BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of the American Indian -- Exhibit: Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories

DC -- Natl Museum of the American Indian -- Exhibit: Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. AMINOP_090323_038.JPG: The Americas: The Americas are half the world and a quarter of the earth's land surface -- a generous expanse of rain forests, permanent winters, endless summers, and everything in between. The people who live here are engineers and artists, cooks and dreamers, hunters and students. They are scientists and kings, farmers and revolutionaries. They aren't "Indians". They have never heard of "America." They number in the tens of millions, and make their homes in deserts, on mountains and farms, in fishing villages and crowded cities. They speak a thousand different languages and live a million different lives. Their world is ancient and modern, and forever changing, with memories from the beginning of everything. The figures standing before you knew this world. Many spent centuries underground, until farmers, tomb raiders, road builders, and archaeologists brought them to light. Like their human descendants, they are survivors of a buried past. Personal Note: The second (?) floor of the museum has a permanent exhibit that tries to cover the breadth of the American Indian experience. It's an exhibit with, in my opinion, too few signs and the ones that it has are oddly attributed to museum curators. I've never seen this in a Smithsonian museum -- a permanent exhibit with text which ends with something like "Paul Chaat Smith, NMAI, 2003". There are some ego issues at work here and it can leave a distasteful feeling.
2. AMINOP_090323_041.JPG: 1491
3. AMINOP_090323_043.JPG: Gold: The millions who lived in the Americas produced extraordinary wealth. Corn and gold were the paramount symbols of power and wealth. They anchored the largest civilizations: the Mexica (also known as the Aztec), the Maya, and the Inka. People across the hemisphere domesticated hundreds of varieties of corn. By perfecting the cultivation of corn, societies could support larger populations. Towns became cities. The cities built pyramids and dreamed of empire. Gold was lavished on palaces, worked into jewelry and figurines, and placed outdoors to absorb and radiate the sun's powerful energy. It was never used as currency.
4. AMINOP_090323_046.JPG: The Prize: The Americas had a seemingly endless supply of land, timber, silver, and gold -- all on a scale no European had ever imagined. A Spanish visitor to Cusco, spiritual center of the Inka Empire, described a garden when the dirt itself was made of gold: "In one of the houses, there was the figure of the sun, very large and made of gold. Ingeniously worked, and enriched with many precious stones... They had also a garden, the clods of which were made of pieces of fine gold; and it was artificially sown with golden maize, the stalks, as well as the leaves and cobs, being of that metal." -- Pedro de Cieza de Leon, "Chronicles of Peru" (1553-1554).
5. AMINOP_090323_051.JPG: Men of Fortune: Inspired by stories of untold wealth, the conquistadors were ambitious men who joined leaders such as Francisco Pizarro and Hernan Cortes to seek their fortunes in the Americas. Their ranks included skilled artisans, soldiers of fortune, and religious crusaders who hoped to bring Christianity to the unsaved. The conquistadors coveted gold because it brought them closer to the wealth and status they desired. No other materials were as compact, transportable, divisible, or imperishable.
6. AMINOP_090323_056.JPG: Four Roads, Eight Months: In 1532, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro seized the Inka ruler Atahualpa and held him hostage. From across Peru, gold and silver arrived on the backs of people and llamas. They trudged along the empire's four highways, carrying the largest ransom in world history. It took eight months. A room 22 feet long, 17 feet wide, and eight feet high was filled with gold. Two more rooms were filled with silver. When the rooms could hold no more, Pizarro became one of the world's richest men. He then ordered Atahualpa strangled.
7. AMINOP_090323_059.JPG: Seventeen Ships: One year after his first landing in the Americas, Christopher Columbus again sailed west. His 17 ships carried a priest, 1,000 men, and the Western Hemisphere's first horses, sheep, and cattle. Unknown to anyone, the ships also carried a host of deadly microbes. For the next 150 years, European ships brought microbes that devastated indigenous people. Imported diseases weakened Indian resistance to European intrusion and keyed the colonialization of the Americas. In 1500, no one knew about germs. If European farmers had landed in the Bahamas bearing nothing but good will, their diseases would have killed just the same. That initial explosion of death is one of the greatest tragedies in human history because it was unintended and unavoidable, and even inevitable. But what happened it its wake was not.
8. AMINOP_090323_062.JPG: Infinite Thousands: Contact withered the indigenous people of the Americas. With little immunity to European diseases, Native people fell victim to smallpox, influenza, mumps, and other diseases. From 1492 to 1650, contagions claimed as many as nine lives out of ten. The kingdom of death extended from Chile to New England. There, in 1616, a wave of diseases swept in ahead of the Mayflower's Pilgrims. By the time the ship landed, the plagues had emptied entire Indian villages. Cold and hungry Pilgrims dug up graves and ransacked abandoned houses in search of buried corn. In December 1620, the colonists settled in a deserted Indian village. They named it Plymouth. The epidemics raged for 150 years. The biological catastrophe was unprecedented in human history: an extinction event that spanned continents. Sorrow and heartbreak cloaked a shattered world that in 10,000 years had never faced such disaster.
9. AMINOP_090323_068.JPG: Mexico, 1520: "It was a dreadful illness, and many people died of it. No one could move, not even to turn their heads. If they did move their bodies, they screamed in pain. They could not get up to search for food, so they starved to death in their beds." -- Mexica Narrative, quoted by Fr. Bernadino de Sahagun, "General History of the Things of New Spain"
10. AMINOP_090323_069.JPG: Peru, 1533: "The Inka Huayna Capac, said, 'I must die,' and then he fell ill with smallpox... Had this Huayna Capac been alive when we Spaniards entered this land, it would have been impossible for us to win it, for he was much beloved..." -- Pedro Pizarro, "Relation of the Discovery and Conquest of the Kingdoms of Peru"
11. AMINOP_090323_075.JPG: Caribbean, 1493: "There occurred an epidemic of smallpox so virulent that it left Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba desolated of Indians..." -- Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, "Natural History of the West Indies"
12. AMINOP_090323_079.JPG: American Southeast, 1540: "About this place... were large vacant towns grown up in grass that appeared as if no people had lived in them for a long time." -- The Gentleman of Elvas, "The DeSoto Chronicles"
13. AMINOP_090323_080.JPG: Brazil, 1552: "The disease has struck the first converts... Almost none of these has survived..." -- Father Francisco Pires, "Letters from the Province of Portugal"
14. AMINOP_090323_082.JPG: New England, 1616: "The Indians died in heapes [sic], as they lay in their houses... And the bones and skulls upon the severall [sic] places of their habitations made such a spectacle... that, as I travailed in the Forrest [sic] nere [sic] the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new found Golgotha." -- Thomas Morton, "New English Canaan" Note: In the bible, Golgotha means "place of the skull."
15. AMINOP_090323_086.JPG: Arrival: Many Europeans first learned of the new and exotic world across the Atlantic from the work of German engraver Theodor de Bry (1528-1598). In his epic series, "The Grand Voyages," de Bry portrayed the European invasion of the Americas. These copper engravings are among the most influential historical images of all time. Four centuries later, they are still widely reprinted. The ships that dominate these images were one of the most advanced technologies Europeans possessed. They were the spaceships of their time.
16. AMINOP_090323_090.JPG: Arrival: Many Europeans first learned of the new and exotic world across the Atlantic from the work of German engraver Theodor de Bry (1528-1598). In his epic series, "The Grand Voyages," de Bry portrayed the European invasion of the Americas. These copper engravings are among the most influential historical images of all time. Four centuries later, they are still widely reprinted. The ships that dominate these images were one of the most advanced technologies Europeans possessed. They were the spaceships of their time.
17. AMINOP_090323_107.JPG: Gold Bars: Spaniards took Native-made gold objects and hastily melted them into bars, transforming indigenous wealth into European currency. This tumbaga bar was melted down by Hernan Cortes and his men during the conquest of Mexico (1519-21).
18. AMINOP_090323_113.JPG: Three Reasons Why: Swords, diseases, and complex political conditions enabled Europeans to exploit the Americas. Steel swords easily penetrated Indian shields and allowed Europeans to kill their opponents at arm's length. Native people had no answer for this weapon. New diseases swept the hemisphere, decimating Native populations and weakening resistance to invasion. Europeans exploited rivalries between Native peoples to defeat the largest American empires -- the Aztec and the Inka. Some 200,000 fighters defeated the Aztecs in 1521. Nearly all were Indians from the Native nations of Tlaxcala, Huejotzingo, Texoco, or Cholula. Just 900 were conquistadors.
19. AMINOP_090323_117.JPG: A Fragile Dominion: By 1630, Spain ruled most Indians from Tierra del Fuego to Northern California and much of the Caribbean. Great Britain, France, Portugal, the Netherlands, and other European nations also established centers of commerce and settlements in the Americas. The internationalization of the Western Hemisphere brought Europeans, Africans, and others to Native homelands. Native people did not accept this willingly. In Puerto Rico in 1511, and in Cusco in 1536, Native people revolted against their new rulers. Others quietly resisted the forces of change.
20. AMINOP_090323_120.JPG: Money: The 1500s saw an upsurge in coinage across the planet. These coins were minted from gold from the Americas. Silver from the Americas was also turned into money. Between 1503 and 1650, more than 35 million pounds were shipped to Seville, Spain.
21. AMINOP_090323_130.JPG: Money: The 1500s saw an upsurge in coinage across the planet. These coins were minted from gold from the Americas. Silver from the Americas was also turned into money. Between 1503 and 1650, more than 35 million pounds were shipped to Seville, Spain.
22. AMINOP_090323_136.JPG: Wealth, Power, Abundance: The first 150 years of Contact witnessed one of the greatest transfers of wealth in world history. Gold, silver, and labor from the Americas created and transformed international economies and permanently linked the Western Hemisphere with Europe, Asia, and Africa. Riches from the Americas made Spain an international superpower, whose empire stretched from Europe to South America and the Philippines -- the largest empire since the Age of Julius Caesar. Perhaps 20 million Indians died as a direct result of Contact. Tens of millions more perished from disease. Little of the gold made by Native people before Contact survives in its original form. Museums and collectors hold almost all of what remains.
23. AMINOP_090323_139.JPG: Early Guns: By 1400, Europeans had developed the "hand gonne" -- a hand-held cannon. These early firearms are novelties, often more dangerous to shooters than their targets. Technological developments soon made firearms safer and more effective. In 1598, Native Araucanians captured guns, bred horses, and destroyed most Spanish settlements in southern Chile. Further north, English newcomers fired matchlocks at people and wolves. By 1633, households in Plymouth, Massachusetts were required to be armed but colonists were warned, "... whoever shall shoot off a gun on any unnecessary occasion, or at any game except at an Indian or a wolf, shall forfeit five shillings for every shot."
24. AMINOP_090323_140.JPG: The Greater Ohio Valley, 1800-1815: Reasoning that Native people had a common destiny, Shawnee leader Tecumseh built a confederacy that united 32 Indian nations over nearly 500,000 square miles. His 15,000 armed fighters posed a serious challenge to the expansion of white settlement in the Greater Ohio Valley. During the War of 1812, Tecumseh threw the confederacy's support to England. He was killed at the Battle of Thames in 1813. After the war, the entire area west of the Appalachians was opened to US expansion.
25. AMINOP_090323_143.JPG: King Philip's War, 1675-76: In 1671, Plymouth Colony demanded that Indians surrender their firearms, but it was too late. The Wampanoag already had their own forges, blacksmiths, and gunsmiths. By 1675, tensions over land sparked a full-scale war between Puritans and the Algonquian tribes of southern New England. Led by Metacom ("King Philip"), the Indians sought to drive the settlers from the region. Half of the towns in New England were burned and many Indian villages destroyed. The war ended with the killing of Metacom, whose head was displayed on a pike in Plymouth for 25 years.
26. AMINOP_090323_148.JPG: Arrows and Black Powder: In the 1840s, warriors on the northern Plains still found arrows superior to guns. A skilled Arapaho could shoot six arrows with deadly accuracy in the time it took to reload the most advanced single-shot rifle. Advances eventually made guns faster to shoot and more accurate at greater distances. As firearms improved, Native people embraced them, lavishing the same attention on guns as they formerly did their spears and bows.
27. AMINOP_090323_154.JPG: Pepperbox: In 1847, John Sutter built a sawmill near the Maidu Indian village of Koloma, and discovered gold. Over the next six years, 300,000 prospectors flocked to California. Many were armed with these Allen pepperboxes, the first American double-action revolving handguns. Native women suffered abuse during the gold rush, and Indians who intervened on their behalf were shot. Bounties were issued for Indian scalps, and volunteer militias formed to collect them. By 1900, fewer than 16,000 Indians remained from an estimated original population of 150,000.
28. AMINOP_090323_158.JPG: Colt: In the 1830s, a young Connecticut inventor named Samuel Colt developed a revolutionary weapon: a gun that could be fired again and again without reloading. The new Walker Colt was manufactured using Eli Whitney's principle of interchangeable parts, and its engraved barrel showed Texas Rangers defeating Comanche warriors. Colt revolvers became a favorite with military units and Indians.
29. AMINOP_090323_160.JPG: Sioux Guns: In 1865, the discovery of gold in Montana brought prospectors into Sioux territory, triggering Red Cloud's War. Red Cloud and his warriors used these rifles in the 1860ds to battle Army troops sent to Montana to open and protect a trail supplying mining camps. After two years, the Army abandoned its forts. History often calls Red Cloud the only Indian who ever won a war against the US.
30. AMINOP_090323_165.JPG: Apache Guns: From 1871 to 1886, the Chiricahua Apaches, led by Geronimo, Cochise, and others, used guns such as these to attack non-Native settlements in Arizona and New Mexico. Geronimo finally surrendered in 1886. He and his 469 fighters were held at Fort Marion in Florida, then at Mount Vernon, Alabama, and at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Geronimo died in 1909. His 265 surviving warriors were freed in 1913.
31. AMINOP_090323_172.JPG: Resistance: In the 1840s, Americans came to believe the US had a divine right to acquire all lands between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As newcomers pushed across the continent, western tribes led by Rain in the Face, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Cochise, and Chief Joseph, faced losing their lands. Warriors used many of the guns seen here to defend their lives.
32. AMINOP_090323_173.JPG: Four guns (from the bottom): Top one: Winchester Model 1876 .45-caliber cavalry carbine, owned by Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo, ca 1880 (engraved plaque shown elsewhere) Second one: Springfield US model .45-caliber trapdoor carbine, owned by Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo, ca 1875 Third one: Winchester model 1876 .45-caliber cavalry carbine, owned by Chiricahua Apache leader Naiche, ca 1880 Fourth one: Springfield US model 1873 trapdoor carbine, ca 1875
33. AMINOP_090323_181.JPG: Carbine of Geronimo Apache Chief Surrendered at Fort Bowie Arizona in 1886
34. AMINOP_090323_184.JPG: Five Guns. Middle one: Winchester Model 1866 .44-caliber carbine, owned by Nez Perce Chief Joseph, ca 1880. Bottom one: Whitney Burgess Morse, .45-caliber lever-action repeating rifle, owned by Nez Perce Chief Joseph, ca 1880.
35. AMINOP_090323_201.JPG: Why Guns? Guns are everywhere in the Native past. Like Christianity and foreign governments, they weave a thread of shared experience that links Native people across the hemisphere. Native desire to adopt to new goods drove early encounters between Indians and Europeans. Indigenous people gave up some technology -- pottery, stone knives, and leather clothing -- and adopted brass kettles, metal tools, and, eventually, guns. Europeans increased their manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of the new American market. As guns became less expensive, they spread everywhere. Native people made guns their own, using the new technology as they used all new technologies: to shape their lives and futures.
36. AMINOP_090323_206.JPG: The Great Plains, 1889: By 1889, the buffalo population on North America had been reduced to 1,000 from more than 50 million in 1830. Guns such as these Sharps rifles, known as buffalo guns, and the Remington single-shot, killed most of them. The killing transformed the lives of Plains Indians who depended on the buffalo.
37. AMINOP_090323_207.JPG: Guns in the 20th Century: Guns were used by -- and against -- indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. In 1932, the government of El Salvador responded to a peasant movement for land reform with La Matanza (The Killing). More than 10,000 Indians lost their lives. In 1973, Oglalas from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, joined by activists from the American Indian Movement, used guns to seize the village of Wounded Knee. They held it for 71 days against US Marshals and federal troops. The incident brought world-wide attention to Native human rights and treaty issues.
38. AMINOP_090323_220.JPG: Religion: The Storm: Guns, Bibles, and Governments: Foreign intrusion swept over Native America like a hurricane. Within this space, images of Indian life flash by, caught in a whirl of guns, Bibles, and treaties. Howling winds and lightning illuminate the sky. At the center, you'll encounter "Eye of the Storm," a work of installation art by Edward Poitras (Saultreaux/Metis). This is a place of stillness, a space in time where Indians regrouped, adopting elements of the storm to keep their cultures alive. The piece features evidence of Native survivance: seeds of corn, cardinal direction markers, pages from the Biblical book of Revelation, and the hat similar to one worn by Wovoka (ca 1858-1932), a Paiute holy man whose prophecies or regeneration inspired the Ghost Dance movement of the 1890s. Storms come and go, but life continues. There is regeneration and renewal, rebirth and rebuilding -- always and forever. Native history is not over. It continues, as yet unwritten.
39. AMINOP_090323_222.JPG: The Storm: Guns, Bibles, and Governments: Foreign intrusion swept over Native America like a hurricane. Within this space, images of Indian life flash by, caught in a whirl of guns, Bibles, and treaties. Howling winds and lightning illuminate the sky. At the center, you'll encounter "Eye of the Storm," a work of installation art by Edward Poitras (Saultreaux/Metis). This is a place of stillness, a space in time where Indians regrouped, adopting elements of the storm to keep their cultures alive. The piece features evidence of Native survivance: seeds of corn, cardinal direction markers, pages from the Biblical book of Revelation, and the hat similar to one worn by Wovoka (ca 1858-1932), a Paiute holy man whose prophecies or regeneration inspired the Ghost Dance movement of the 1890s. Storms come and go, but life continues. There is regeneration and renewal, rebirth and rebuilding -- always and forever. Native history is not over. It continues, as yet unwritten.
40. AMINOP_090323_227.JPG: Native American Church: In the late 1800s, peyote became the basis for a unique Pan-Indian religious movement: the Native American Church. Native peoples in northern Mexico and the American Southwest had long used peyote as a sacrament and source of revelation. With the emergence of the Native American Church, other Native peoples embraced the peyote religion. Today, use of peyote in Native religious rituals is guaranteed under a 1994 amendment to the Native American Religious Freedom Act of 1978.
41. AMINOP_090323_231.JPG: SIL/Wycliffe: William Cameron Townsend served as a fundamentalist Baptist missionary in Central America from 1917 to 1930. Working with the Cakchiquel Maya Indians, he discovered that Spanish-language Bibles were of little use in proselytizing Indians. To do God's work, Townsend needed a Bible Indians could understand. His first project: translating the book of Mark into Cakchiquel. Later, Townsend created the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and the Wycliffe Bible Society to bring the gospel to Indians in Mexico as well as Central and South America. To date, the organizations have translated Bibles into more than 200 Indian languages. In some cases, these translations have preserved Native languages and the traditional knowledge they encode.
42. AMINOP_090323_232.JPG: Indian Shakers: In 1881, John Slocum, from the Squaxin Indian band of Washington State, fell asleep and apparently died. During the wake, Slocum suddenly revived. He explained that his soul had gone to the judgment place of God, and that his sinful life disqualified him from entering the promised land. Instead, he was instructed to return to earth and bear witness of his transformation. So began the Indian Shaker Church, a uniquely Indian Christian church that teaches against drinking and other vices while emphasizing individual inspiration.
43. AMINOP_090323_237.JPG: Indian Education: Many 19th-century Americans believed that sending Native children to distant boarding schools would assimilate them into "white society." Beginning with Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, the US government opened 24 Indian boarding schools throughout the nation. The schools promoted Christian values and beliefs and prohibited students from speaking their Native languages. Still, some graduates were able to use skills obtained at boarding schools to build intertribal unity.
44. AMINOP_090323_238.JPG: Clandestine Movements: Participation in Native ceremonies was not simply a religious preference but often a dangerous and illegal undertaking in 19th-century America. Religious and ceremonial practices were often taken underground, away from government authorities and the prying eyes of foreigners. "Any Indian who shall engage in the practices of so-called medicine men, or who shall resort to any artifice or device to keep the Indians of the reservation from adopting and following civilized habits and pursuits, or shall adopt any means to prevent the attendance of children at school, or shall use any arts of a conjurer to prevent Indians from abandoning their barbarous rites and customs, shall be deemed to be guilty of an offense..." -- Thomas Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1891
45. AMINOP_090323_244.JPG: Indian Religious "Crimes": In 1882, Senator Henry Moore Teller of Colorado introduced the Indian Religious Crime Code, which outlawed many Native spiritual practices. For the next 50 years, Indians under US jurisdiction were punished for participating in traditional ceremonies. Tribes were ordered to surrender sacred objects, which eventually found their way into museums and private collections.
46. AMINOP_090323_245.JPG: Up-Biblum God: The first complete Bible published in America was written in the Massachusett Indian language. Up-Biblum God (1663) was translated by John Eliot, a Congregationalist minster from Roxbury, Massachusetts. Eliot wished to preach to Indians in their own language, and spent 15 years learning Massachusett.
47. AMINOP_090323_249.JPG: Praying Towns: Seeking to convert Indians to Christianity, the Puritans of New England segregated native people in encampments called praying towns. In these settlements, Native people were prohibited from practicing their traditional religions. Indians who continued to worship their "false gods" were threatened with death.
48. AMINOP_090323_255.JPG: Indian Rights: Inspired by liberation theology and civil rights movements, Native people demanded greater religious, civil, and political rights in the 20th century. In rural Mexico, the Andes, and the Amazon region, indigenous people established their own regional political organizations.
49. AMINOP_090323_256.JPG: Liberation Theology: In 1962, Pope John XXIII presented a new theology intended for developing nations. Known today as liberation theology, the "Preferential Option in Favor of the Poor" encouraged the Catholic clergy to lead a peaceful struggle to improve the conditions of the poor. Liberation theology planted deep roots in Latin America, where Indians constitute the majority of the poor.
50. AMINOP_090323_260.JPG: Strategies: Native people often retained their traditional beliefs and practices by fusing them to Christianity. The strategy preserved ancestral teachings in an environment that spurned traditional beliefs.
51. AMINOP_090323_261.JPG: Reducciones and Missions: In the 1560s, the Viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, forcibly resettled Indians into small communities called reducciones. The settlements made it easier to conduction religious conversions and collect tribute. They became the model for the Spanish missions that were subsequently established throughout Northern Mexico, California, Texas, and the American Southwest.
52. AMINOP_090323_265.JPG: Why Bibles? Christianity weaves a thread of shared experience that links Native peoples across the hemisphere. Wherever Europeans went, they spread the gospel. This wall features more than 100 Bibles, translated into nearly 75 indigenous languages. Each translation is a testament to the tireless efforts Christians have made to convert Indians since 1492. Today the majority of Native people call themselves Christian. How Indians became Christians is a story not only of choice but also of adaptation, destruction, resistance, and survivance.
53. AMINOP_090323_266.JPG: Taki Onqoy: In the Andes, Indian resistance to Christianity first appeared in 1560. Throughout the former Inka Empire, the "dancing sickness," or Taki Onqoy, took hold of indigenous people. The dancers engaged in a rite of spiritual purification, during which they shook, trembled, and fell. They predicted a battle between their Andean deities and the Christians' God, and called upon the people to reject Spanish names, food, clothing, and rule
54. AMINOP_090323_271.JPG: Spanish Catholic Church: Viewing non-Christian invaders as infidels, the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church combined to re-establish Christian control of Spain in the 1490s. The "Reconquista" of the Iberian Peninsula informed the subsequent conquest of American Indian peoples.
55. AMINOP_090323_272.JPG: Survivance: Native societies that survived the firestorm of Contact faced unique challenges. No two situations were the same, even for Native groups in the same area at the same time. But in nearly every case, Native people faced a contest for power and possessions that involved three forces -- guns, churches, and governments. These forces shaped the lives of Indians who survived the massive rupture of the first century of Contact. By adopting the very tools that were used to change, control, and dispossess them, Native peoples reshaped their cultures and societies to keep them alive. This strategy has been called survivance.
56. AMINOP_090323_303.JPG: Treaties: Why Treaties? After 1492, the indigenous people of the Americas encountered the power of foreign governments. The treaties seen here illustrate the encounter between American Indians and the U.S. government. Beginning in the 1700s, the US used treaties and peace medals to forge strategic alliances and friendships with sovereign Native nations. As the US became more powerful, treaties required tribes to cede territory in exchange for money and goods. When payments proved insufficient, Indians ceded more land for more payments. The spiral of dispossession continued until substantial portions of Native homelands were lost. In 1871, Congress ended treaty-making with Native tribes. But lawmakers could not ignore the 367 Indian treaties Congress had ratified. Nor have Native people forgotten them. Treaties are living documents that support our sovereign people and our survival.
57. AMINOP_090323_305.JPG: "Medals are valuable to the Cherokees, and when accompanied by speeches, are monuments to friendship to their nation." -- Chief Bloody Fellow (Cherokee), 1792
58. AMINOP_090323_309.JPG: George Washington Peace Medal: Peace medals were symbols of friendship between the US and powerful Indian nations. Following a tradition established by European kinds, American presidents from George Washington to Benjamin Harrison presented medals as gifts to Native leaders.
59. AMINOP_090323_310.JPG: Preserving Treaties at the National Archives: The original treaties and related documents in this case are on loan from the National Archives and Records Administration. The preservation of these and similar documents is part of the National Archives' mission to ensure the availability of historical evidence for future generations. To protect these important and fragile documents, the treaties will be on display here for a limited time. Other treaties will replace them periodically. Our museum continues to work with the National Archives and other institutions to display original documents of historical significance to Native communities.
60. AMINOP_090323_314.JPG: George Washington Peace Medal: Peace medals were symbols of friendship between the US and powerful Indian nations. Following a tradition established by European kinds, American presidents from George Washington to Benjamin Harrison presented medals as gifts to Native leaders.
61. AMINOP_090323_320.JPG: Treaties of Hopewell: South Carolina, 1785 and 1786: The Hopewell treaties were negotiated sequentially with the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw nations. Trespassers on Indian lands forfeited protection from the US government and could be punished or not, as the tribes desired. US citizens who had settled on Indian lands were required to move. In return, Indian nations acknowledged they were under the sole protection of the US government, and that the US retained the exclusive right to regulate trade with them.
62. AMINOP_090323_321.JPG: Presidential Proclamation of 1792: George Washington established a $500 reward for apprehending "lawless and wicked persons" who had violated US treaties by invading and destroying a Cherokee town in western Georgia, killing its residents.
63. AMINOP_090323_326.JPG: The Great Chickasaw Cession / The Jackson Purchase: Chickasaw Territory, 1818: In return for relinquishing all lands north of Mississippi, the Chickasaw nation was promised $300,000. Andrew Jackson, the US negotiator of this treaty, stipulated that the treaty minutes be kept secret to avoid disclosing the substantial cash payments and other favors given to the Chickasaw negotiators. The Chickasaw had fought alongside Jackson during the War of 1812. The Chickasaw nation required a clause in their treaties that allowed them to stay on ancestral lands until suitable, alternative lands could be found. Between 1828 and 1836, five Chickasaw exploring parties announced they were unsatisfied with the land under consideration for their nation, preventing their relocation until 1837.
64. AMINOP_090323_329.JPG: Sovereignty and the Marshall Trilogy: European monarchs and the US government recognized the sovereign power of Indian nations to control their own governments. In the 19th century, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall established the core doctrines for interpreting US Indian law in Johnson v McIntosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v Georgia (1831), and Worcester v Georgia (1832). Marshall found that the tribes' inherent sovereignty was not lost but was "necessarily diminished" by their dependency on the US. Additionally, Indians' rights over their homelands were secondary to the rights of Europeans who had "discovered" their land. Finally, Marshall described Indian tribes as "domestic dependent nations" and compared the tribal-federal relationship to that of a "ward to his guardian".
65. AMINOP_090323_334.JPG: Treaty Rights: 21st Century: US Indian treaties are more than instruments of dispossession. The US Constitution recognizes treaties as the "supreme Law of the Land," and US treaties recognize Indian tribes as sovereign entities -- principles that have helped indigenous people claim, and sometimes win, the right to determine their own destiny into the 21st century.
66. AMINOP_090323_335.JPG: Symbols of Liberty: Images on money reflect a nation's values. In the 20th century, the US displayed images of Native people on coins and currency to represent America's spirit of freedom and independence. It was not always that way. The first paper money from colonial Massachusetts (1690) bears an image of an Indian with the legend, "Come over and help us." Some of the 19th-century currency shown here depicts Indians as being ambivalent toward or disinterested in "progress" as well as hostile toward frontier settlements. Once most Native people were restricted by treaty to live on reservations, American Indians were again pictured on money, this time as symbols of liberty.
67. AMINOP_090323_339.JPG: Symbols of Liberty: Images on money reflect a nation's values. In the 20th century, the US displayed images of Native people on coins and currency to represent America's spirit of freedom and independence. It was not always that way. The first paper money from colonial Massachusetts (1690) bears an image of an Indian with the legend, "Come over and help us." Some of the 19th-century currency shown here depicts Indians as being ambivalent toward or disinterested in "progress" as well as hostile toward frontier settlements. Once most Native people were restricted by treaty to live on reservations, American Indians were again pictured on money, this time as symbols of liberty.
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Description of Subject Matter: Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories
September 21, 2004 – March 14, 2014
This exhibition discusses events that shaped the lives and outlook of Native peoples from 1491 to the present. The first part of the exhibition reveals the forces that affected the lives of Native peoples; it shows how Native peoples have struggled to maintain traditions in the face of adversity, and explains why so little of this history is familiar. The second area consists of eight small galleries that recount the histories of individual tribes: Blackfeet (Montana), Chiricahua Apache (New Mexico), Kiowa (Oklahoma), Tohono O'odham (Arizona), Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation (North Carolina), Nahua (Mexico), Ka'apor (Brazil), and Wixarikari—sometimes known as Huichol—(Mexico). The exhibition also includes a "wall of gold" featuring over 400 gold figurines, dating back to 1490, along with European swords, coins, and crosses made from melted gold.
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2009 photos: Overnight trips this year: Niagara Falls, NY, New York City, Civil War Trust conferences in Gettysburg, PA and Springfield, IL, and my 4th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of a Lincoln-Obama cupcake sculpture published in Civil War Times and WUSA-9, the local CBS affiliate, ran a quick piece on me. A picture that I took at the annual Abraham Lincoln Symposium appeared in the National Archives' "Prologue" magazine. I became a volunteer with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs. I've also got a Nikon D90 and a newer Fuji -- the S200EHX -- both of which are nice but I still prefer the flexibility of the Fuji. Number of photos taken this year: 417,000.
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