![]() White people showed up and struggled to survive. Insofar as this collection represented a story, it was one about white settlement and achievement, the righteous triumph of hard work and perseverance, casual conquering and acquisition. When the volunteer came back, she wanted to take me upstairs to see a whole barbershop. A placard commemorated the dwelling as the birthplace of “the first white child born in the valley.” Horseshoes and plows, flat irons and clothes wringers, saws and dinner bells sorted with the contents of a blacksmith shop, including “the largest known collection existing today.” These items were not so much curated as simply accumulated, cast-off objects speaking of absence and obsolescence with all the richness and specificity of the past but without the people who animated it. There was some of just about everything: wagon wheels, tricycles, beaver and raccoon skins, old firearms, leg-hold traps, quilts, barbed wire labeled by type, and an entire pioneer cabin, reassembled. As it turned out, that’s where it was all happening, historically speaking. On the first floor I spent a few minutes looking at entries in a school art contest, but when I asked whether there were any historical artifacts on offer, a volunteer led me downstairs. Traffic was heavier on its western fringes, where the Walmart Supercenter and the Dollar Tree are. ![]() ![]() ![]() A few years ago, while doing research in southeastern Kansas, I stopped in Independence, a metropolis of around 8,500 on the Verdigris River, and paid a visit to the Independence Historical Museum and Art Center, a brick pile occupying much of a city block just off Main Street, which is also US Route 160. ![]()
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