I Believe The Proper Term is "Native Americans"

David Skinner over at the Galley Slaves is a wee bit miffed about what new National Museum of the American Indian is accepting for their collection.

{...}When I visited recently, I was impressed only by the architecture, and the lobby especially, in which you enter a vertiginous central cavern that goes all the way to the building’s ceiling. The "collection," if you can call it that, is scattered about on floors extending outward in a circular fashion, not unlike the Guggenheim’s setup.

But what they have on display is pathetic. In one window case, there were some everyday crafts by a Canadian tribe (speaking of which, there is absolutely no uniformity or even thoughtfulness behind the museum’s use of terms like tribe, nation, people, etc.), including, on one shelf, a coke can and an ordinary hot beverage thermos. Whether these had been left behind by construction workers or were deemed, somehow, illustrative of Indian culture I cannot say. The signage for the display ignored most of its contents. In fact, the museum’s collection properly speaking receives only a fraction of the attention that is lavished on the subject of living Indians of North and South America. Head-dresses, weapons, totem polls, all the beautiful, intricate ceremonial pieces one associates with this massive indigenous civilization are little in evidence.{...}

I wonder if they'd accept these for their collection...

...or if they'd deem them too "warlike" and "not contemporary enough"?

If you're interested in the story of these, read on after the jump.

This collection is the husband's. He inherited them from his Grandfather, who had many odd jobs during his day, including walking the railroads, checking the worthiness of the line. It was during this job, and while he was farming, that he amassed this collection of arrowheads. Apparently the man was a magnet for these things, like they just jumped out of the soil and presented themselves to him. The area he lived in obviously had something to do with it, as well. These were found southeast of the Quad Cities, near the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.

This is only the best of the lot, too. Supposedly he threw boxes upon boxes away. And before anyone goes all "Antiques Roadshow" on me and whines about how they're displayed, there is a little story that I would like to share about why they're displayed as they are. Grandpa and Grandma Nelson had eight kids and money was tight: Grandpa displayed them like this so he could enter them into the county fair. Exhibitors and their families received free entry to the fair and free entry was important as they couldn't afford to go if they had to pay. They're attached to the board with Elmer's: it's easily removed, we just don't have anywhere to put them if we took them off.

Anyway, we've done some research and the best information we received was from this museum . And I quote the curator of anthropology from an email:

"Your grandfather's collection contains many good examples of chipped-stone and ground-stone artifacts associated with a number of different prehistoric cultures. It is difficult to make type identifications based on photographs, but some of these stand out pretty clearly. There are two or three Hardin spear points (c. 9,000-10,000 years old), several Kirk corner notched spear points (c. 8-9,000 yr), a number of side-notched spear points that likely date to the Middle Archaic period (c. 4-8000 yr.) several contracting-stem spear points dating to the Late Archaic/Early Woodland period (c. 2-4000 yr), and a number of small notched and un-notched arrowpoints that date to the Late Woodland, Mississippian or Late Prehistoric periods (c. 1,500 yr to prehistoric). Ground-stone pieces include three celts and a Mississippian Chunky Stone (round piece in the center)"{...}

The round piece in the middle had been of some bafflement amongst all of us, but fortunately the curator cleared it up:

"Chunky was a game of skill played historically by tribes living in the southeastern U.S. The stone was a target that they rolled across the ground and tired to hit with arrows or spears. The same type of stone artifact appears in prehistoric Mississippian villages (c. 1000 yr) and we assume they played the same game."

So, one measly email with pictures attached sent to one curator at one state museum in Illinois provided all of this information, which was previously unknown to us. The new museum in DC is apparently more interested in accepting records from The Village People. What would they do, do you think, if I sent them the same sort of email? Do you think they'd help me out?

Hmmmm.

Posted by Kathy at January 13, 2005 12:48 PM