History

A new NMAI-DC exhibit reveals one California tribe’s journey from persecution to prosperity.

An engraved statue removed from a cave more than century ago evokes an international controversy.

A lead from the other side of the world is helping to fill in gaps of knowledge about our collections. One of the dealers who helped George Gustav Heye assemble his massive ethnological holdings in the early 1900s was the British collector William Ockleford Oldman. Following Oldman’s trail, NMAI’s Collection Documentations Manager Maria Galban located a treasure trove of his business records and invaluable provenance information in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington.

In 1619, as peace with the Powhatan Indians was breaking down, the settlement of Jamestown received its first captives from Africa, convened a representative assembly and awaited the arrival of the first large-scale importation of potential wives from England. The Commonwealth is marking the subsequent four centuries of “American Evolution,” with a memorial being built to commemorate influential women of the day – including the Pamunkey chief Cockacoeske – and an Indigenous film festival.

The Indian tribes of Massachusetts and Connecticut went all in to support the American Revolution, losing men in engagements from the Boston Massacre to the Battle of Bunker Hill and beyond. Yet some are still fighting for federal recognition and reservation rights.