Podcasts. Each week american artifacts takes to museums and Historic Places to learn about history. Next we visit the trail of tears gallery at the National Museum in washington, d. C. Which looks at the debate of the 1830 indian removal act and impact on southern tribes. The associate curator leads us through the gallery after an introduction in the american exhibit which examines how indian imagery is previous leal products. The exhibition is built on a paradox, a riddle. 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 areas, suburban areas, parts of the country where they never actually see American Indians. Yet an American Daily life, 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 it is somehow never noticed very much, never seems important. The Territorial Team decided to call this the phenomenon called indians everywhere, and what it is about is normalizing what is actually a very weird phenomenon. We looked and we 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, simply stereotypes or cultural 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. We have in the hall a handful of major objects that will get a significant amount of visitor attention including an Indian Motorcycle from 1948. People who love motorcycles often reveer the Indian Motorcycle, particularly from this year. It was a special motorcycle 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 uk. 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 then becomes a motorcycle brand. So it went through all of these changes in ownership, the company management. The one thing that survives is indian. Ultimately that becomes the most valuable thing about the product, is the name indian. So you see in this motorcycle, 1948, how much they emphasized that and the Color Options are all indianrelated. So, again, you dont choose Something Like that unless you feel it adds value. That sort of name, that sort of 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, and the indians actually become a signifier for the United States. So something people often look for and something we knew was always going to be in this hall of over 300 objects and images was something about the local nfl team here in washington, Washington Redskins. We werent really sure how to present the objects because we felt it would be a little boring if we have just a football helmet or something. So what we chose to do was in multiple places in the hall really show how these mascots are in sort of everyday life rather than just show them by themselves. So here we have a photograph of robert griffin, iii, who was a sensational nfl quarterback for the redskins, with a young fan. What were interested in and this was a little bit due to my status as a news and sports junky, is to really appreciate why people support teams. 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, 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 isnt the determinative thing. We wanted to respect that sports plays a role in civic life and brings people together, and having the 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 very opposed to it, and for me as someone who lives in the Washington Area to see that as the main representation of indians on a daily basis, you know, it is annoying. At the same time we are not about trashing people who support the team or are interested in dialogue and debate about this. So for people looking for the Washington Redskins, it is here. I think virtually everyone understands that if a new team came up, no one would choose such a name, and it seems clear eventually over time the name will change. It was part of our effort to be really welcoming to people, including people who dont necessarily agree with us. So i have always thought the Chicago Blackhawks, the nhl team in chicago had one of the most attractive logos as far as aesthetics. 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 university that have indian names. Again, what we think is interesting is just that there are just such a tiny number of other examples. People say, well, what about the notre dame irish, what about the dallas cowboys. In terms of an entire ethnic group, it is like 10001. We are looking at what makes it socially acceptable and something you dont have to think about. Up until the recent controversies about mascots most people never thought about it, it just seemed right to call a Team Warriors or indians or apaches. It wasnt even an issue. So thats really what were trying to get at, is to really look at how pervasive this is and how really 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 with people wearing Chicago Blackhawks jerseys. Again, this is something just to show how this becomes very normalized and ordinary. 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. Again, it is about 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 in a way of dehumanizing American Indians because, again, this is something that happens to native American People and rarely does it happen to other ethnic groups in the United States to this degree. And theres 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, you know, of the chief feels very stereotypical from another age and demeaning. Some might disagree, but i think most nonindian people would say, gee, that really feels out of place and, of course, now that team is phasing that logo out, and the Washington Redskins again being a diggsarydefined slur. Others are not so clear, the blackhawks or the name indians without a stereotypical 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. This was a National Basketball association team. They used a head dress to promote their team in early days of that franchise. Now theyre socalled 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 how, again, vast the phenomenon is. We decided to avoid being prescriptive and to say, okay, this one is okay or, you know, Chicago Blackhawks if you make this change it is fine. We are really looking at the larger picture. I think every exhibition should have a photograph of Elvis Presley in it, thats just 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 presley did a movie in which he played a native american character, but other people are here that werent actually in movies playing a native american character including a president such as franklin d. Roosevelt, richard nixon, the famous union leader jimmie hoffa, cher. The reasons why people wore head dresses in these particular ways vary. But what we were interested in showing is how, again, people you would never particularly think in this context would end up wearing a head dress. Indians are on 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 this exhibition which shows really almost 100 years of these images going all the way from john fords 1939 movie stage coach all the way up to the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and other contemporary Television Comedies and everything in between. It is a little bit like the celebrities who end up somehow playing an indian or wearing a head dress or like chaka khan wearing an indian outfit. That situation comedies in the 60s and 70s that had nothing to do with indians would have an indianthemed show. Sometimes it was thanksgiving, sometimes it wasnt. It could be the munsters or it could be signfield. It was interesting to us because television is in your house, in your living room. You are actually watching, you know, indians in American Life on tv in your living room. So, again, when you dont if you ask people about any of these tv shows, they may not remember. But in this gallery people see it and often they say, oh, yes, that brady bunch episode, i remember all about it. I always knew i wanted this in the show but thought we probably would decide against it because, you know, kids today, they didnt grow up with this image. This is called the rca test pattern. 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 was still had limited amount of programming. But actually you see this image now on hipster t shirts, you see it in video games. It has established a life of itself even though it quit being 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. It is a cathoray tube, it is a weird machine in your house. The engineers that devised this, they wanted something to actually help adjust the broadcast quality, the picture quality. So that explains, you know, all of the lines and the numbers and everything. But they also wanted a drawing to get that quality as well. Again, this is one of those examples where it just makes sense to use an indian in a head dress because Everybody Knows an indian in a head dress. Also, it signifies americanness. It is for an american audience. So i think it is just something spooky and subversive about the strange Natural Light from a brandnew form of technology. It is in your living room. It is on, you know, early in the morning, late at night. I show feel theres something bizarre going on with american consciousness, where this is somehow getting into peoples heads in a way maybe they you dont fully understand even today. Off of this main hall are 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 is one of the result of the indian removal act. 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. We also look at it in this moment in which innocent american democracy was on trial. But 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. This was 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 took it was a country that took seriously its enlightenment ideals. So in 1830 this National Conversation that had been simmering for some time comes to a head and the Jackson Administration proposes the indian removal act. Really what it is about is trying to manage this problem which is there are indian nations inside 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, it is very modest in length and in language, proposes something thats really quite extraordinary. It really imagines a future in which the United States would exist without American Indians. It proposes an exchange of land so that indians inside the territorial borders of the United States would most west of the mississippi. So this is one solution and it ignites a very Intense National debate, and what we show in this section is how many points of views there were on this and that, in fact, American Indians had a great deal of agency and 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 marshal allies in the country and both politicians, members of congress, but also civic groups. 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 know the term trail of tears they understand it as a moment of National Shame for the United States. There are very few people that say that was our finest hour, that was just great, lets do it again. So we know people understand that it was 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 many people in congress, predicted this would not go well and the country would regret it. 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 was a leader who understood that there was a contradiction in his mind about having these indian nations within the borders of the United States. He thought a lot about what the Different Solutions might be to that. 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 just 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 be to remove themselves, and some actually do accept 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. A particular member of congress who spoke really eloquently against the indian removing act, arthur frelinghuysen, and as a moment of betrayal of american principles. I think president jackson in a way gets too much credit for the indian removal. There were two choices behind this before he came into office, but he was certainly the manager and executor of the policy and the one that oversaw the passage of the indian removal act. It is interesting, it has been synonymous with part of his administration because for most of the decades after he left office he was known for other policies such as the bank of the United States being the first person who was frnt from virgi or massachusetts to become president. So it is interesting to see how history changes. At the same time jackson is the person who was most possible, certainly it was president Andrew Jackson. One of the things that is a surprise is how close the vote was in congress and that it passed with a margin but it wasnt an overwhelming margin. 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 was enacted into law, then it really does become the policy of the United States of america. One of the things that it set in place was a template for a kind of paternalistic approach towards American Indians. There was this interesting humanitarian argument that said actually this is really good for American Indians. Theyre going to be really 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 the 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. It is start willing to actually read the act, which visitors can do, because it is it is not very long, a few hundred words. It never directly references any particular indian tribe. It doesnt even reference the south in any particular way. It is a very it almost is like a real estate pitch that, look, you know, 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 can stay and everything will be fine. So it is extraordinarily misleading. It is also revealing in that it does state pretty clearly that the states in the south would grow in economic welt aalth and power, an explicit goal that it would help build this part of the United States which is being held back in view of the act by the internal nations within the United States. So on one hand it is very clear in what it is saying, that we are doing this for Economic Development reasons, and it is extremely misleading in that it implies that this is this is voluntary, this is an over. It is misleading in that it does not concede it is really 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 marshalled public opinion. They filed suits in the United StatesSupreme Court to prevent it and, you know, 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 racist attack, and a lot of indians really under stoostood this was all going. The Cherokee Nation fought to the very, very end, and it has become understood in american imagination to be primarily about the Cherokee Nation. I think it is a lot because of, you know, their heroic struggle against removal. But one of the things we wanted to accomplish in this exhibition is to show that this was a large national, even global event. It was not only about more than just the cherokee, it was more than the five civilized tribes. It transformed national borders. It transformed global economies. The results of 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 deal in the United States, and he spent one miserable december der signing thousands of them by hand. And they were still thousands behind schedule. Eventually they passed a law that said some details could sign the deed. It gives you an idea of how small the federal government was. In this section, which we call the machinery of removal, we focused on how epic a project it was, and how successful it was in one of meeting one of its goals, to create economic wealth in the United States. And a catastrophe, in that the act would imagine it could do that and that this would be a good thing for American Indians. Of course it was a disastrous failure. One of the things few people understand is that removal from the passage of the act until the final removal treaties were amended and changed and the final things made out, it actually extended nine president ial administrations. President jackson wasnt actually the president during the final horrific journey of the trail of tears. Again, it became a huge National Policy. It was epic in scope. It involved half of the states of the union in removal routes, involved getting indians west of the mississippi. It was expensive. Some scholars estimate it would be Something Like 100 million total. It was something that not only affected the south but also created economic wealth in new england. Cotton was an important commodity on the planet. And it created wealth in the United Kingdom as well. We are looking at how massive a project this was. Orchestrated by a bad president , and the National Policy carried it out. It was epic, it was brutal, it was visionary. It was all of those things that once. By the end of the decade, the wealthiest americans in the country had zip codes in louisiana. Explosion was the removal, the removal of the last. To have itself be a region. We focus on the kingdom a lot. Its important to find to point out that the five civilized tribes were considered slave states. Most indians in those nations didnt own slaves. Which is also most white people in mississippi. They were, by law, slave states. They reinstated slavery when they went into indian territory, and they fought with confederacy. One of the goals has to show indians as human, as capable of all the good and evil and with any other kinds of people do. We have an image of the house of a leader named greenleaf lafleur. A native leader who had hundreds of enslaved persons, and his mansion was based on one by napoleon and france. This is something the museum is taking on to show the complexity of some of this history. The cotton kingdoms success of building it came at an extraordinarily high cost. First of all, the enslavement of human beings. The disposition of native americans. Even that wealth, even accessibility on building the country. That enslaved labor results in the civil war, the worst war in American History. The end result of this is something that the country is still coming to terms with. And what we hope, in this exhibition, is to show 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 it 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 in the 21st century, the same indians would reconstitute themselves. They still have a sovereign status. I was in oklahoma and you see Television Commercials in the major channels. These are nations that have actual genuine power today. And have recovered in a way that i think would be really shocking to people. That certainly is an element to the story that native people really want to be understood. They not only survived but they prospered in this new place. The trail of tears is a really famous event. Pretty much all americans know that phrase trail of tears. I think everyone knows something that was done to indians, and we know Andrew Jackson was part of that story. What we found is intended to be seen as a shape of moment in history. We hope to show how it was a much larger event. We operated from what people already think and people already know. So the concluding section of the exhibit we look at trail of tears in National Memory over time. Whats really interesting is the trail of tears was never forgotten by American Indians. But in National Memory it faded away pretty quickly. In the late 19th 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 area there are many books there arent many books written that touched upon it. Is the first thing people think of when they think of president jackson. People are really familiar with that phrase. In our last section we show how that didnt just happen by accident. It was contrary of young indian women in early 20th century that launched a campaign that started to catch on. There was different kind of writings. There was a turkey woman who dressed in clothing. To talk to people about indian removal. The phrase trail of tears caught on among the American Public over time. It was not until the 1950s that it started appearing a lot and not until the 60s and 70s that it became very, very wellknown. We are always fascinated about how American History changes over time. Its different than how people understood it at other times even though the facts of what happened didnt really change. We see that the Largest National park is the trail of tears national trail. You see native americans walking and riding through that. You see motorcycle clubs, you see all kinds of people enjoying that. Its not something thats understood, it is a major event in American History. What we hope this exhibition will do is enlarge the understanding of it. That it really was an epic chapter. It was about national borders, global economies and setting forward policies about indians that had an effect long after the move long after the removal. This billboard behind me, we chose that because we wanted to sort of suggests something provocative that has visitors kind of question what they may already think they know about it. Again to say this is a moment of Huge National significance. An unfortunate policy carried out by a single president. 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