Searching through the National Museum of the American Indian records, I stared at a single receipt from Paris dated 1927 that simply said “vase.” I set the small slip of paper aside and thought, “I’ll never figure out which vessel that is.”
Yet 13 years later, I finally discovered the answer to this and many more mysteries hidden within the museum’s collection. That receipt was among the hundreds of thousands of documents, journal entries, photos and handwritten notes that have been matched with their corresponding items through an intense, multiyear effort.
An item’s journey doesn’t end when it is brought through a museum’s doors. It continues with its life through research studies, exhibitions and, in some cases, its return home to its community. The Retro Accession Lot Project has retraced items’ lives through whose hands they passed, from those of their original Indigenous creators and owners to those of collectors, dealers and anthropologists. This enormous undertaking of bringing clues together has revealed hidden stories that are providing depth and reconnection to objects previously thought lost to time.
For example, entertainer Dick Cavett donated the funds for the Museum of the American Indian to purchase this Mexican statue in 1972.
Figure, Teotihuacán, Mexico, A.D. 100–350; modeled, polished and appliquéd ceramic; 7.75”x 5.25”. 24/6989
Photo by NMAI Staff
This Chilkat tunic was simply described as a purchase in the NMAI catalog. But a 1949 letter to Heye from the Alaska Fur Company described a “ceremonial robe about 100 years old, once owned by the famous Chief Donnawak” for sale. A search through the NMAI collection database yielded a match with this red tunic acquired around that time. This correspondence provided us with the name of not only the seller but also the previous owner (actually spelled Doniwak), a chief of the Chilkat Tlingit in Alaska. An object with no known history was suddenly reconnected to its Indigenous owner. Prior to this discovery, it had been displayed as the tunic of a high-ranking woman.
Tunic, Tlingit, Alaska, circa 1900; red wool, cotton and glass beads; 47.5” x 65”. 21/3784
Photo by NMAI Staff
This 1949 letter to George Heye from the Alaska Fur Company provided us with the name of not only the seller but also the previous owner of the red tunic in the previous photo.
Photo by NMAI Staff
Mark R. Harrington worked for George Heye and later the Museum of the American Indian from 1908 to 1928, traveling throughout the United States to collect items from Indigenous communities. In 1908, he visited Florida, where he purchased these rare Seminole men’s leggings. Fortunately, Harrington kept detailed field notes about objects he collected, including the names of the individuals from whom he purchased, the prices he paid and the Indigenous language term for objects. Harrington purchased these leggings from a Seminole man named Mister Dennis (Icokocokni or Ch-To-Go-la-Gee). Before finding this information in Harrington’s field journal, it was missing from the NMAI catalog.
Men’s leggings, Seminole, Florida, circa 1900; leather; 26” x 12 ”. 1/8208
Photo by NMAI Staff
In the NMAI archives was this photo of the leggings’ original owner, Dennis (left), and fellow Seminole Tribe of Florida member Tommy Jumpen, which was taken about 1896.
Photo by Charles Barney Cory Sr., NMAI Archives; P29045
The receipt from a Paris shop that merely listed a purchase as a “Vase” would lead to the discovery of where a Guanacaste-Nicoya pot in the collection came from. After years of looking through the MAI records, the Paris auction houses that Heye visited and the type of objects he usually purchased on his frequent trips became known. The date on the receipt, 1927, was cross-referenced in the NMAI collection with pre-Hispanic ceramic objects that may he have been acquired around that time. Then an image of the pot was found in a Paris auction catalog from the same date that said it was from Costa Rica. Now we know how MAI acquired this pot and have a starting point for further provenance research of this object.
Tripod vessel, Guanacaste-Nicoya, Costa Rica, A.D. 800-1350; pottery and paint; 12.5” x 7”. 15/8688
Photo by NMAI Staff
A Paris shop receipt led to uncovering the auction at which the vessel had been sold.
Photo by NMAI Staff
Harrington collected this coat in Oklahoma during his 1910 expedition. He kept detailed notes about the objects he collected, including the names of the individuals from whom he purchased items. He also often took photographs documenting how items were worn or used. After pouring through his notes and photographs, more than 100 years later the coat has been reconnected to its Indigenous owner. One of Harrington’s photographs (right) shows Joe Billy, chief of the Big Jim Band of Absentee Shawnee of Oklahoma, wearing the same coat that is now housed in the NMAI collection.
Absentee Shawnee, Oklahoma, 1910; leather and beads; 36”x 22”. 2/7607
Photo by NMAI Staff
Joe Billy (Pem Mep To), chief of the Big Jim Band of Absentee Shawnee), wearing the same coat in the NMAI collection. NO2868
Photo by Mark R. Harrington; NMAI Archives
This birchbark box elaborately engraved with scenes of running figures and flowers was created by Passamaquoddy artist Tomah Joseph during the early 1900s. Joseph’s signature runs up the side of the box yet it was cataloged in the MAI by the name of collector Helen Pep Grodka. Her daughter and son-in-law donated the box to the museum after her death in 1982, but how Grodka acquired it was unclear. The original catalog description of the box was finally located in the MAI archives. It noted that she purchased it in 1970 from collectors Luther D. and Virginia Enoch Lovekin from Pennsylvania. These collectors had not appeared in the NMAI archives before. This new information makes tracing who else once owned this box possible.
Birchbark Box, Passamaquoddy, 1837–1914, Maine, circa 1900; birchbark, woodsplints and dye; 4” x 2.5”x 3”. 25/1662
Photo by NMAI Staff
During the 1940s, the MAI hit hard times after two wealthy benefactors died. The museum began to sell board-approved “duplicate” items from the collection to raise money for the purchase of other items. Receipts and correspondences helped uncover the sources of these objects, which were usually purchases from individuals. This process revealed that this pipe bowl, which depicts a face and two figures holding a whiskey barrel, was purchased in 1949 from Patty Frank, a collector in Germany who once worked for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Frank donated items to help found the Karl May Museum in Radebeul, Germany.
Pipe bowl, Wendot (Huron), Canada, circa 1800; catlinite; 5.5”x 2.7”. 21/3037
Photo by NMAI Staff
Dakota present eagle feathers such as this to honor someone’s actions. It was another item simply described as a “purchase.” However, documentation located at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Library revealed that it once belonged to Dakota tribal member Artemas Ehnamani. During the Dakota war of 1862, Ehnamani was imprisoned in Davenport, Iowa, for opposing his peoples’ removal from Minnesota. He was sentenced to death, but President Lincoln ultimately pardoned him. He later became a Presbyterian minister in Santee, Nebraska. MAI purchased the feather in 1925 from Mary B. Riggs, whose husband, Alfred, ran the Santee Normal Training School, a mission school for Santee Sioux children.
Honor feather, Dakota, Nebraska, 1825–1902; eagle feathers and porcupine quills. 14.5”x 2.5”. 13/7828
Photo by NMAI Staff
Lewis Hotchkiss Brittin was a collector of books and Native American art as well as the founder of Northwest Airlines. Heye purchased his collection in 1906. Found in the archives was a set of collector cards referencing the name Thomas F. Burnett, but no such individual was associated with the museum’s collection. After digging deeper and comparing objects, we discovered these cards were actually from Brittin and the name Burnett was erroneous. The cards included early images of the objects and notes about how Brittin obtained them, including this Lakota saddle blanket, which he bought from the Hyde Exploring Expedition, a trading company that operated stores in New Mexico and New York City from 1899 to 1903.
Saddle blanket, Lakota, South Dakota, circa 1890; hide, glass beads, sinew, brass bells and cotton thread; 72” x 2 5”. 0/8530
Photo by NMAI Staff
In 1928, archaeologist Samuel Lothrop went on a trip to Guatemala where he collected K’iche’ Maya (Quiché) masks and outfits used in traditional dances. The orginal owners of these objects had been unknown. However, one of Lothrop’s journals found in the Peabody Museum Archives at Harvard revealed he met with Miguel Chuc, a well-known K’iche’ Maya mask maker, from whom he purchased them.
“Then we went to the house of Miguel Chuc, the maker of masks. … His father, grandfather, have all been makers of masks. … He led us through a series of no less than 10 dusky rooms lined with shelves and piled ceiling high with costumes—and offered to sell me anything I could pay for.”—Samuel Lothrop, 1928 journal entry
Mask, K’iche’ (Quiche), Guatemala, circa 1920; wood, cloth and paint; 9” x 7”. 16/0801
Photo by NMAI Staff
This basket woven from deer grass and other plants was gifted to the collection in 1929. The MAI catalog listed only Homer E. Sargent Jr. as the previous owner. However, the original catalog card for the basket discovered in the MAI archives notes this basket was collected from Mary Burkhead, a Western Mono woman from North Fork, California, around 1900. It was part of the collection of Lucy A. Peckinpah of Napa, California, until Sargent purchased it from her estate in 1921. Previously, not only had just one owner of this basket been in the NMAI’s records, the museum had to display it without the name of its artist.
Basket, Mary Burkhead, Western Mono, California, circa 1910; deer grass, sedge root and bracken fern root; 5” x 10”. 16/5503
Photo by NMAI Staff
The Retro Accession Lot Project has also reconnected documentation with images in the archives. For instance, the MAI acquired the Sidney S. Wilson collection of images in 1942, yet documents related to the images were transferred to the Huntington Free Library at Cornell University in New York. These include dozens of letters written by Wilson’s sister, Florence, to her family while she was a teacher at a federal boarding school at the Pima Indian Agency in Arizona. The files included lists of Akimel O’Odham (Pima) students with their assigned English names. Through continued research, we hope to identify the students in this photograph.
Group of Akimel O’Odham students at the Pima Indian Agency school in Arizona in 1884. P15787
NMAI Archives
This restoration of information has been crucial to helping Indigenous peoples reunite with cultural items removed from their communities, often generations ago. “Understanding the origins of the items in the collection—where they come from, who they belonged to, how they were used, how they were collected—provides critical context and tells an important story about the life of the belonging,” NMAI’s Head of Conservation Kelly McHugh explained. “Communities need to know how their belongings ended up in NMAI’s collection as they are considered relatives and, in many cases, relatives that have gone missing.”
By piecing together clues from the archives, we have uncovered hidden stories that reconnect Indigenous communities, artists and others with these items. We have also discovered a vast network of dealers, collectors, anthropologists and archaeologists who during the past century helped build the only national collection dedicated to the art, history and living cultures of Indigenous peoples across the Western Hemisphere.
George Heye, holding a Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo) mask and rattle in British Columbia, Canada, in 1938. He used his vast collection from the Americas to found the Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation.
Photo by W. A. Newcombe; NMAI Archives P13426
Growing an Institution
What is today the National Museum of the American Indian began with the vision of one man. George Heye was a trained electrical engineer turned investment banker and the son of a wealthy German immigrant who made his fortune in the oil industry. Heye was fascinated with Indigenous cultures from an early age and began collecting arrowheads while at Lake Hopatcong in New Jersey. He purchased the first item for his collection, a Diné (Navajo) deerskin shirt, in 1897 at the age of 23.
Within a few years, he began amassing a large amount of Indigenous cultural materials and referred to this collection as the “Heye Museum.” In 1904, he wrote to his colleague archaeologist George Pepper that, “The young museum has taken on quite a business-like air. I am busy cataloging now during all my spare time and have just reached no. 1,250 and still have several hundred specimens yet to number.”
By the following year, he began talking about founding an institution solely dedicated to the study of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Using his personal wealth, he spent the next decade building a research staff, sponsoring expeditions and funding publications about the work of the “Heye Museum.” By 1908, Heye needed to develop a plan to care for his growing collection. He struck a deal with George Gordon, director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, and in 1909, a portion of Heye’s collection was loaned to the museum, where it could be exhibited. Heye also served on the museum’s Board of Managers. By 1916, Heye had finally gained enough support of several wealthy benefactors to found his own institution, the Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation (MAI).
Cultural items came to the MAI in various ways. Heye’s museum staff of professional anthropologists and archaeologists brought items back from their expeditions and excavations. He also developed a vast network of contacts who would help locate objects for purchase from Indigenous individuals, dealers, collectors or auctions. The institution would also exchange items with other museums or be given gifts and bequests. Missionaries, farmers, Indian agents, diplomats, engineers, artists and others sold or donated items to the growing institution. Upon Heye’s death in 1957, MAI’s collection included more than 700,000 items in addition to numerous photographs, rare books and other archival materials.
Heye has often been portrayed as an obsessive, erratic collector, concerned only with acquiring more material. However, research indicates that Heye had focused collecting priorities and strategies. In addition, the emphasis on Heye as a sole collector has obscured the thousands of individuals involved in the creation of the MAI collection. Those contributors who have been in the shadows are now coming to light and providing us with new understandings of the museum’s practices as well as the broader history of Indigenous art collecting in the 20th century.
The Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation as photographed in 1941.
Photo by N. L. Stebbins; NMAI Archives P02974
Lost Connections
When Heye began cataloging his personal collection in 1904, he did so on 3-by-5-inch cards. The records usually only included a catalog number, the object’s name, culture or geographic region, and minimal source information. Collectors or Indigenous individuals deemed notable might be included, but thousands of items were simply described as purchases with no information about from whom the object had been acquired. For many years, collection documentation was kept in files organized by the collector’s name or, when available, an item’s source. However, as many files did not have a direct reference linking them to objects, retrieving information about specific items was difficult.
Heye’s successors as directors of MAI—Edwin K. Burnett from 1956 to 1960 and Frederick J. Dockstader from 1960 to 1975—inherited an understanding of the collection and its filing system. Burnett also created systems to document museum activities, including the compilation of gift, exchange and loan rosters. Dockstader saw the value in the archives and worked to expand them with the acquisition of papers from former MAI staff, such as archaeologists Pepper and Mark R. Harrington. These included field notes of MAI expeditions along with correspondence and photographs.
In 1974, the museum hit a particularly rocky period. Dockstader’s sale of the museum’s collection items without MAI Board approval led to a New York State Attorney General investigation, and MAI dismissed him in 1975. Dockstader’s departure led to a tremendous loss of institutional knowledge. The MAI was faced with completing a court-ordered full inventory of the collection, and focus was placed on that work for the next several years as well as finding a new home for the financially burdened MAI.
By the time the MAI collection was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in 1990, the collection had grown in number to nearly a million objects and photographs. MAI’s absorption into the Smithsonian further disrupted connections between the collection and its documentation. In 1999, the paper records of the MAI were transferred to the NMAI’s Cultural Resources Center newly built in Suitland, Maryland. However, as staff members had been busy working on opening the new George Gustav Heye Center in New York in 1994, moving the object collection from New York to Maryland from 1999 to 2004 and then opening the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2004, they could not complete the processing of the collection until 2011.
Another complication was that a portion of the MAI archives kept at the Huntington Free Library in the Bronx was not transferred to the Smithsonian with the rest of the collection. In 1930, the MAI lacked space for their growing rare book and archival collection, and MAI patron Archer Huntington built an addition to the Huntington Free Library to serve as the repository for MAI’s material. The library was given 40,000 volumes on Indigenous archaeology, ethnology, history, rare books and significant manuscripts as well as documentation directly related to MAI collections and expeditions.
While MAI staff considered this material to be part of the MAI collection, the library’s trustees disagreed. After 15 years in court, the Smithsonian lost its claim to the material in 2004, and the Huntington Free Library sold the collection to Cornell University in New York, where it remains today. This loss to the NMAI further disconnected MAI archival documentation from the collection.
Recovering Histories
The Retro Accession Lot Project was launched in 2010 to locate, standardize and digitize collections documentation so that they would be fully searchable and accessible to staff, researchers and Indigenous communities. An “accession lot” is a numbering system that records an item or group of objects that were acquired from a particular source on a particular date. With this accession information, NMAI could begin to rebuild the provenance, or record of an object’s ownership, for the entire collection.
Rather than starting with an object and trying to locate information about it, it was decided to start with the archival documentation and match it to the objects. This strategy changed everything. With digitized documents, we could finally piece together information found in different locations in the archives. Some documentation on its own might not tell the full story, but when paired with other pieces, the picture got clearer and gave a better springboard for research, something we never had before.
In 2012, I joined the project as the primary researcher. Over time I became more familiar with the collecting strategies of the MAI and its founder George Heye. I began keeping a timeline to track the whereabouts of museum staff through the years to better understand their motivations and collecting habits. I identified collectors and sellers, determining whether they kept notes or photographs, and tried to narrow down the usual suspects that were sources of objects in different regions. In 2015, the project expanded to include reviewing archives at other institutions, including Cornell University. This also sometimes meant conducting genealogical research on individuals to track the path of items from hand to hand.
Tackling the provenance history of a museum collection of this size has been an incredible undertaking, but the result has been worth it. We have made the collection more accessible and obtained a better understanding of when and how objects entered the museum. We have also discovered the names of thousands of individuals who were never before associated with these items. Restoring this rich history allows the NMAI to offer Indigenous communities, researchers and museum visitors the most accurate information about this vast collection. It also helps the museum reckon with its history of separating Indigenous peoples from their cultural heritage.
“This project has an enormous impact on engagement with collections items,” said NMAI’s Head of Collections Care and Stewardship Cali Martin (Osage/Kaw). “The dots are finally connected, which means we can provide an incredible amount of information to our constituents.”
“Conservators attempt to use the material evidence to help understand the story of an object. The Retro Accession Lot Project helps us connect the material evidence to the history, putting everything in context. This results in more informed and responsible conservation, care and stewardship,” said McHugh. “The provenance information revealed because of this project also plays a critical role in helping Indigenous communities understand the past to pursue ethical return or shared stewardship arrangements for the future.”
Although we have revealed fascinating connections through this project, the work is far from over. We are excited to see what we will discover next.