Fall 2017

The Road to Kingsbridge: Daniel Nimham and the Stockbridge Indian Company in the American Revolution

The Redcoats took their revenge in a well-planned bloody ambush. Their targets were soldiers of the Stockbridge Mohican community, British allies in previous wars but now effective raiders for George Washington’s Continental Army, in a standoff just north of New York City. By the end of the intense fighting on Aug. 31, 1778, the Stockbridge Indian Company had taken heavy casualties. Its leaders, the sachem Daniel Nimham and his son Abraham, were dead. The Indian refugees in the praying town of Stockbridge, Mass., were so weakened that within a generation they were forced on their long trek west. What became known as the Battle of Kingsbridge was more than an episode in the American Revolution; it was a turning point in the struggle of the Hudson River Indians to preserve their rights amidst a flood of European settlement.

Art That Moves

Art transforms, translates, transgresses, transfixes and transcends. Most importantly, art moves. It moves our ideas and our ways of seeing as it moves from one way of being to another. Tradition likewise moves as it transmits beliefs and customs across time.

It's Just Between Us

Three generations from one famous Cape Dorset, Nunavut, family of artists track changing attitudes of Canadian Inuit toward the modern world, and themselves. An impressive selection of their works is now on display at the George Gustav Heye Center in Lower Manhattan.

Americans: Major New Exhibition Asks, Why Do Images of American Indians Permeate American Life?

Moving beyond discussions about the politicization of visual culture in the United States, the Museum’s exhibition Americans (opening this fall in Washington, D.C.) delves deeply into the reasons behind this phenomenon. Whether viewed sweepingly or considered in detail, the exhibition’s central gallery, titled Indians Everywhere, reveals the historical extent of this imagery – its use began with Paul Revere and the revolutionary generation and has continued to the present day – as well as the unexpected, sometimes paradoxical contexts in which it appears. American Indian imagery has been used by the federal government to distinguish the United States from other nations and to define the nation for its citizens, by U.S. armed forces to express military might, by American corporations to signify integrity and by designers, such those who created the 1948 Indian motorcycle, to add luster and cachet to commercial products.

Marking the 400th Anniversary of Pocahontas’ Death

Of Pocahontas’ Death March 21, 2017, was the 400th anniversary of Pocahontas’s death. She was about 22 years old when she died, and both her life and death were commemorated this past spring in London.[1] One key event – a three-day conference titled Pocahontas and after: Historical culture and transatlantic encounters, 1617–2017 – was organized by the University of London School of Advanced Studies’ Institute for Historical Research and the British Library, and took place March 16 through 18. Pocahontas spent the last nine months of her life in London and was known there as Lady Rebecca.

Fall 2017

Already a familiar face in Washington, D.C., Sicangu (Brule) Lakota chief Mat ó Hé lo e a, or Hollow Horn Bear (c. 1850–1913) became the iconic, if unnamed, “American Indian” by 1923, when his likeness appeared on the new 14-cent U.S. postage stamp. He also appeared on the five-dollar bill, the first and only historic Native to be shown on U.S. paper currency. Hollow Horn Bear fought alongside Oglala Lakota Chief Red Cloud in Red Cloud’s War of 1866–68 and participated in the defeat of Gen. George A. Custer in the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.