By
Marissa Gormel, Intern
When
I first began my internship here at the Chemung Valley History Museum one of
the first things I think that I shared with Erin (CVHM curator) was my Native
American heritage, and my obvious pride in it. Before starting my internship I
had visited the museum twice for school functions, and both times I had been
drawn to the ‘Seneca’ section in the Bank Gallery. Although my family is from
the Mohawk tribe, the Seneca and the Mohawk were both a
part of the Iroquois Confederacy along with four other tribes, and any history
discussing the Confederacy grabs my interest. Because of this, when it
came time for me to choose a topic for a 20 page paper for a class I took at
Elmira College, I chose the Life of the
Iroquois in New York State, Before and After Colonization. Armed with this
knowledge and stories that my family has shared with me, I was really excited
to see what CVHM had in its archives and collections that related to Native
American’s.
While
working on other projects in the museum, learning the in’s and out’s, every so
often I would see some native objects, both in collections or in the exhibit,
and I began to think back at the American Indian Museum in D.C., and about what
I liked about how they displayed their artifacts, and what I didn’t like. My
thoughts quickly lead me to remember learning about Natives in school, and what
exactly we were told about them in our classes, and what I realized was how
little the Natives on the east coast are talked about, in either schools or
museums. The memories were easy to recall because ever since I can remember I
have been proud of being a part of the Mohawk tribe. In second grade, in
celebration of Thanksgiving, my peers and I were told the day before break we
could dress up as either a Pilgrim or an Indian and we would ‘act out’ the
first Thanksgiving and learn about why we still celebrate it. Of course I chose
to be an Indian, there was no other option. In the fourth grade we were taught
New York State history and we had to build a model of an Iroquois longhouse.
That weekend at home my parents and I spent all of our time in the kitchen
working on the model and playing Native music. After we presented our models to
our classmates, our teacher taught us that the Iroquois, or SCOOM (Seneca,
Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk (we never talked about the Tuscarora))
lived in New York and along the east coast, and they grew three major crops,
but after that there wasn’t anything else we were taught, and I can clearly
remember the disappointment that we weren’t being told more.
After
middle school the only Natives we ever covered in history classes were the
‘Plains Indians’, discussing things like the Trail of Tears or the Battle of
Bull Run, and even then I wondered why not the other tribes? The Natives on the
east coast have an interesting history too! Eventually I let these feelings go
as I entered college and began to concentrate on European history, rather than
American, and it wasn’t until my D.C. visit that my concerns returned.
When
a museum is small like CVHM I understand that they probably don’t have the
resources to really expand certain exhibits like they want to, but at least
they were able to share Chemung County’s history of having Seneca tribes as a
part of their history. The larger museums are the ones that have me confused.
There are two National Museums of the American Indian, one in Washington, D.C., the other
in New York City. These institutions clearly have a lot of funding, a lot of
support, and a lot of space so they are able to display a very wide range of
their objects.
During
my visit to the D.C. museum I was in awe of how expansive their building was,
of how the architecture was designed in a way to reflect the culture that was
being displayed. Through its three levels the museum was able to separate the
areas of the U.S. and then take the tribes from those areas and look at them at
several angles: their belief system, what they ate, what they lived in, and how
those things were affected by where they lived in the country. The entire time
my friends and I walked through the museum I kept an eye out for the clear
signs of the Iroquois: their language, their flag, a familiar name. Every so
often there were hints of those things, like a beaded pin cushion made by a
clan mother, or a headdress that identified the wearer as a Mohawk chief, but
it was not until we went to the last level and walked into the 21st
century exhibit did I find what I was looking for. This exhibit explained to
the visitor what life was like for the tribes now. Pictures showed what their
houses looked like, and newspapers talked about our yearly Pow Wow - a large
festival with traditional dancing and pottery and an all-around cultural
celebration.
Though
this did excite me, I was definitely let down. It was like middle and high
school all over again. I wanted to see the history of my family. I wanted to
learn more about how they lived and who they interacted with. These tribes had
their own writing system, they lived in structures that look like houses that
we have today and they even had their own democracy! Is it because of these
facts that not many people find them worthy of deeper research? Does this make
them not interesting enough for large museums to create exhibits around them?
Isn’t their influence on the first Europeans enough to be taught in schools?
Maybe I feel this way because the culture is so dear to me and I am very
passionate about it, but I still believe that it is important for more of the
history to be told.
