Cécile Ganteaume:
It's great to be with you, Paul, in the American Gallery. This exhibit, as we know it summarizes the nature of US American Indian relationships. And it does so by looking at three events, Pocahontas, the Trail of Tears and the Battle of Little Big Horn. I have to say that since this show opened in 2018, I've been relatively surprised by the degree to which it resonates with people. And I'm curious, what would you call out as explaining Americans' power to resonate?
Paul Chaat Smith:
I think in a way we turn things inside out because normally what you do is you say, "Here's the Indian story and try to engage people with how that story is important." But what we've realized at the museum is so few Americans actually think they have anything to do with American Indians. We just put all our chips in the middle of the table and said, "Look, you're going to come into this show and you're going to see how connected you are with American Indians through imagery, through names, things that have been with you your entire life." So we put all of our emphasis on trying to show as goofy as some of this is, you're connected to it. And there's profound issues at stake.
Cécile Ganteaume:
And it is the scale of this phenomenon that we want to get across because it's been going on for some 250 years since before the country was founded. We're saying it's got significance. You can't have a phenomenon of this scale without it having any significance at all. And really we're saying it exists as a tip of an iceberg, and that iceberg is the deeply entangled history that Americans and American Indians share.
So let's talk about Pocahontas, what we want to get across to the visitor are two things. One; Pocahontas was a historic person, a real person, and that for a very, very long time, she was considered hugely important to the foundation of the United States of American.
Paul Chaat Smith:
And when we look at Pocahontas, what this exhibition is always getting to is, "What does it mean now? How is it relevant? How did it change the country over time?" Basically, "Why are we still thinking about Pocahontas centuries later?"
Cécile Ganteaume:
I was really surprised to learn how important she was economically, politically, and socially to early Americans. She was important economically because she was always associated with tobacco. And tobacco was the economic engine of the Colony of Virginia, which was the wealthiest and most powerful of all 13 colonies. So she's associated with the wealth that enabled the country.
And in saving the life of Captain Smith, she's associated with saving the life of the colony, which is where representational government started. And then she's associated with the social life of Virginians because her son became a wealthy tobacco planter himself. He married into the plant plantocracy. And many of Virginians ruling elite families descend directly from Pocahontas. And through the person of Pocahontas we're making the point that American Indians are in the DNA of the country literally as well as metaphorically.
Paul Chaat Smith:
Let's take a closer look at Trail of Tears.
Cécile Ganteaume:
We link the Trail of Tears to both the 1830 Indian Removal Act and the Cotton Kingdom. And we want people to understand what the 1830 Indian Removal Act was all about, because it was the legal veneer that Americans wanted to justify removing Native Americans from East of the Mississippi River to beyond the Mississippi River, which meant to remove Native Americans from living within the settled borders of the United States.
But there was this huge debate in the country before the passage of the Act, the proponents of the act, they really argued strenuously that Native Americans were standing in the way of economic progress because of course they wanted their land to build cotton plantations. But their loftiest argument was that Native Americans just weren't ready to take their place among their white brethren.
Paul Chaat Smith:
And what's so hilarious about that argument is that the Indian Nation leading the opposition to removal, the Cherokee Nation, was full of lawyers and accountants and journalists. They've been Christians for generations. They were educated in US universities, very sophisticated people.
Cécile Ganteaume:
There were many American people that scoffed at this notion that Native Americans were inferior. And then again, they argued against the Indian Removal Act both on issues of morality as well as issues of legality. Legally, they made the case, which was true, that Native Americans were sovereign nations. The United States had signed many treaties with them recognizing their sovereignty. And if we forcibly remove Native Americans from their land because none of the Native Americans wanted to leave, that this would be a stain on the character of the United States.
Paul Chaat Smith:
It's really quite moving to read some of the speeches from members of Congress and civic leaders who predict exactly that and say, "If this goes through, we will look back on this as a moment of shame." And of course, that's what Trail of Tears means to Americans around the world.
Cécile Ganteaume:
So let's talk about battle of Little Big Horn now. The Battle of the Little Big Horn is the one US Native American battle that most Americans can likely name. And not only that, it's out of this battle that Plains Indian warriors emerged as the most iconic image of Native Americans.
Paul Chaat Smith:
Who won the battle of Little Big Horn? It's complicated. I had never studied it closely, but what always struck out to me is the idea that the one Americans who remember the most is a battle of the US lost.
Cécile Ganteaume:
The US Army was led by General George Armstrong Custer, who at that time was a Civil war hero. And he and 300 US American soldiers lost their lives at the hands of Cheyenne Arapaho and Lakota warriors. And this event just really rocked the nation because the United States at this time was celebrating its centennial and the whole country was having a party.
Paul Chaat Smith:
It's quite a plot twist. Indians won the battle of Little Big Horn, but lost that war. And to me, it seems like then there's this question, "Well, who are Indians now that they're not any military threat? How do we think about them? They're still here." And what you see is this bizarre turn to where we like Indians, Indians are our friends. And in fact, Indians begin this process of becoming sort of the mascot of America.
Cécile Ganteaume:
So after the battle, of course, Plains Indian warriors were reviled, called savages, but then comes along these Wild West shows just a few years after the battle. And these Wild west shows are equestrian extravaganzas. And quite often their finale is a reenactment of the Battle of Little Big Horn, which is kind of shocking. And what happens with the Wild West shows is the Plains Indian warriors who were reviled, suddenly they're being romanticized and they're being held up as valiant warriors.
And why is that? Because they are being held up as a foil to justify "Manifest Destiny" or the winning of the West. But what happens is the Wild West shows they continue into the 20th century and just as they start petering out, the movie industry takes on. And of course, Westerns were the most popular films in the early history of Hollywood. And again, the Battle of Little Big Horn is reenacted over and over again. And what happens is that the Plains Indian warrior, while being romanticized and held up, is also frozen in time.
Paul Chaat Smith:
So because Indians are a relatively small part of the country, it teaches Americans that Indians are of the past. And maybe there's some around now, but there's certainly not real Indians. And this is a particular kind of framing that really has not affected any other ethnic group in the country to that degree.
We hope visitors could start seeing how this imagery, these objects are connected to those stories that they're part of the United States grappling with this issue of Indians. So all of these people come in, "Oh, I'm going to learn about this little chapter about American Indians." But really you're learning about the country, you're learning about national identity, you're learning about how it's changed over time.
Cécile Ganteaume:
They are all national stories which explain how Americans think about themselves.
Paul Chaat Smith:
National stories that still live in the present there we're still thinking about and considering. And in 20 or 30 years, there'll be a different understanding of Pocahontas in some ways and these other events. But they'll all be going back to the same question, "Who are we as Americans? Who are American Indians in relation to the United States?"
