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Already this year weve brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You could watch all of cspan Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and through our daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by private industry, americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Each week american artifacts takes you to museums and Historic Places to learn about American History. Next we visit the trail of tears gallery at the National Museum of the American Indian in washington, d. C. Which looks at the National Debate over the 1830 indian removal act and the impact on southern tribes. Associate curator paul chaat smith leads us through the gallery after an introduction in the americans exhibit to show American Industries in products, toys and mascots. The exhibition is called americans and it is built on a paradox, a riddle. And the paradox is this in 2018 the United States is a country of 230 Million People and American Indians are perhaps 1 of that population. Most americans live in urban and suburban areas, parts of the country where they never actually see American Indians and yet in American Daily lives, indian images, place names, advertising, mascots, surround people every single day. So the show is about exploring this strange contradiction of how prevalent American Indians are in American Life. Really from the earliest memories of americans throughout their lives. And yet somehow it is never noticed very much. Never seems important. The curator team decided to call this phenomenon indians ever where and what is normalizing a very weird phenomenon. We looked and couldnt find any other country in which one ethnic group has been used for so many different purposes for such an extraordinarily long time into the present. So we want to enlarge the discussion beyond the idea of stereotypes or culture appropriation. And look at the vastness of it. The uniqueness of it and explore the reasons for why it exists. We have in our hall over 300 objects and images of representations of American Indians from before the country began up to the present. And they cover every manner of advertising for every sort of product. And we have in the hall a handful of major objects that will get significant amount of visitor attention including an indian chief motorcycle from 1948. People who love motorcycles often revere the Indian Motorcycle particularly from the years. It is a very special model of motorcycle that was sort of at the height of american engineering, craftsmanship and style. What is interesting to us about the motorcycle is that the name of the brand was chosen to distinguish it from competition particularly from the u. K. And the company has gone through many, many changes over the years. It still exists. Ownership has changed multiple times and almost nothing exists from the early days when it started out as a bicycle factory and becomes a motorcycle brand. So went through all of the changes in ownership, company management. The one thing that survives is indian and that becomes the most valuable thing about the product. Is the name indian. So you see on this motorcycle in 1948, how much they emphasize that and the Color Options are indian related. So again, you dont choose Something Like that unless you feel it adds value. That sort of name or advertising strategy. So one of the things the exhibition is about is how indians add value to products, entertainment, and ultimately to the nation itself. Indians become a signifier for the United States. So something people often look for and something that we knew would always be in the hall of over 300 objects and images was something about the local nfl team here in washington. Washington redskins. And we werent really sure how to present the objects because we felt it would be a little boring. We just have a football helmet or something. And so what we chose to do is in multiple places in the hall really show how these mascots are in sort of every day life rather than just show them by themselves. So here we have a photograph of Robert Griffin iii, who is a sensational nfl quarterback for the redskins with a young fan. And what were interested in, and this is a little bit due to my status as a news and sports junky is to appreciate why people support teams. And very few people actually say which team has the coolest mascot or the best name. You almost always are supporting a team because youre from the region and your family and friends support it and it is part of life. The team names are chosen by very rich guys usually from another century. And it really is a determinate thing so we wanted to respect that sports plays a huge role in civic life and brings people together and having that image of Robert Griffin iii with a young fan feels like a generous approach to this. While at the same time the name is a dictionary defined slur. Certainly most indians are opposed to it. For me as someone who lives in the washington area, to see that as the main representation of indians on a daily basis, it is annoying. At the same time we are not about trashing people who support the team or interested in dialogue in debate about this. So for people looking for Washington Redskins, it as here. I think virtually understands that if a knew team came up no one would choose such a name and its clear eventually over time the name will probably change. It was part of our effort to be welcoming to people including people who dont necessarily agree with us. So ive always thought the Chicago Blackhawks, the nhl team in chicago had one of the most attractive logos as far as aesthetics. Theyre about the professional sports teams are the most famous examples of sports mascots but there are actually hundreds and hundreds of Public Schools and colleges and universities that have indian names. And, again, what we think is interesting is that there are just such a tiny number of other examples. Peel s people say what about the notre dame irish or the dallas cowboys, the ethnic group, it is like a thousand to one. So again were looking at what is it that makes this both socially acceptable and somehow just something you dont even really have to think about. And up until the recent controversy about mascot nobody thought about it, it seems right to call a Team Warriors or apache and it wasnt an issue. So that is how were looking at how pervasive this is and how strange it is once you take a look at it. This photograph is of Michelle Obama when she was first lady of the United States with people wearing Chicago Blackhawks jerseys. And again this is something just to show this becomes very normalized and ordinary. And when we thought about how to show this in the exhibition, one decision we made was when possible to show Childrens Clothing and apparel. So you see this infant onesie and again how people usually decide to support a team. Usually because thats where they live and it tends to be a Unifying Force in many ways and it comes at a way of dehumanizing American Indians because, again, this is something that happens to native American People and rarely doesnt happen to other ethnic groups in this United States to this degree. And there is not one opinion about as far as American Indians on this phenomenon. I think two examples that are really clear are the Cleveland Indians in which most people would say the image of the chief feels very stereo typical from another age and demeaning. Some might disagree but i think most nonindian would say that is out of place and the team is phasing that logo out. And the Washington Redskins being again a dictionary define the slur, others are not so clear. The blackhawks or the name indians without a stereo typical name. One of the images we have here is a pennant from the Golden State Warriors back when they were called the San Francisco warriors. And this is a National Basketball association team. They used a head dress to promote the team in the early days of the franchise. Now theyre called the warriors but they make no reference to American Indians. So i think those are interesting things to debate. But our point of view is again how vast the phenomenon is and we decided to avoid being prescriptive to say this one is okay or Chicago Blackhawks, if you make this change, it is fine. Were really looking at the larger picture. I think every exhibition should have a photograph of Elvis Presley in it. That is my own point of view. In this case it is an example of how many distinguished americans have found themselves wearing a head dress. Elvis did a movie which he played a native american character but other people that are here that were in movies playing a native american character including franklin roosevelt, richard nixon, the famous union leader jimmy hoffa, cher and the reasons why people wore head dresses in these particular ways vary. But what we were interesting in showing is again how people you would never think in this context would end up wearing a head dress. Indians are in the wallpaper of American Life and through most of the countrys history it would seem like something that just made sense. So when we talk about these representations surrounding americans throughout their lives, one of the most important ways is through movies and television. So we have a section of the exhibition which shows really almost 100 years of these images going all the way from john fords 1939 movie stage coach up to the unbreakable kimi schmidt and other contemporary Television Comedies and everything in between. And it is a little bit like the celebrities who end up somehow playing an indian or wearing a head dress or like chalka khan wearing an indian outfit that situation comedies in the 60s and 70s that had nothing to do with indians they would have some indian theme show. Sometimes it was thanksgiving and sometimes it wasnt. It could be the munsters or seinfeld. It is interesting to us because television is in many ways a more intimate forum than film because it is in your living room, its in your house and youre actually watching indians in American Life on tv in your living room. So, again, when you dont if you ask people, were there any indians in these tv shows, people not remember but people see it and say oh, yes, that brady bunch episode. I remember all about it. I always knew i wanted this in the show but felt we probably would decide against it because kids today, they didnt grow up with this image. This is called the rca test pattern and in the very early days of television it would be broadcast at the beginning of the broadcast day, at the end and often throughout the day when Television Still had limited amount of programming. But actually you see this images now in hipster tshirts and video games, it established a life of itself even though it quit used in Television Broadcast in the 1960s. What was interesting about it was in the late 40s and 50s when tv was new, it is a completely different kind of light that didnt previously exist. This life of a Catherine Gray tube. It is a weird machine that is in your house. And the engineers that devise this, they wanted something to help them adjust the broadcast quality, the picture quality. So that explains the lines and the numbers and everything. But they also wanted a drawing to get that quality as well. And, again, this is one of the examples where it just kind of makes sense to use an indian in a head dress because Everybody Knows an indian in a head dress. And it is will signifies americanness. It is for an american audience. So i think it is just something spooky and subversive about this strange kind of a Natural Light from a brandnew form of technology. It is in your living room. It is on early in the morning, late at night. And i somehow feel there is something bizarre going on with american consciousness, how this is getting into peoples heads in a way we dont fully understand even today. Off of this main hall of hundreds of objects and images of indian representations, we have three galleries that look at these huge moments in American History. Well look at one now. 50 years after the American Revolution, the United States passed the indian removal act of 1830. This section of the exhibition is about the trail of tears which was one of the results of the indian removal act. And what were really looking at here is how the indian removal act in our view is the most significant law ever passed. It was more important than any other single treaty or any other federal action. And we look at why we believe that to be true and we also look at it in this moment in which in a sense american democracy was on trial. That at this time in 1830 the United States was the only Representative Democracy in the world. Revolutions had failed in europe and despite all of the horrific flaws in the United States in 1830, the enslavement of black people, women couldnt vote of course, indians being dispossessed. In fact, not too many years earlier even white men couldnt vote unless they owned property and this is after the revolution. So with all of these terrible flaws in the United States, it still was a beacon of hope around the world. It still was something that was a country that took seriously its enlightenment ideals. So what was simmering for sometime comes to a head and the Jackson Administration proposed the indian removal act. And really what it is about is trying to manage this problem which is there are indian nations inside of the borders of the United States and this is something that causes problems for the states, limits their development, and it feels intolerable to certain number of americans that there should be these selfdescribed indian nations within the United States. So in 1830 the act, which is very modest in length and in language, proposes something that is really quite extraordinary. It really images a future in which the United States would exist without American Indians. It proposes an exchange of lands so that indians inside of the territory borders of the United States would move west of the mississippi. So this is one solution and it ignites a very intense National Debate. And what show in this section is how many points of view there were on this. And that, in fact, American Indians had a great deal of influence in the conversation. John ross, the cherokee leader, was a National Political figure in the United States. He was pretty wellknown. He was somebody who could marshall allies in the country and both politicians, members of congress, but also civic groups. And there were legislators who were very, very opposed to what this act was talking about which was a removal of American Indians. So we knew that most americans today, if they knew the term trail of tears, they understand it as a moment of National Shame for the United States. Very few people that say that was our finest hour. That is just great. Lets do it again. So we know people understand that it is something that the country regrets. But what we were very interested in doing is trying to explain how there was a real National Debate about this. The people at the time including people in congress predicted this would not go well and the country would regret it. And we wanted to show that it was a National Conversation that happened. So in this section we show a range of points of view. We actually start with president jefferson who is a leader who understood that there was a contradiction in his mind about having these indian nations within the borders of the United States and he thought a lot about what the Different Solutions might be to that. And usually it was some form of removal dispossession that was being talked about. During these early decades of the 19th century, the cotton kingdom was coming into its own and it was clear that cotton could be an engine of Economic Development in the deep south so those things were already taking place. So by 1830 when this is happening, indians in the south are under intense pressure to remove themselves and some actually do. Except offers of removal in exchange for lands and money. But this debate is a moment in which the country really has to think about what it stands for. So we show points of view of president jefferson, of john ross, the cherokee leader, and we talk about different civic organizations that were involved as well and a particular member of Congress Free lehigh sen as a betrayer of american principles. So i think president jackson gets too much credit for indian removal. There were huge forces behind this before he came into office. But he was certainly the manager and execute of the policy and the one that oversaw the passage of the indian removal act. Its interesting, it has become synonymous with this one part of his administration. Because for most of the decades since he left office he was much more known for other policies such as bank of the United States, being the first person who wasnt have virginia or massachusetts to become president. So it is interesting because it shows how history changes. At same time jackson is obviously a person most responsible certainly it was president Andrew Jackson. One of the things that is a surprise to most visitors is how close the vote was in congress. And that it passed with a margin but it wasnt an overwhelming margin. And i think it is fair to say that after this debate it really became National Policy in a genuine way. That even though the vote was split, once it wass enacted int law it becomes the policy of the United States of america and one of the things that it set in place was a template for a kind of paternalistic approach toward American Indians. There was an interesting humanitarian argument that said this is good for American Indians. Theyll be much better off west of the mississippi. And theyre going to be just fine and they are being compensated. So that humanitarian argument carried over in a sense of a century of policies following this that basically said the United States knew what was best for American Indians. So this section of the americans exhibition is really about words and text and their meanings. Its startling to read the act, which visitors could do, because its not very long, a few hundred words. It never directly references any particular indian tribe. It doesnt even reference the south in a particular way. Its a very almost is like a real estate, that look. Lets come to a deal if you want, Exchange Lands and it does not directly suggest that if American Indians choose not to accept lands in the west, that they could stay and everything will be fine. So it is extraordinarily misleading. And it is also revealing in that it does state pretty clearly that the states in the south would grow in economic wealth and power and in an explicit goal, this will help build this part of the United States which is being held back in the view of the act by these internal nations within the United States. So on one hand it is very clear in what it is saying, that were doing this for Economic Development reasons, and it is extremely misleading in that it implies that this is this is voluntarily, this is an offer and misleading in that it does not see that it is targeting indian nations in the south. So after the indian removal act was passed in may of 1830, indian nations still fought against it. They still martialed public money and filed suits and the United States Supreme Court to prevent it. And kept fighting really throughout the 1830s. Some indian nations did go ahead with removal. And it is important to remember conditions on the ground were really, really hard at that point. That indians were under attack, under a racist attack and a lot of a lot of indians understood where this was all going. The Cherokee Nation fought to the very, very end. And its become understood in american imagination to be primarily about the Cherokee Nation and i think it is a lot because of the heroic struggle against removal. But one of the things that we wanted to accomplish in this exhibition is to show this was a Large National even global event and it was not only about more than just the cherokee, it was more than the five civilized tribes, it transforms National Borders and global economies and it was also a massive project for the United States to carry out. The federal government was still quite small in the 1830s. President jackson had to personally sign every land deed in the United States. And he spent one miserable december signing thousands of them by hand and was still thousands behind schedule. Evenly they passed a law that said somebody else to sign the deeds but it gives you an idea how small the federal government was. In this section which we called machinery removal, we focus on how epic a project it was and how it was brilliantly successful in meeting one of the goals which was to create economic wealth in the United States and a catastrophe in that the act imagined that it could do that and that this would somehow be a good thing for American Indians. And in that, of course, it was disastrous failure. One of the things that a few people understand is that removal from the passage of the act until the final removal treaties were amended and changed and the final payments were made out, it actually spanded nine president ial administrations and that Andrew Jackson was not even president during that final horrific journey of the trail of tears. He was already out of office. So, again, this became a huge National Policy. It was epic in scope, it involved basically half of the states of the union that were removal routes that were involved in getting indians west of the mississippi. It was extraordinarily expensive. This budget of over 500,000, some scholars estimate it would be like 100 million total. And it was something that not only affected the south but create the economic wealth in new england, cotton was really the most important commodity on the planet and it created wealth in the United Kingdom as well. So were really looking at how massive of a project that was so if visitors think it is about a terrible thing that happened to some American Indians orchestrated by a bad president and that was a National Policy carried out and it was epic, it was brutal, it was visionary. It was all of those things at once. By the end of the decade, the wealthiest americans in the country had zip codes in louisiana, mississippi and alabama. So the cotton kingdom explosion wasnt due to removal, but what removal did was remove the last barrier to have the south be a region that was connected by railroads that could develop economically and create this new wealth. We focus on the cotton kingdom a lot and for that reason it is important to point out that the five civilized tribes were really understood as slave states. Most indians in those states, in those nations didnt own slaves which is all true of most white people in mississippi. But they were by law slave states. They reenacted reinstated slavery when we went to indian territory and they fought with the confederacy. And one of the shows that is fully human as capable of all of the good and evil any other kinds of people do. So we have an image of the house of leader named greenwood lefleur, a native leader who had hundreds of enslaved persons and his mansion was based on one owned by napoleon in france. So it is complicated and this is something the museum is taking on to show that the complexity of some of the history. The cotton kingdom success of building it, of course, comes at a extraordinarily high cost. First of all, the enslavement of millions of human beings. The dispossession of native americans. But even that wealth, even that success of building the country on the cotton kingdom which couldnt exist without enslaved labor results in the civil war, the worst war in American History. And so the end result of this is something that the country is still coming to terms with. And what we hope is in this exhibition is to show that there is an argument to say that indian removal was the most significant event between the American Revolution and the american civil war. So when American Indians arrived in indian territory, there was a different landscape, a different environment, different situation. Pretty much all around. I think people from the 1830s would be really, really surprised if they understood that in the 21st century these very same indian nations reconstituted themselves formally and legally and exist in pretty good shape in the United States, that they still have a sovereign status. I was just in oklahoma and you see Television Commercials on the major channels from the chickasaw and Cherokee Nation and the cha and the choctaw nations. These nations have actual genuine power today and have recovered in a way that i think would be really shocking to people who had seen what they went through in the 1830s. So that is certainly is a element of the story that native people went through removal want that to be understood, that they not only survived but they did prosper in this new place. The trail of tears is a really famous event. And pretty much almost all americans know phrase, trail of tears. I think they pretty much know its something about indians, something really bad that was done to indians, and a lot of people know Andrew Jackson is part of that story. But what we found is that it tends to be seen as a shameful moment in history, but kind of a small event. It really was something done to indians. And what we hope to do here is to show how it was a much larger event. So we operated from what people already think and what people already know. So the concluding section of the exhibit, we look at trail of tears in National Memory over time, and whats really interesting is that trail of tears, of course, indian removal, was never forgotten by American Indians, but in National Memory, it faded away pretty quickly and when you look at what historians were writing in the late 91 century into the first half of the 20th century, its rarely in textbooks as a major event involving indians. And its often completely omitted from discussions of the Jackson Administration. There were many, many books written that barely touched on it or ignored it altogether. So its quite interesting to hear in the 21st century, its the first thing people think of when they think of president jackson, and that people really around the world are familiar with that phrase. So in our last section, we show how that didnt just happen by accident. There was actually this cadre of young indian women in the early 20th century that launched their own sort of campaigns. There was a poem that used trail of tears and it started to catch on. There were different kinds of writings. There was a cherokee woman who dressed in plains and in clothing, even though thats not what cherokees wore and she knew that. To talk to people about indian removal. And the phrase trail of tears really caught on among the American Public over time. It wasnt quick. It was really not until the 1950s that it started appearing a lot and not until the 60s and 70s that it became very, very well known. So were always fascinated about how American History changes over time. How we understand events today are different than how people understood it at other times, even though the facts of what happened dont actually change. So we look today and see that the Largest National park is the trail of tears national trail and you see native americans walking and riding through that. You see motorcycle clubs. You see all kinds of people enjoying that. And you see that its now something thats understood. Its a really major event in American History. But we hohat we hope this exhibn will do is enlarge that understanding of it. That it really was an epic chapter that was about National Borders, global economies, and setting forward policies about indians that had effect long after the actual removal. This billboard behind me, trail of tears, not what you think, not even close. We chose that because we wanted to suggest something sort of provocative, that has visitors kind of question what they may already think they know about it. And again, to say that this was
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