Category: Michelle Hopey
Indian Museum Lacks Northern New England Artifacts
By Thomas Rains
WASHINGTON – There are 800,000 pieces in the collection of the Museum of the American Indian that opened here this week, but visitors from northern New England may have trouble finding many pieces from their neck of the woods any time soon.
The entire collection includes only seven artifacts from Maine, five from Massachusetts and two from New Hampshire, according to museum public affairs assistant Leonda Levchuk.
And, of the 800,000 pieces, only about 10 percent of them are on display at any given time, said Levchuk, who could not confirm if any of the northern New England pieces are currently displayed.
“Possibly the projectile points” are on display in the Window on Collections, she said, referring to a part of the museum that gives visitors a glance at other parts of the assortment of artifacts not featured in any of the core exhibits.
Nine of the 14 pieces from the three states – including both pieces from New Hampshire – are identified as projectile points. These could have been arrow tips, spear points or scrapers.
Maine’s other pieces include an Abenaki-Penobscot wampum necklace, which is made of seashells, two birch bark boxes and covers of Abenaki-Penobscot and Micmac origin. The other Massachusetts pieces include a Pennacook cornhusk basket and a Mahican wood and metal club.
Generally, the museum’s collection comes from areas of the United States outside of the Northeast. Pieces from the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes region, the North American plains and both southwestern and southeastern United States make up much of the collection, while a “substantial array of materials” comes from Central and South America and the Caribbean, according to the museum’s Website.
While there is no doubt that the American Indians in the Northeast played a major role in the history of the United States, the museum is based entirely on the personal collection of one man: a rich New Yorker by the name of George Gustav Heye, Levchuk said. Because of this the collection is based on Heye’s personal whim, not on geographic or tribal representation.
Heye, who died in 1957, often traveled out west and was “rabid in his collection,” Levchuk said. He “would buy anything,” she added, which is the reason the museum has so many pieces from South America.
However, the museum is “always looking to accept new things,” Levchuk said. That can be a struggle, especially when dealing with Northeastern tribes, because their artifacts are the oldest and most sought after.
“The artifacts are very precious and very scarce,” said Gayle Andrews-Chamberlain of the northeastern relics, adding that many of them are still being fought over by the tribes.
Andrews-Chamberlain, in Washington for the opening of the museum, is a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Cape Cod, but now lives in Tallahassee, Fl.The number oftribes in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire that are federally or state-recognized today is small, but some people, including Andrews-Chamberlain, think this is not important.
“If you practice customs and understand who you are, you don’t need to be recognized,” Andrews-Chamberlain, whose tribe is not recognized, said. “The benefit, though, is sovereignty,” which means they are not subject to American laws.
In addition to the small number of recognized tribes, “Native Americans,” according to The Almanac of American Politics, make up less than one half of one percent of the population in these New England states.
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Michelle Hopey contributed to this story.
