Powerful Images
American Indian peoples have inspired powerful images, both within their cultures and outside their cultures. This section of the exhibition examines a selection of those images. It looks at the ways in which Indian people have represented themselves in art and traditions and the motivations that may have inspired these expressions. It also looks at representations of Indian people by and for non-Indians and the motivations that may have inspired those works.

Native Images and the American West
Over the last two hundred years, images of Native Americans have become symbolic of the American West. Despite the diversity of Native North American cultures, languages, economies, and individuals, popular images of Native people remain the Plains buffalo-hunting warrior on horseback of the 1800s or the Southwestern weaver or potter selling her works to tourists traveling to the reservation.

These images are based on many of the depictions of nineteenth century artists and writers and have been repeated, layer upon layer, in contemporary art, literature, film, advertising, and museum displays, resulting in a public perception of Native North Americans as unchanging and one-dimensional people. This exhibition will explore these persistent perceptions of Native Americans to reach a better understanding of how the images evolved and why they continue to be so powerful. What images come to mind when you hear the words "Native American" or "American Indian"?


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Perceptions of Native Peoples
Eagle feather bonnets, decorated cradleboards, and the artistry of Southwestern pottery are honored traditions within particular Native North American cultures. Such objects serve as reflections of cultural ideals, beliefs, knowledge, and the spirituality of the people. Viewed from outside the cultures, such objects have different meanings and, in many ways, have become generalized symbols of all Native people.

In the popular imagination, the sculpture End of the Trail, also symbolizes the Native American experience and carries the message that Native people and their cultures have reached the end of their existence. This message fails to recognize the vitality and survival of Native North American people despite the effects of warfare and disease, and the loss of their lands and traditional economies.
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Plains Feather Bonnets
Among Northern Plains tribes, eagle feather bonnets were reserved for men of high status as symbols of their leadership and skill as warriors. As warfare and raiding intensified on the Plains during the late nineteenth century, public fascination with the American West also increased, marked by historical events such as the Battle of Little Big Horn reported as fact and fiction. This interest brought artists, showmen, and entrepreneurs into contact with Plains tribes. Wild West shows and novels and, later, films featured Lakota and Cheyenne warriors often wearing eagle feather bonnets, known as warbonnets. Over time, feather bonnets have assumed new meanings within and outside Native communities, with tribes from outside of the Plains adopting its use. For many people, Native and non-Native, the timeless image of the Plains warrior on horseback in the flowing feather warbonnet has come to symbolize all Indian people and the American West.

Within Plains Indian cultures, the position of the warrior as a defender of home and family continues to be valued and recognized. Although warriors of the nineteenth century are revered, honors are also given to men and women who served in the two World Wars, Korea, Viet Nam and the Gulf War.

Although the eagle feather bonnet is most recognized, the headgear of many tribes reflects their cultural diversity.
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Southwestern Pottery
For Puebloan peoples of New Mexico and Arizona, the use of clay in pottery and the development of culturally distinctive designs have roots centuries old and continue to tie the people to their traditions and lands. Until the late 1800s when manufactured metal and ceramic wares became readily available, the use of pottery was an integral part of daily Pueblo life. By 1880, Puebloan people were welling pottery to traders, collectors, and museums to produce income for the purchase of needed goods and supplies. At first, older examples of pottery made for household use were sold, although artists later began making pottery specifically to sell to traders.

In the early 1900s, tourists traveling in the Southwest on the Santa Fe Railroad purchased pottery from traders or directly from the potters of Zuni, Hopi, Acoma, Santo Domingo, Zia, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and other Pueblos. This market affected the production of these formerly utilitarian objects and created an important economic resource for Southwestern communities, which continues today. Although the designs and uses of pottery have changed over the centuries, the process of creating pottery, including gathering and mixing of clay, hand-shaping of the clay, carving designs and painting with clay slips, stone polishing and the outdoor firing, are often guided by traditional songs and prayer.

"Greet your Mother Earth, when you pass us on the road of life. Then you give her food and cornmeal and then in return, she gives you her flesh, the pieces of clay as her flesh, in order for you to reproduce something of use; a blessing."

Josephine Nahohai (Zuni), Dialogues With Zuni Potters, Milford Nahohai and Elisa Phelps, Zuni A:shiwi Publishing, Zuni, New Mexico, 1995. Families and Children
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Families and Children
Among Native people, the creation of decorated cradleboards symbolizes the importance of family and children. Among many tribes, the making of the cradleboard was shared by both the mother's and father's relations and represented the joining of the two families. A grandmother or another older respected woman guided the gathering of materials, design, and construction of the cradleboard.

The image of the Indian mother with her baby in a cradleboard is common in photographs, art, and popular culture, although the importance of the cradleboard is often misunderstood. Within Native communities, men, women, children, and elders had duties and responsibilities that contributed to the well-being of the entire family.

Among Northern Plains people like the Crow, women had a myriad of responsibilities including making and erecting tipis, drying and preparation of meat and other foods, hide tanning, and crating clothing and household goods for family use, in addition to caring for children. While women worked outdoors during the day or traveled on horseback, babies were safely laced in cradleboards that could be propped against trees or hung on saddles. Although the use of cradleboards declined in the early twentieth century as tribes were permanently settled on reservations, their significance as family heirlooms and the family bonds they represent continue.
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End of the Trail
Fraser's silhouette of a dejected Indian on his dispirited horse is one of the most often-repeated images of a Native American subject. The monumental version of this sculpture was originally exhibited in San Francisco, California, for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It symbolized the belief that the "Indian race," threatened with extinction, had been pushed to the edge of the continent. By the time Fraser had completed his model for the End of the Trail statue in 1894, Canada and the United States had been resettled from east to west coast by an ever-increasing European derived population. The pathos of the image implied that this result was sad, but inevitable. The sculpture, however, is open to multiple interpretations, with the passing of the nomadic life of the Plains being among the most prominent.

Contrary to the "vanishing race" stereotype projected by much of Western art and literature during this period, Native Americans did not disappear, nor did their heritage or cultural traditions. From a low of approximately 1,362,000 at the turn of the century, the Native population of the United States and Canada combined now number well over three million. Today, Native people combine traditional, time-honored values with opportunities afforded them by a modern society. Many Native Americans still follow the ways of their ancestors while other have assumed prominent roles as educators, doctors, artists, lawyers, business and political leaders. Unlike Fraser's sculpture, being a Native person has never been cast in an unchanging mold of the mythic past.
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Native American or American Indian?
Many North American people are unaware of the diverse range of cultures, languages, histories, and traditions that exist among Native people represented by approximately 500 tribal groups. Native people themselves do not agree on what they should be called. Among individuals in the United States, "Native American," "Indian," or "American Indian" may be preferred. In Canada, the preference may be "First Nations." Most people prefer to be identified by tribal designations such as Lakota, Hopi, Arapaho, Siksia, Navajo, or Tohono O'odham in recognition of their own unique traditions. Some native speakers identify themselves by names unfamiliar to English speakers. For example, the tribal name, Cheyenne, derives from a Sioux term, Sha-hie-na, meaning "people speaking a language not understood." They call themselves Tsistsistas meaning "the people."


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