Museums, Native American Representation, and the Public: The Role of Museum Anthropology in Public History, 1875-1925

Surveying the most influential U.S. museums and World’s Fairs at the turn of the twentieth century, this study traces the rise and professionalization of museum anthropology during the period now referred to as the Golden Age of American Anthropology, 1875-1925. Specifically, this work examines the lives and contributions of the leading anthropologists and Native collaborators employed at these museums, and charts how these individuals explained, enriched, and complicated the public’s understanding of Native American cultures. Confronting the notion of anthropologists as either “good” or “bad,” this study shows that the reality on the ground was much messier and more nuanced. Further, by an in-depth examination of the lives of a host of Native collaborators who chose to work with anthropologists in documenting the tangible and intangible cultural heritage materials of Native American communities, this study complicates the idea that anthropologists were the sole creators of representations of American Indians prevalent in museum exhibitions, lectures, and publications. In this way, this work attempts to return some of the humanity and individuality to many of the forgotten players in American anthropology’s early years, while also revealing some of the power dynamics involved. Regardless of their sympathy for the hardships suffered by Native American communities, nearly all of the anthropologists portrayed herein ascribed to the common belief that American Indians were a vanishing people, doomed to assimilate to American society or disappear. At the same time, anthropologists also depicted American Indians as existing in an ethnographic present, frozen in time, and thus beyond the bounds of modern society. This study argues that due in part to such anthropological portrayals in museums and World’s Fairs, large numbers of the mainstream public chose to willfully ignore the suffering and marginalization of Native Americans as the federal government corralled them onto reservations, compelled them to attend Indian Boarding Schools, and forced them to abandon their cultures.