Posted on: Sunday, September 26, 2004
Exhibits you don't want to miss
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| • | American Indian Museum takes its place on Mall |
Gannett News Service
Ten interesting things you can see at the National Museum of the American Indian:
Washington Post *Gannett News Service Panel of treaties: A sampling of some of the 367 treaties between the U.S. government and Indian tribes. Included is a presidential proclamation, dated 1792 and signed by George Washington, establishing a $500 reward for catching "lawless and wicked persons" who violated U.S. treaties by destroying Cherokee towns in western Georgia.
Totem pole: A colorful, 20-foot totem pole by master carver Nathan Jackson and his family of the Tlingit tribe in Alaska tells the story of Kats, the hunter, and his bear wife.
Animals: From a fat, red clay Chihuahua from Mexico to beaded horses from the Zunis of the American Southwest, eight glass cases are filled with woven, beaded and pottery items made in the likeness of animals.
Peace medals: A display of presidential peace medals given by the federal government to Indians to win their support. A medal with the likeness of President James Buchanan, dated 1857, and given to a member of the Brule Lakota Nation in South Dakota is adorned with a necklace made of grizzly bear claws and brass beads.
Geronimo's rifle: Apache Chief Geronimo's Winchester rifle, surrendered at Fort Bowie, Ariz., in 1886.
Outer space: Items that orbited Earth on the space shuttle Endeavour in November 2002 taken by the first American Indian astronaut, John Bennett Herrington, a Chickasaw. Included is a small ceramic pot with corn motifs.
"Who We Are": A 13-minute multimedia presentation in the Lelawi Theater showing modern native life. Images on the overhead dome screen transport viewers to towering forests along the Northwest Coast and a rock quarry in the Black Hills. An acrylic rock in the theater's center changes from a rushing creek to a storyteller's fire.
Indigenous foods: Pumpkin soup; ash-roasted, sweet corn on the cob; and fire-roasted juniper salmon. Those and other native foods are for sale in the Mitsitam Cafe (Mitsitam means "let's eat" in the Piscataway and Delaware Indian languages).
Native landscape: More than 33,000 plants of 150 species. Landscapes important to native cultures surround the museum: forest, terraced croplands, meadow and wetlands.
Wall of gold: A collection of 408 gold objects including jewelry, figurines, masks and coins, made by the Aztec, Maya and Inca nations.
A sweep of guns is displayed at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C., but there is little information on who these arms were used by, and whom they were used against, and why.
