Report #2 New Year's Day NYC

0037 These are the 35,000 year old Clovis Points

0035 This is the Hopi Migration Pot

0012 Vivian Bigbow the Kiowa/Caddo Girl

0031 Pueblo Pottery

0016 Roy Rogers and Dale Evans with Maria Doty and Rogert Goombi riding in the 1967 Indian Exposition Parade.  Roy was voted ‘Indian of the Year’ in 1967

 

Jan 1 - The Big Apple.  Last night was very tiring so we slept in pretty late for a tourist day.  Hotels.com recommended including breakfast with our room and I’m glad I did.  The upgrade was relatively inexpensive and there are no breakfast places close by.  It’s a fairly simple buffet with eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, oatmeal, bread items, muffins, cereal and fruit.  Certainly enough to eat in the morning. 

 

It’s pretty windy and cold again today so Diana doesn’t want to venture far from the hotel.  One half block away is the National Museum of the American Indian.  It’s a Smithsonian Museum and therefore free.  I noticed it was open today when I went on a short scouting trip of the neighborhood this morning.  Diana decided that she was willing to venture that far in the cold so off we went.

 

There are two departments of this museum, one in Washington DC and the other in the historic Alexander Hamilton US Customs House here in lower Manhattan.  It was built in 1902 and served as the customs center for New York City.  Today it is home to the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian.

 

The displays cover the historical inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, North America, Mesoamerica, South American and the Caribbean.  It’s not a huge place but the displays are very well done and contain significant artifacts.  For example, the North American exhibit has two examples of Clovis Points. 

 

Clovis points are the fluted projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture.  They date to the Paleoindian period around 13,500 years ago.  They are named for the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929.

 

A typical Clovis is medium to large.  Sides are parallel to convex, and are carefully pressure flaked on the sharp edge.  The broadest area is near the midsection or toward the base.  The base is distinctly concave with a characteristic flute or channel flake removed from one or both surfaces of the blade.  The lower edges of the blade and base are ground to dull edges to facilitate tying it to a shaft.  Clovis points also tend to be thicker than the typically thin latter stage Folsom points.  Whether the points were knife blades or spear points is unknown.  When a typical point would break it was reformed into a smaller point like the ones in this exhibit.

 

Blades using this technology can be found from Canada to Venezuela and seem to have reached that area within a period of only 200 years.  It was quickly replaced by the more sophisticated and lighter Folsom point.

 

Of special interest to me was the display on Southwestern Indian pottery, mainly from the Pueblos around Santa Fe and Taos.  I have a small collection of these pots and it was nice to see the truly exquisite examples in this collection.  They had Acoma, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara and Santa Domingo pots.  My favorites have always been the deeply carved red and black ware produced in Santa Clara. 

 

Pottery Note: I love travel because I always lean something.  One of the pots exhibited is almost exactly like a pot I acquired years ago but was never sure of its identity.  It’s an odd color for traditional Indian pottery, sort of a creamy medium tan.  Its squat shape is painted in black and red geometric designs.  Turns out it’s a Hopi pot, not from a pueblo.  The design symbolically portrays the migration of the Hopi with very abstract bird’s wings circling the pot.  Oddly enough there are symbols of waves along the bottom alluding to migration over water, an event not known to have occurred to the Hopi anytime in the last few 10,000s of years.  I love it when stuff like this happens.

 

Another very interesting collection was titled “For the Love of His People”, The Photography of Horace Poolaw.  The photos were taken in the 1930-40s by Horace in and around Anadarko, Oklahoma.  He never wrote or gave and interview about his work, titled his photographs or even printed most of his negatives.  Are these just snapshots or are they social commentary?  We each have to make up our own minds as Horace never said.  His work is technically excellent and seems to capture the subjects intimately.  Perhaps they were relaxed because Horace was an American Indian as they were.  Most striking to me was a picture of the Chiefs of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche and Kiowa on the Capitol steps in Oklahoma for the swearing in of Governor William ‘Alfalfa Bill’ Murray in 1931.  Another interesting shot was of Vivian Bigbow, a Kiowa/Caddo girl, taken at the American Indian Exposition in Anadarko, Oklahoma in 1945.  She’s dressed in a cowboy hat, boots and vest and cute as all get out. 

 

They had a special exhibit of modern Indian jewelry by Raymond and Lee Yazzie, famous Navajo brothers.  I’ve seen their work for sale in San Juan Capistrano at Zia Jewelers.  They specialize in southwestern and especially Indian custom jewelry. 

 

After spending a wonderful afternoon at the museum it was back to the hotel.  I got dinner to go at Murphy’s Pub and took it up to the room.  Diana had shepherd’s pie and I had fish and chips.  Very nice.  Then it was to bed.