and sometimes skips around in Buechel’s sequence. Most of the cards have one or two photographs attached, an older contact proof of the object in black and white and sometimes a Polaroid or commercially developed color picture of, I assume, more recent vintage. I scanned all of these cards (both sides) keeping the file size down by using .gif format which is not great for photographs but allows the text to be seen clearly. I also edited each card by removing the yellow background by filling the card with white. There are 944 cards following Fr. Buechel’s catalogue system (I duplicated some cards when Buechel had several numbers while Gibbs used a single number). ( Example of Official Catalogue Card )
Fr. Buechel's Museum Tags
Fr. Buechel used tags to identify some of his objects. It seems the tags were written before he created his systematic classification for the entire collection as his catalogue letter (indicating the classification) and number were often added in a different color pencil. A full collection of tags does not exist. It is not clear if some of the tags are missing or if some of the objects were never tagged by Fr. Buechel or subsequent museum managers. The descriptions on the tags are often identical to Fr. Buechel's hand written file cards. There are a total of 425 tags that were found and scanned for this project. ( Example of Museum Tag )
Fr. Buechel’s Hand Written File Cards
Fr. Buechel created a set of cards with his own sequence number consisting of a letter and consecutive numbers for each letter. He also created a simple classification key to his system:
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A = Wearing Apparel (12 items)
B = Beadwork (42 items)
C = Charms (34 items)
D = Dances (50 items)
F = Fauna (12 items)
H = Home (45 items)
M = Medicine (60 items)
O = Ornaments (20 items)
P = Pipes (48 items)
R = Religious Ceremonies (59 items)
S = Sport (34 items)
T = Travel (37 items)
U = Utensels (121 items)
W = Weapons (64 items)
Fr. Buechel Typed File Cards
Fr. Buechel took his hand written cards and typed them. At times he added information. He also hand wrote the Lakota terms onto these cards rather than type them. There are also various cards which were originally displayed in his museum cases. In addition there are small descriptions of Lakota life and history as well as a map of Fr. Buechel’s original museum arrangement. There are in fact two sets, one made by carbon copy except in a few instances when the second card is typed. When the two cards each had unique data I scanned both the cards. There are a total of 654 cards (some of the cards are duplicates). ( Example of Buechel'sTyped Museum Cards )
Fr. Buechel’s Carbon Copy of his Typed File Cards
Fr. Buechel created a carbon copy of the majority of his typed file cards. Other cards were typed twice. In a few instances the information on the second card is different from that of the first card. When that is the case I have scanned both cards and included the uniqe second card with the typed files card listed above.
Photographs of Ethnographic Objects
There are 739 photographs of the remaining objects in Fr. Buechel's ethnographic collection. It is difficult to come up with an exact number of items in Fr. Buechel's collection as some of the objects such as games have multiple pieces and at various times these pieces have been catalogued individually or as a group. The original images are in .tif format and are archived at the museum. These .tif images were edited, joined together into a single composite image showing multiple views of the object, and saved in .jpg format. ( Example of Object Image )
Photographs of Native Contributors
Fr. Buehcel was very careful to record the benefactor from whom he received most of his objects. To date we where able to identify pictures of 43 contributors in the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum Photographic Archives. ( Example of Image of Native Contributor )
Digitized Information
The database itself contains the following text fields:
If you wish to cite material from the database please use the following format:
Buechel, Fr. Eugene, S.J. Digitial Archive: Fr. Eugene Buechel, S.J. Lakota Material Culture Collection and Associated Notes. Editors: Raymond Bucko, S.J. and Mike Marshall. Database Design: Filipp Sapienza. Saint Francis, South Dakota: St. Francis Mission. 2003.