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 Exhibition of Native American Collections From February 13, 1999, to January 2, 2000, the New Hampshire Historical Society featured an exhibition entitled Beyond Relics: Reinterpreting Native American Collections. The exhibition included 100 Native American wood, stone, leather, and cloth items collected and preserved by the Society over the last 175 years. Since its founding in 1823, the Society has collected Native American material. Although some of the stone tools in the Society's collection come from New Hampshire, the majority of the Native American material collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came from outside New Hampshire. Sojourners, sailors, and soldiers brought dolls, hats, baskets, and moccasins from locales as distant as Alaska, Washington State, California, and the Dakotas to the Society for display and preservation. The Society, a reflection of the culture of the time, valued this material for its association with individual non-Indian's experience, most often of travel, or valued the material as evidence of the ancient American cultures which existed for centuries before European colonization. Although most of the Society's Native American material was sought beyond New Hampshire's borders, some examples of New England origin found a place in the collection. Among these objects is a nineteen-foot-long birch bark canoe likely marked with the name of the Penobscot family who created it. Many other New England Native American objects, such as snowshoes, baskets, and wooden utensils entered the collection because they were commonly used in both Native American and European American homes. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Society collected these artifacts as representative of domestic life in New Hampshire. In working on this project the Society received assistance and advice from many Native American scholars and consultants. The presentation of a variety of points of view about Native American collections and the inclusion of new research and interpretation regarding Native American material gave visitors to Beyond Relics: Reinterpreting Native American Collections an opportunity to explore new ideas. About Us  |
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