Kalispell Middle School students learn how to tan hides

Out in the courtyard of Kalispell Middle School on Wednesday was an unusual sight — deer and elk hides stretched tautly with rope on wooden frames lying fur side down on tarps.

Picking up hand tools, eighth-graders in Kris Schreiner’s Montana History class crouched around the hides, which were in different stages of the tanning process. This was the first time Schreiner was doing the project as part of a unit on the fur trade.

“That’s why they’re doing it in the more traditional sense, why they’re using hand tools and nothing mechanized,” Schreiner said, pointing to pelt scrapers and an all-purpose knife called an ulu.

About 10 hides were donated to the project, most of them from students or their family members and teachers such as Schreiner, who donated an elk hide. An Indian Education For All state grant was used to buy tanning supplies.

This was also the first time many students in this class period had tanned a hide, whether or not they were hunters.

“You guys can spread out that mule deer inside that frame, yep, and bungee the four corners and start putting in the zip ties,” Schreiner said, helping one group set up a fresh hide. “So this is just a ‘green’ hide. It’s called green when it’s fresh off the animal and hasn’t been tanned yet. So grab the four corners on the legs ­­— the awls are over there in the bucket and you can use zip ties.”

Grasping one corner of the hide, eighth-grader Bella Hodous sat down and pierced a hole in the skin using an awl. When Hodous first learned about what was involved in tanning, she was squeamish, however, by the second day she had overcome any hesitation.

Taking the corner where Hodous secured a zip tie in place, classmate Isaac Keim began to stretch it outward. For student hunters such Keim, who knew a bit about what to expect, he was excited about learning a new skill he could possibly use later on.

“I’ve skinned a deer, but never tanned a hide,” Keim said.

Hodous and other students grabbed other corners and shifted the hide around for better placement.

Across the way, in another stage of the process, eighth-graders Alissa Young and Mauraia Nigon held ulus and scraped the wide blades across a drier hide, the membrane flaking off.

Nearby, eighth-graders Kole Johnson and Derrick Lyttle were using pelt scrapers to remove fat, which was being collected in a bucket to use later to make candles in science class.

Other subject areas such as art and family and consumer sciences were also going to use the pelts once the tanning process is completed, according to Schreiner. He said the art department plans to use some to paint traditional native American paintings and the family and consumer sciences department may use them to create bags, pouches or something else.

For hides ready for the last step of salting, Schreiner had demonstrated earlier the amount of salt to pour onto the hide and how to rub the salt in, using his palms to embed the grains into the skin.

“Based on what you guys know about salt ... what do you think the salt’s doing to the hide?” he asked.

“Preserving it,” one student answered.

“How would it preserve it, what’s it gotta do in order to preserve the skin?” Schreiner asked.

“Pull out the water,” another student answered.”

“Yes, pull out the water, because the water is what’s going to cause it to basically break down and decompose right, so the salt is going to extract the water out of the hide, so when we go to cure it with our tanning solution that water is all out of there,” Schreiner explained.

Once covered in salt, the hides are rolled up to dry for 24 hours.

“Then we’ll unroll it. We’ll scrape all the salt off. Then, we’re going to scrape it again to get any additional material off that may have lifted with some of the salt. And then it gets a second salting and sits another day and then we do the same thing,” he said.

The process doesn’t end there.

“Then it goes into a salt water bath, so you drench it and from there, we go to a liquid Dawn bath and we give it a good, nice de-greasing scrub. From there, we stretch it back out on the frame and put on a trapper’s [tanning] solution.

“The tanning solution helps keep the hide flexible and supple, so that it doesn’t crack or break, essentially,” Schreiner said.

The prospect of being part of a visceral activity was a mixture of excitement and unfamiliarity, but most students were enjoying the hands-on aspect.

“I really like to get hands on for this stuff instead of sitting in a classroom,” Johnson said.

Did he know how involved the activity would be?

“Knowing Mr. Schreiner, yes,” Johnson, said smiling.

Lyttle noted that the class had also done spear throwing as a unit activity.

And that’s what Schreiner is hoping to accomplish, bringing history to life whether through tanning a hide, or in their next unit on Montana’s mining history, bringing in a professional to talk to classes about the industry today.

“So there’s the primary source component, but there’s also, like, kids getting to see this is a real thing that we’re learning about,” he said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.