Native American Artifacts Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- History, Art, Painting, Terrae Incognitae
- by Matjaž Klemenčič
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- Sociology, Croatian, Hrvatski
- by Douglas Wilson
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- History, Fur Trade, Archaeological Anthropology
- by Matt Colvin
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- Geography, Native American Studies, Iconography, Ethnography
- by Tom Thiessen
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- by Michael Noll
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An object, catalogued in an American museum as a gunstock club, was recognized by the author as related to a reputedly unique “sacred slab” thought to have been given by the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa to the Winnebagos in the early nineteenth century. Further research showed that six such “prophet sticks” had ended up in collections, and the cumulative evidence raised doubts about their origin and meaning. Fifteen years later, the author noted the club/prophet stick’s appearance on the Native American art market and helped the museum to recover it. The museum’s curator was identified as the thief and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Thirty-five years after first encountering this unusual piece, the author looks at these prophet sticks in the contexts of their collection histories and of the prophetic movements as well as iconographic and mnemonic traditions of the early nineteenth century in the western Great Lakes region of North America. He suggests their association with the Winnebago prophet Wabokieshiek and interprets their pictographic inscriptions as a combination of cosmographic representation and (perhaps) a mnemonic prayer record. But there are no final truths either in research or in the museum world.

Les collections ethnographiques sont devenues un enjeu de réappropriation culturelle pour beaucoup de communautés autochtones. Face à leurs revendications croissantes, les musées d’ethnographie sont confrontés à de nouvelles problématiques en matière d’éthique, de déontologie et de conservation-restauration. Une nouvelle catégorie d’objets, dits culturellement sensibles, a été définie dans le monde muséal canadien et fait l’objet de considérations spécifiques, traduites par la mise en place de protocoles de soins en collaboration avec les Autochtones. Si la notion s’est exportée en France, elle rencontre des réticences dans le monde muséal, qui ne semble pas encore enclin à suivre, ou du moins à considérer la perspective canadienne, qui fait pourtant figure de modèle. Cette étude tentera d’apporter des éléments de compréhension à cette situation complexe en comparant la compatibilité des modèles canadiens et français concernant la gestion de ces objets symboles d’une mémoire vivante, au cœur de traditions culturelles en pleine renaissance.

Discussion of metal-inlaid catlinite gunstock club, c. 1850s, associated with the "conjuror" (probably "Medicine Bottle") of the Mdewakanton chief Shakopee (probably Shakopee III) in the context of the comparative evidence on catlinite... more

- by Christian Feest
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- Native American Artifacts, Metal Inlays, Native American Art, Pipestone

The ethnographic artifacts deposited by Father Friderik Baraga in 1837 in the Carniolian Provincial Museum in Ljubljana are of substantial importance for the local and temporal attribution of regional styles of the Native arts of the Great Lakes region of North America. Since Baraga’s contacts with Ottawa and Chippewa Indians between 1831 and 1836 are well documented, and since additional information can be derived from various lists of the objects prepared at the time of their accession, the collection can help to shed light on other, less well documented materials.
A general discussion of the problems inherent in the interpretation of historically collected ethnographic specimens and their importance for historical ethnography is illustrated by comparative perspectives on selected artifacts from the Baraga collection.

The red-on-white drawn glass bead is an under-used 19th-century temporal marker for cultural objects and archaeological assemblages from Native American and fur trade sites in the Plains region of the United States. This bead variety is referred to as "cornelian" in Plains fur trade records, but is also known by several additional names in other places including cornaline d'Aleppo, cornaline, and corniola. By examining bead sample cards, historical references, fur trade ledgers, beaded cultural objects in museums, and beads from archaeological assemblages, it was determined that this bead variety first appears in the latter part of the 1830s in Plains ethnology and archaeological collections. Plains fur trade ledgers first refer to cornelian beads in 1837, and are common therein by the mid-1840s. These multiple lines of evidence provide a chronology for drawn red-on-white beads that is relevant for both the Plains and other regions.

Bead researcher Mary Elizabeth Good died December 18, 2007. A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, she was 77 years old. Mary Elizabeth was well-known and respected as an early researcher of trade beads in North America. Her first publication, “Guebert Site: An 18th century Historic Kaskaskia Indian Village in Randolph County, Illinois” (1972), is considered a classic in bead studies. Mary Elizabeth was active in the Society of Bead Researchers, serving as Chair of the Publications Committee from 1989 to 1993, and as President of the Society from 1994 to 1996. The bead community has lost an important member.

- by Karlis Karklins
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- Historical Archaeology, Beads, Glass Beads

During the 1960s, the late Dr. W.G.N. van der Sleen of Naarden, The Netherlands, published a number of reports that dealt with Amsterdam's 17th century glass bead industry (Sleen 1962-67). While these reports presented a general description of the 17th century beads that had been collected in and around Amsterdam, a detailed list of the various types was lacking. Because such a list could be useful to historical archaeologists for dating and possibly determining the origin of the beads in their collections, the author visited the Instituut voor Zuid-Aziatische Archeologie in Amsterdam in November of 1972, to catalog and photograph the beads recovered by van der Sleen from ten sites in The Netherlands, as well as to further research the Dutch bead industry. The results of this work are presented herein. NB Subsequent research has revealed that the Dutch glass bead industry did not extend into the 18th century and that none of the wound beads are Dutch products, but mostly those of the Bavarian and Bohemian industries.

- by Karlis Karklins
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- Beads, Native American Glass Trade Beads, Glass Beads, 17th Century Trade Beads

Racially categorized art canon can be detrimental to an artist's work, and to its perception. Jimmie Durham, however, upsets expectations of what Native American art "should" be, demanding we question our reactions and prescribed... more

- by Jordan Philson
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- Art History, Art, Art Theory, Contemporary Art

During the past 500 years, European collecting of artefacts produced by the native peoples of the Americas has been affected by changes in the conceptualization of the inhabitants of the New World (from archetypal 'other' to merican Indians to specific peoples) and of their products (from potentially useful artefacts to cultural documents to 'primitive art') as well as by growing specialization of the collections. Since these changes were closely interrelated, a better understanding of their relationships is necessary for an evaluation of the various meanings attributed to these artefacts in Europe.

- by Christian Feest
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- Native American, History of Collecting

The second half of the eighteenth century was an important period in the protohistory of anthropology as well as in the history of ethnographic collecting. After more than two centuries of European expansion into other parts of the world, the enormous mass of observational data on the manners and customs of a wide variety of peoples, which had been accumulated more or less randomly, begged to be compared, classified, and explained. In the short run, Joseph François Lafitau's comparative approach of 1724 was less influential (partly, no doubt, because his book was not translated into English for nearly 250 years) than Carl Linné's Systema naturae (1735), whose taxonomic scheme was adapted to the needs of a classificatory interest in peoples and their cultures. It was the creation of terms descriptive of the subject matter (such as "culture") and-in the context of a proposed Systema populorum-of the discipline itself (i.e., "ethnography" and its 44

- by Christian Feest
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Two well-preserved and well-provenanced collections of Native American artefacts survive from the American Revolutionary era which were collected by members of the 8th, or King's, Regiment of the British Army. These were acquired as a result of the diplomatic exchanges of gifts and negotiations that took place between these two officers and the chiefs of various Nations in the Great Lakes area and the Ohio Valley. In addition, the circumstances are examined of a council at Sandusky in January 1880 between Native American Chiefs and Lieutenant John Caldwell, which is commemorated by two versions of a painting depicting Caldwell dressed as a Chief holding a wampum belt. When interpreted in conjunction with Caldwell's report of the council in the papers of Governor Haldimand, the paintings are shown to be important evidence of the efforts by the British to maintain Native American cooperation during the war with the American rebels and of the dilemma faced by Chiefs caught between the conflicting powers.

Since the publication of Warren DeBoer's 1993 study on chunkey stones, it has been generally accepted that the chunkey game in Late Woodland and Mississippian societies was more than a recreational activity. Yet today researchers are still working to unearth the specific meanings of this community event. In this article, we document a second whole example of an engraved Cahokia-style discoidal and compare it to the only other whole example of an engraved Cahokia-style discoidal from the American Bottom region. Inferences about the specific meaning that the chunkey game had to Mississippians in the region are then made based on recent research, the engraved iconography on chunkey stones, and the sources of the lithic raw materials from which chunkey stones were manufactured.

- by Brad Koldehoff
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- Ritual, Cahokia Mounds

Eagle trap sites are documented in the Great Plains ethnographic literature and they are occasionally found in archaeological contexts during river basin surveys. Eagles and their traps remain as important to present indigenous groups as they were to precontact groups. However, few studies of this fascinating site type exist. This paper summarizes both ethnographic data and published archaeological evidence of eagle traps and compares them to several traps recently relocated along the Missouri River in North Dakota.

- by David Ingleman
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- Ethnohistory, Zooarchaeology, Eagle ecology, Great Plains Archaeology
- by Mark D. Mitchell
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- Ceramic Analysis (Archaeology), Plains Archaeology
- by Zoey Reisdorf
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- History, Archaeology, Native American, Iowa history
- by Zoey Reisdorf
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- Native American, Games, Native American Artifacts, Discoidal

This is a compulation of sites within North America at which this particular glass bead has been found. As more information becomes available it will be updated.

The reproduction of this article in whole or in part without the written permission from either Anita or Robert Jirka is prohibited.

This is a compulation of sites within North America at which this particular glass bead has been found.

This is a compulation of sites within North America at which this particular glass bead has been found