February 23, 2014

February 23, 2014

I bought a Groupon coupon for half price tickets to the Amerind Foundation Museum three months ago. It expires in the next few days so we make the hour plus trek east of Tucson to Dragoon, AZ. I am not really into American Indian history so this place was never high on my list of must-sees, though it often gets rave reviews. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the museum is in the beautiful setting of Texas Canyon, a geologic oddity in the desert. The area looks like a giant emptied his bag of massive granite boulders here.

The Amerind Museum was established by a Connecticut resident who visited the area, fell in love with the Southwest and bought a ranch here. He became an amateur archeologist and the museum holds the artifacts from digs he did in the area. Many Indian museums focus on crafts made in the modern era, mostly silver products and intricate beadwork. I like the fact that the artifacts displayed are from the pre-European time. A true Stone Age period of clay pots, woven baskets and tools of bone and wood. No metal tools of any kind.

Besides the abundance of ancient artifacts, the museum has a little on the history and lifestyle of the various Indian groups in the West. Because the horse wasn’t introduced until the arrival of the Spanish, most Indians lived a sedentary life in small groups, with little contact with others. (Your world becomes very small if you have to walk everywhere carrying everything you own) As a result their languages diverged so much that they were mutually unintelligible. The introduction of the horse revolutionized their culture. Many suddenly became nomadic hunters and raiders, greatly extending their range, and bringing them into conflict and war with their neighbors. For some reason this new short-lived lifestyle became our movie stereotype of the American Indian.