 Okay, it looks like some attendees are rolling in. Hello to our audience. We are going to wait just a few minutes before we get started and make sure that enough people can join who want to join before we get rolling. It's fun to see so many of our participants from the research sessions showing up. Thank you. I can't see them, but that's right. That's right. We've got about 26 folks already in the room with us. So great to have everybody here again. Yeah, so I think it's I think we can start so good afternoon. I'm greeting you from the Moravian archives here in Winston Salem and I'm very glad that you are joining our conference. I'm one of the co-conveners. My colleagues are here who are also co-conveners and I'm professor in the department for the study of religion at Wake Forest University. I'm Grant Callister. I'm associate professor and lebson faculty fellow in the department of German and Russian at Wake Forest. I'm also one of the three co-conveners for this conference. Welcome to today's walk and learn session. My name is Eric Elliott. I am the archivist here at Moravian archives and we're so glad to have you joining us virtually today. I invite you to come down at some future point yet to be determined to come take a look at our place live if you like what you see here today, but thank you. Okay, so I'm so glad you're here with us today. We have a very, very rich program, as you know, for four days and our session today starts our first of four virtual walk and learn events. I'm very pleased to greet Sally Gant, who is a docent at the Museum of South Eastern decorative arts and she will say a little bit more about her work before she takes you on a tour in honor of Indigenous peoples here on this continent and their powerful presence here in the southeast. I would like to offer you a land acknowledgement and I would like to pronounce and announce that this conference recognizes and respects the Indigenous peoples of our region as a traditional stewards of this land. Our conference acknowledges the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous peoples and their traditional territories. The land on which Wake Forest University now resides and the land on which the original campus resided has served and continues to serve for place of exchange and interaction for Indigenous peoples. In the past, specifically the Saura, in the past and today the Kataba, Cherokee and Lambi nations in the current location and the traditional tribal communities of Shakuri, Eno, Sisi Paho and Okanechi in the original campus location. So join us in this land acknowledgement and welcome to Sally Gant, a very quick word about the second session. So if you want to go directly from our first walk and learn then to the second one. Please look in your chat. And my colleague Grant McAllister has given you a link that you can very quickly access to follow the rhythm of our conference. And without further ado, I will give the microphone over to my colleague Sally Gant. Welcome Sally to our community of scholars and community members. Thank you so much Ulrika. And I will just say I really appreciated hearing that the land acknowledgement that was just beautiful and it means a whole lot. I know to all of us and I'm going to go ahead and pull up the PowerPoint and just use that partially as my introduction to myself if that's okay. I just click this is my first time for doing this. So if I just hit the share screen and open the PowerPoint, is it going to be there? Can you guys see it? Yes, Sally. It's working. Okay, let me go back to the title. If I can get back there. Well, it's just, well, it's going to go forward instead of backwards. Can I make it work? Anyway, I will start the title for my presentation. The title for my presentation is called, excuse me, I'm sort of really wish I could get to that first slide. I'll go back. I'm going to, I'm going to pardon me for just a minute where I can begin again. You might be able to use the back button. Just the arrow keys to go. Yeah. Okay. All right. Sorry. This is first time. And it's happening. No problem. I'm going to begin in here. Now there we go. All right, here we go. Thank you so much. And I want to say my thanks to the university and to the conveners of the conference for allowing me to do this. This is the first time I've taken a visual tour through the collection and this respect and I must say that preparing this as a PowerPoint presentation has provided me the impetus to delve much deeper into the stories of optics that have been very familiar to me for a long time. Just as a brief introduction to MESDA. I will say the museum was founded in 1965 as a division of old Salem with a mission to collect and research and exhibit the decorative arts of the early south and also to provide visitors a broader vision of the material culture of the region that surrounded and intersected the lives of the Moravian and Salem. Our founder, Frank L. Horton, determined a region of seven southeastern states, including Maryland and Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee, encompassing the three major cultural regions of the early south, the Chesapeake, the Carolina low country and the back country or inland south as we call it. And over these 55 years since our founding, the collections have grown extensively so that at the Frank L. Horton Museum Center in old Salem now includes three self guided galleries that are open daily to the public when we can open again, which we all look forward to. And then 30 period cell study galleries that offer the behind the scenes tours which we'll be looking at today. My experience with MESDA as a part of my introduction began when I joined the staff in 1976 as a guide in the museum and I've been working with the museum ever since began with guiding and then for from 1979 on I ran the educational programs for the museum including our annual summer Institute and seminars and conferences and lectures, which is a wonderful experience for me. But since my retirement five years ago. I have gone back as Ulrika said to being a guide in the collection, which I am thoroughly enjoying because I love working with the public and with these objects. And just a few years ago when I received the first request to from Ulrika to think about doing a tour in the collection that looks specifically at the American Indian context. It was a new direction and a new approach for me and one that I have thoroughly enjoyed and have really appreciated the opportunity to grow in this as we move along. In the 1970s the museum realized we could never collect everything that was out there in the south that would represent the South as we wanted it so we founded two seminal research programs, the program that allowed us to go out into the south and record objects that were still existent in private collections and public collections of field research program, which is yielded now data on over 20,000 objects that are still in other collections, and also our documentary research program, which led us to read primary resources, public records, newspapers, court records and from these we called information on any artisan that we found copy word for word. And those that has now yielded information on over 90,000 artists and artisans working in the early south in over 127 trades. And we also have a subject database that allows us to, has allowed us to gather tidbits of information that our researchers have thought that would be interesting on over 200 subjects, which is all searchable. All of these databases are now accessible through our MESTA website, as well as our journal, which has been in publication since 1975. And I encourage you to all take the time to explore these and enjoy them with us because they have added so much to what we know now about the early south and its material culture. In 1737, Count Nicholas Ponsonsendorf wrote a letter to the Yamacraw Chief, Tomochichi Miko, in Savannah, Georgia, in which he wrote, I hear that you are seeking wisdom. You have the wisdom you are seeking, for it is wisdom if one knows that one knows nothing. How true. If there is one thing that I have learned over the past few months, it is the more that I learned, the more I realized that I have so much more to learn. The complex landscape of the American Indian peoples and their nearest neighbors, as revealed in the objects we have to study, continues to open new doors and take us down new trails of connectivity and intersection. I've often said to my visitors at the museum that every time I walk into the collection and see an object I've known for many years as an old friend, I find that it's got something new to tell me. And so we set about the task every day of discovering new meanings for old objects. The whole process of material culture is learning to let the objects speak to us, to see beyond the limited dimensional aspects of each object, to parse out the deeper cultural context, the narratives, the worlds, neighborhoods, if you will, in which these objects existed, and the people who made and used them, evolving function, myths and realities about objects that they may have conveyed, and the realization that meanings can change, and depending upon the cultural context in which they occur, and through which we are looking, through which we are studying them. Had we done our in-person collection study, excuse me, what is that? Oops. Yeah. Had we done our in-person collection study in April, the first object we would have encountered would have been this. And I am indebted to Dr. Timothy Shannon, who in his essay called Quake-Quig's Tomahawk published in Ethno History in 2005, who provided one of the best models for material culture that I have ever seen using this object. While the Tomahawk, he wrote, has served as a symbol of Indian savagery, the pipe tomahawk, however, tells a different story. From its backward country origins as a trade good to its customization as a diplomatic device, this object facilitated European Indian exchange, giving tangible form to spoken metaphors for war, peace and alliance. The production, distribution, and use of the pipe tomahawk also illustrated contrasting Indian and European notions of value and utility in material objects, exposing the limits of such goods and promoting cross-cultural mediation and understanding. This is what anthropologist Nicholas Thomas has called an entangled object, a physical embodiment of the different ways that colonizers and the colonized perceive each other. Europeans regarded this object as a weapon, a souvenir, a collector's item. Indians used it as a tool, as a grave good, a symbol of prestige, and both groups invested it with significance as an object of diplomacy. There's been a lot of discussion about the origins of the pipe tomahawk, how it came about, and it's a question we often get asked in the museum. And again, thanks to Dr. Shannon and our friends at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, and to cut a long story short with specific significance for this conference, I'm happy to say the earliest documentation of the appearance of the pipe tomahawk in America comes through the Moravians. In the travel journal of the German Moravian Bishop Johannes von Vataville, who with three other Moravian clergymen visited the Indian town of Chamokin in Pennsylvania, Susquehanna Valley in the fall of 1748, entries in the Vataville's journal during this visit included notes on conversations between the Moravians and the Oneida headsmanship academy and whose request the Moravians sponsored a blacksmith named Anthony Schmidt to work in Chamokin. Von Vataville's notes confirmed that Schmidt had agreed to make guns and hatchets for the Indian warriors free of charge. But if they wanted other goods, for example, the tobacco pipes with an attached hatchet, which are presently the new fashion among the Indians, they like other Indians would have to pay for them. So that was our first recorded and documented evidence of this instrument coming into presence here in America. 50 years later, in 1799, brother Abraham Steiner and his traveling companion Friedrich Christian von Shrinitz experienced another encounter with the pipe tomahawk on their journey through the Cherokee settlements in Tennessee. At teleco, they wrote, eight Indians gathered as each man entered. He shook hands with us, then sat down by the tiny fire. They talked much with each other and the tomahawk pipe filled with brother Steiner's tobacco circulated constantly. Several days later, these two men also noted a young Indian was here today who had decorated his tomahawk quite artistically with silver. Working in small flowers with the initial letters of his name. He said that he wanted to go to Philadelphia for a year to learn something in this line of work. In general, the Indians seem to have much skill with their hands and to take much pleasure in ornaments. So through the tomahawk, we just see the evolution and form and function and also in meaning. The demand for skilled artisans, the blacksmith in this case, whose trade and products had become a necessity in the Indian towns of the Susquehanna. We see patterns of consumption, this new fangled gadget, multi-purposed and highly desirable worth paying for, if you were, so to speak, to keep up with the Joneses. The quantum leap from the 1740s to the 1790s were from a neighboring blacksmith to be required to the young Indian who with the skilled ornament his own pipe and the desire to improve on those skills. So now as we enter the collection, I'll begin our actual walking tour with two of our oldest objects in the collection. These are actually documents. John White, an artist and photographer, accompanied the small group of colonists to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1585 under a plan of Sir Walter Riley to settle what they called at that time Virginia. White remained at Roanoke Island for about 13 months, returning to England in 1786, bringing with him over 70 delicate watercolor paintings and sketches, now in the collection of the British Museum, providing his impressions of the people and the places he had encountered. Published by Theodore DeBree and Frankfurt in 1591, we can see that DeBree took many liberties with White's original sketches. As you compare the original sketch here with the published sketch of DeBree drawing from former publications that he knew. There's little doubt that White's image and later DeBree's depiction of the great Lord of Virginia was also the source for the giant Susquehanna warrior dominating the map of Virginia that was published by Captain John Smith in his general history of Virginia in 1624. This map has long been acknowledged as one of the most important maps ever produced. Just a cursory glance reveals that what was important to Smith and to whatever eyes view this map was the pervasive Indian presence in Tidewater, Virginia. In addition to the giant warrior on the right, the upper left corner is filled with the inset image of Palatine, who held this state and fashion when Captain Smith was delivered to him prisoner in 1607. The truth about Captain Smith's dramatic rescue by Palatine's daughter Pocahontas remains shrouded in myth and legend. But what does stand out in full truth is that this most accurate map of Virginia for this period could not have been created had it not been for the cooperation and the guidance and the knowledge of the Indians that Smith encountered. Smith inserted actual symbols, little crosses in the map indicating the points beyond which everything was known by relation rather than by discovery. And so this map documented over 10 tribes and 166 villages in India in Virginia at that time, thanks to the guidance of the Indians who were his assistants and his help. And this was the case with almost all of the early travelers accounts, including our collection and library. Mark Catesby, for instance, freely acknowledged in his indebtedness to the Indians who assisted him and his gathering expeditions in preparation for his publication of the natural history of the Carolinas in Florida. Now, we do understand that not all the travel that took place at this time was from the East to the West, but some of it occurred from the West to the East, as several important delegations made their way from the Americas to England and to Europe as our next three objects will show. Our collection includes the evidence of three of these journeys. In 1730 Sir Alexander coming and eccentric Scottish nobleman took seven Cherokee chiefs to London. Their visit there over several months was recorded in great detail in the London newspapers and an accounts of the curious who encountered and observed their activities. The caption of this engraved of this engraved copy of their group portrait relates that the clothing that they are wearing for this occasion was provided to them from the Royal wardrobe at that time. The visit concluded with the finalization of an agreement of articles of friendship and commerce, settled with the Lord's commissioners of trade after two days of negotiation. The end of which is the caption states cat a goose after a short speech and compliment to his majesty concluded by laying down his feathers upon ye table and said, This is our way of talking, which is the same thing to us as you letters in your book are to you. And to you beloved men, we deliver these feathers in confirmation of all we have said. This is definitely an expression of the chief's authority speaking directly and on an equal footing to his hosts and reflecting the dignity of his delegation and their customs and his control of that situation. The young tree chief to the right of this image was was a young man who came to be known as atta color color or little carpenter. Are these our pictures in the way can I move this. I'm not sure but want to be sure we can see everything. Yeah, it's visible. It's all good. Good. Good. Good. Thank you. Attica to color or little carpenter upon his return to South Carolina became one of the most recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation involved in negotiations for allegiance and treaties as well as in more an eloquent order and true politician playing the British against the French and the Virginians against the Carolinians but always with the goal of establishing a better situation for his people in matters of control and commerce. As we are well aware, the Moravian settlements. Were frequent stopping points for groups of Indians traveling to Virginia and other points. And in January of 1775 at a color color actually came with a small group to Bethabera, where the records recorded that they heard and were pleased with the sound of the organ in the hall. And when asked if they would be interested in having one of the brethren come to them to tell them about their creator, little carpenter replied that if anyone would come and teach a school for children, they would be glad. Again, making clear what it was that they desired and needed. We moved down south now to Savannah, Georgia. When General James Oglethorpe arrived with his small group of colonists on the shores of the Savannah River in 1733. He was greeted by the man who would become his greatest ally and friend over the next six years. Tomochichi was the king of the Yamacross, a band of about 200 people who had separated from the Greek Creek nation and come to this location on the Savannah River, where they would be near the tomb of their ancestors, as Tomochichi told Oglethorpe. In a few months of their meeting, Oglethorpe and Tomochichi with a delegation of six tribesmen, Tomochichi's wife and his nephew, Tuana Howie, had embarked with Oglethorpe for London. As had been the case with the seven Cherokee chiefs the four years earlier this visit was recorded in every detail through the London newspapers as well as the records of the Georgia trustees who are the sponsors of the colony. And portraits were painted, and we're fortunate to have this excellent Metsutent copy of the double portrait of Tomochichi and Tuana Howie. Note that the 90-some-year-old Tomochichi in this case has chosen to be portrayed wearing his traditional garb of deerskin and displaying his tattoos. And that Tuana Howie is holding the American Eagle, which had been brought as a gift to the king. Tomochichi's audience with the Georgia trustees was also recorded in a monumental painting by William Burrell, which is now at the Winter Tour Museum. And before returning to America, Tomochichi had achieved his goal to bring requests for education and fair trade justice to the trustees. And in his final negotiations he asked for two things, one, that we would make their youth Christian, and number two, that we would settle conditions of trade, intending fairness in waits, forbidding the selling of rum, and that we would furnish them with English stockings, garters, knives, scissors, needles, threads, brass pots, hatchets, nails, powder, gun, and flints. And favor them more than any other nation in the price as being our nearest neighbors. Described in the gentleman's magazine as having been in his youth a great warrior and possessed of excellent judgment, very ready wit and generous, giving away all the presents he received, remaining himself in a willful poverty, being more pleased and giving to others than possessing himself. He was very mild and good-natured. On one occasion, when speaking to a group of Indians who were seeking revenge on an Englishman for a killing, Tomochichi is recorded as saying, If you desire to kill anyone, kill me, for I am an Englishman. And I think this is the reason that I tend to think of Tomochichi as the Gandhi of Georgia. A few months after Tomochichi's return to Savannah, the first group of Arabians arrived there and records of their brief years in Georgia include many accounts of their encounters with Tomochichi and his people, including the establishment of a school for the Indian children, thus fulfilling one of the chief's wishes for education that he had expressed to the trustees. The next delegation to venture across the Atlantic Ocean that's represented in our collection were the three were three Cherokee chiefs who traveled in the company of Henry Timberlake, a foreign officer who had volunteered to travel to the over the hills towns in confirmation of the peace that had been settled following the recent conflict, resulting in the destruction of most of the lower Cherokee towns. This was in 1762. His map of the over the hills towns also published in his memoir as a valid and true record of these sites which have now been lost. Timberlake also recorded in his memoir, a journey of this journey, during which he was subjected to seemingly endless smoking of the peace pipe, quote unquote. The two of the headsmen in these towns are at a color color. And then before, but beneath his name that of ostinaco, who was his successor, ostinaco who was renowned for his eloquent speeches, and one of which Timberlake recorded in his memoir saying, the bloody Tomahawk so long lifted against our brethren the English must now be buried deep, deep in the ground. He who accompanied Timberlake on this trip was Cooney Schott. And he is depicted here in his portrait by Francis Parsons. In this case he's wearing a combination of European and Indian clothing. And around his neck are a pair of British medals which honored the marriage of King George III, and also a gorgeous March GR for George III. These objects are meant to show an allegiance to the crown. But perhaps the most compelling aspect in this life like this is the firmly gripped scalping knife, leaving no doubt as to the tenuous relationship that continued to exist between the Cherokees and their nations. We'll now move to another group of objects. The earliest travel accounts again in our collection, both in the museum itself and in the rare book section of our library, include vivid descriptions of the baskets of the Cherokee people. These masterpieces and mechanics, wrote Mark Catesby, are made of cane in various forms and sizes and beautifully dyed in black and red with various figures, and will keep out wet as well as any made of leather. James Adair, as we see here in his 1775 history of American Indians, wrote, Of all the southeastern Indians, Cherokee weavers make the handsomest baskets close baskets I ever saw. Known for their domestic usefulness, beauty, and skillful variety, a nest of them cost upwards of a moidor, which was a Portuguese gold coin equated with high value. This basket in the British Museum was brought back to England by South Carolina Governor Francis Nicholson and presented as a gift to Sir Hans Sloan, who presented it to the British Museum in 1753. The Mesda and All Salem collections contain two baskets that are believed to have come to Salem from the Moravian School at Spring Place in Georgia. The Spring Place records cite numerous accounts of baskets being brought to the mission by women in the surrounding neighborhood, many of whom were mothers of students at the school. Sarah Hill, in her excellent essay, Weaving History that was published in the William & Mary Quarterly, gave a wonderful account of these baskets and of the culture that surrounds them. During her 16 years at Spring Place, she writes Anna Gambold sent numerous Cherokee baskets as gifts to Moravian correspondents. And several baskets were also obtained from the first convert at Spring Place, Peggy Scott Van Crutchfield, who in the months following her 1810 conversion periodically sent baskets as a remembrance to friends and relatives of the Gambos. As Hill writes, these baskets illuminate and weave together multiple stories of the world in which women made, used and marketed their work, as well as a specific close and loving relationship between two women, Anna Gambold and Peggy Crutchfield, and a cultural tradition that bound the ecological world of the river cane that provided the materials and the skill craft tradition for the creation of these intricate and complex objects, a tradition that had existed for centuries before colonial contact and still exists today. These lovely objects are inextricably woven into the daily life of the Cherokees, not only in everyday household work of gathering, storing, transporting and preparing, but also in the preservation of religious beliefs and the enactment of traditional ceremonies and rituals within the community. Domestic collection also includes a ladder-backed chair from Walton County, Georgia, which is part of an extensive group of vernacular turned chairs from Middle Georgia with a distinctive Franco-German flavor. But this particular example is significant for the survival of its original woven seat, although constructed of split oak, the seat's pattern is similar to Cherokee basketry. What we see here in a Germanic chair form with the Cherokee woven seat is strong evidence of the confluence of cultures that took place in Piedmont, Georgia in their first half of the 19th century. Two other Moravian mission schools are represented in our collection, and here what I'm showing you is an example of one of the cards from our MESDA subject base that I talked about earlier in which our researchers decided on certain evidence of things they found in the reading of microfilm that they thought would be a particular interest. In this case, what we're seeing here is a letter that was written in 1820 by Brother Abraham Shiner again of Salem to General Calvin Johnson Brawley, published in the Raleigh Register and then again published in several other newspapers, which is where we found it in our reading. It read, I enclose you a copy of some decrees of a late council of the Cherokee Nation, which I obtained when lately there. It shows clearly that if the Cherokees are Indians, they are very far from being savages and the affairs of the international are conducted with as much order and I will add intelligence as most of those civilized states. Brother Shiner goes on to mention in this letter the Reverend Mr. Posey, a Baptist preacher who was seeking leave from the council to make a school and missionary establishment in the Valley towns which was cheaply cheerfully and joyfully granted. He then goes on to tell of his visit to the mission at Spring Place, which he had been a founder of, and the school and church at Brainerd, and I apologize for the typo here, but I think that typo was actually in the newspaper that we recorded. Brainerd, a place with which you are acquainted and which is distinguished by the pious and unweary delabors of the Reverend Father Hoyt. These three schools were located within 50 miles of each other near the point where North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia meet. This small sampler was stitched by a young student at the Valley Towns mission school. We do not know her Indian name. She may have taken the name of Eliza Brainerd, who may have been a patroness at the school which was operated as a Baptist mission. The school's daily routine included the requirement that each student memorize the verse of scripture each day, and perhaps this was one of those verses. And obviously the young girls at this school at Valley Towns were being taught their stitches and alphabet and numbers and words of wisdom in the same way the young women were being instructed in female academies throughout the country. The third and largest of these free schools, the Brainerd School, was located near present day Chattanooga and operated by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. And we are very fortunate to have this rare watercolor map of that school that was painted by a young woman named Mary Wilder. Mary was not listed among the school students and may have been a visitor to the school. One of the students at that school in 1817 was John Ridge, the son of Major Ridge, who attended several months at the age of 15. He also had attended school at Spring Pace for a time. One of the daily notes in the Brainerd Journal records a day when John spoke up in a hasty and petulant manner, I'm quoting from the record here, and was reprimanded by his teachers who said, little did we expect such a return from any of our scholars, least of all did we expect it from John, a boy of whom we had great hopes. After which he burst into a flood of tears, said that he meant no harm and was sorry he had given us so much trouble and pain, we could freely forgive him. Major Ridge, his father visited the school two days later to check upon the report that his son had been troublesome. The Ridge family were intent upon providing the best education possible for their children. Two years later, John was sent in 1819 to the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, where he completed his education. During the 19th century, when native tribes were routinely sending delegations to Washington DC to negotiate with the federal government, the superintendent of Indian Affairs, Thomas McKinney, was eager to record these delegations. He engaged artists such as Charles Burr King and George Cook to paint portraits of these visitors to Washington. The majority of these original portraits were lost, sadly, in a fire at the Smithsonian Institution in 1865, but not all was lost. Following his dismissal from his office by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, McKinney had arranged to have the portraits secretly copied by the artist Henry Inman and then taken to Philadelphia for engraving. McKinney partnered with the author James Hall and the first volume of his history of the Indian tribes of North America was published in 1836. Mazda is fortunate to have this original portrait of the young creek Ms. Tippi, who came with his father, the chief Yoholo Miko in 1825, to negotiate a treaty. This portrait painted by Charles Burr King was in King's own private collection and so thus survived the fire at the Smithsonian. In 1825, John Ridge was called to Washington to assist the Creek delegation in composing their new treaty, which when completed in January of 1826 was signed with the mark of Yoholo Miko and the signature of John Ridge as the secretary. While in Washington, John Ridge was approached to help Albert Gallatin, who was working on a vocabulary of Indian languages, and he also asked Ridge if he would be willing to provide a sketch of the progress made in the civilization of the Cherokees. He reminded Ridge of the favorable effect his essay might have as a native Indian on public opinion, both here and abroad. And Ridge agreed to do this. During the same year in 1826, Ridge's sister Sarah or Sally Ridge entered the Salem Female Boarding School. Sally had been observed by a visitor to the school in 1827 was observed in 1827. In 1827, Juliana Margaret Connor, who wrote, there is in the institution, a daughter of one of the Cherokee Chiefs Ridge. She was pointed out to me and I vaguely endeavored to catch her eye and the expression of her countenance. But she manifested not the slightest degree of curiosity at the entree of so many strangers. Ridge is an entire story in itself among much that we know about her time at Salem. We know that her father Major Ridge contracted with Salem artist Daniel welfare to paint a portrait of his daughter. And that sister Eliza feeling was assigned to accompany Sally to welfare's gallery for the sittings. Unfortunately, we do not know of the present whereabouts of this portrait. Barbara John Ridge himself wrote about the school in his essay that he had written in which he said many of our most respectable people have their children educated in the adjoining states at the expense of their friends. Two young ladies have recently finished their studies at the expense of their father in the Salem Academy at North Carolina in North Carolina. Their cultivation and appearance is such that they will bear the test of comparison with those of any class in the universities. Their father has purchased a costly piano for their use. I am acquainted with others who are preparing an admission to that excellent institution. And I'm certain that that in that case he was referring to his sister Sally who was preparing to enter the school at that time. For the most part, John Ridge's essay on the progress made in the civilization of the Cherokee Nation was written for the eyes and the minds that it was intended to impress. However, he included with these words, I might indulge in sad review of the past and point to nations once powerful that is lords of creation of the creation roamed America's far. The son of our glory is set and we are left the shadow of what once was a reality powerful in war and sage in peace. Our chiefs now sleep with their heroic deeds in the bosom of the earth. It was not their destiny to become great. Had they concentrated their council fires, their empire might have stood like a pyramid for ages, yet unborn to admire. It is true. We enjoy self government. But we live in fear and uncertainty for tales are fall. We are in the fall of a lion. Thank you. And I do express my appreciation to the scholarship and to many people who helped me in trying to learn more about our collection this way. Thank you so much, Sally, for this very evocative and important contribution to our conference. So I would like to open now the floor. We have about 15 minutes left to questions from our audience. So please use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. Thank you for any questions you might ask. And while we wait for questions to come in, Sally, what, what is the biggest takeaway point as you review the collection? What do you think these objects can share with us that we don't find in written texts? Well, that's, that's, that is a big one. To me, the interesting thing is these objects, when Mestis collection began, there certainly was not the goal of collecting, of creating American Native American or American Indian collection. And, but it's been exciting to me to realize that these are not all the ones what I've talked to about today is not all that's there, but that almost every object in some way or another has to be seen as a way of reflecting what was happening both historically and culturally in the Southeast during this period. Especially if I were to, if I were to have shown you all of the maps that we have in our collection, where the location of the tribes are there in every instance and how important that was because nothing that happened either politically or in and realizing the, the battles for control of this land. I'm beginning to see this in totally different directions in totally different ways that I probably am not expressing very well because in a way it's pretty much new to me. And we can certainly have a question from one of our folks who are. It's a happy found evidence of musical training, other than the mention of the piano. I have not, but I think that I'm sure that it's there this, and I'm sad to say that because I'm a musician myself. And it's an area that I should should have taken special interest but as far as objects in our collection. That mention of John Ross, John Ridge of the of the family that had bought a piano for the two daughters who'd returned from Salem, I'm not even sure what family that is. But it would be really interesting to find out because I know the rich Sally Ridge was there John Ross's daughter attended but much later in the 1830s and so I'm sure it's there. Anything Moravian is there in the records we just have to know where to look for it. So there are more questions coming in right now. One question is, could you guide our audience to any written materials where they could learn more about the collection. If I understand the question correct. Yes, we don't have a published catalog at this point. The collection has grown so much we the latest partial catalog was published back in the early century but what is what we do have and I can tell you so happily is that our entire collection is online. So if you go to mesda.org and you click on collection and you can search the collection and and you can find any you can search it by a keyword or type of object and find all of the information that we know about it. And so that's there and also several exhibits that we have done are now virtually accessible online through the through the website. It's more available now that it ever has been in any published form itself. So I've even got a question that says, what about Cherokee musical instruments were there any Cherokee musical instruments. I know there have to have been. Of course we know of the of the, and I don't want to be. I can't answer that question because it's not my area of knowledge and I don't want to be too simplistic about it but I know that the drum. I've read some of that. I'm sure that can be a topic of an entire conference but certainly have a good paper to look at that because we know that the rituals that were that were practiced and I've again this is I'm just beginning to delve into all of this but the ceremonies and rituals were accompanied not only by singing, but by, but I'm certain by instruments of some sort or another. I wish I knew more. Thank you. So, let me see there is no other question at this point. So I bet it's just one came in. So the question is, what were the trading relationships with the native nations west of the Mississippi. West in general. Love for somebody to answer that question. You know, the whole story, the whole question of the trading, the traders. Again, when you saw in the seven Cherokee chiefs their, their, their goal with the, the agreement that they had with boards of commissioners for commerce and she was very specific and what he wanted the Georgia trustees to guarantee for him. And we know, of course that the traders that were that were that were out there were with the chief negotiators between the, the native peoples and those who were coming in, and so much rested on the economy of the trade but also on the interactions between the tribes and the towns and villages themselves. I know nothing about west of the Mississippi. Again, another conference. Yes, for sure. I think we have a feeling that, you know, this is really just the beginning of all these questions. Another question came in, and I will read it. So, when did conflicts overland sovereignty first arise. And how did the European settlers justify their presence. That's a very big question. Is there anything that you see in terms of land issues you showed us the maps. You know, and I think it was very important to see the map early on that showed how densely populated. Interestingly, there were subsequent. What do you call it states of that map, the John Smith map to start with, and each state subsequently showed more and more English towns more British towns showing up as time went on and then of course that that all went away. By the end of the 17th century, as people were moving further further westward, and this and you began to see various instances such as the one of the documents I didn't bring up was the description of Carolina by John Lawson, who came in the in the 17, 17, 9, 8, 9 and 10 the first decade of the 18th century and was very connected with the natives in Eastern North Carolina at that time and what became a surveyor was quite friendly with them. And then the Tuscarora war erupted and those little those wars that erupted like that at the embassy war were all extremely, you know, they were sad for both both sides of the story. And I think what it's telling us is what was happening in the way of invasion that didn't, you know, I wish I had the expertise to answer that as well. Sally we have two more questions that we that if you have the interest in answering them in the last seven minutes we have and so one question is what items. were traded between Moravian and Cherokee and other local tribes. So, could you see a pattern in the objects that were exchanged. Again, this is, I'm so sorry. I'm just working with Michael with a collection here at Mazda. The only items that we have that I'm aware of are the baskets. And I don't, and I know that they were traded, you know, early on and all the time in between that. And we, of course, have evidence of objects that were brought back by the Moravians from the various missions, which I think is maybe what we're going to hear about in the next session, which I'm interested in. But I don't, I myself am not at all familiar with that. Sorry. Now I could contribute to that because a little bit about the baskets that seems to be a really, really desirable trade item and one of the early Moravian missionaries to the Cherokee was a little bit criticized because she collected baskets to sell them in Salem. She was also very highly regarded as a sales object in Salem, and she tried to have a little business on the side, buying and trading Cherokee baskets herself. So, okay. Yeah, so, you know, it's, it's a two way street it really is. So, let me see, maybe this is the last question we can answer. Okay, there are two more, but I'm very sorry that we're running out of time. So we talked a lot about the Cherokee today. In terms of your collection, are there other native nations that have a strong representation? Well, of course, the the creek with the with the portraits that we show at the end of this tippy and your holo Miko. And, and yes, I've tried to focus more on those, those elements that related to the Cherokee today. And Mesta has, for instance, a an engraving that shows the the Yamasee war, the, the, the attack that took place in that war. And of course that was a very important war as well, because it was in 1715 very early on. And it had a, and it had a lasting effect and a change between the, the ownership of lands between the French, the Spanish and the English. And also, we also have a portrait in the collection by Henrietta Johnston, which is interesting to me because Henrietta's husband, who was giddy and Henrietta Johnston and Charleston took to England in 1817 13, a young Yamasee prince, who was known as King George and he stayed in London for two years under sponsorship of the society for the propagation of the gospel and foreign parts and returned to Charleston at the Yamasee war when he learned that his father had probably first been killed and then they found it later had been taken prisoner. But we know everything we want to know about his time in England, but we don't know anything about him after that he just disappeared. And I'm certain Henrietta Johnston must have painted a portrait of that young man but, but it doesn't. So yeah. So interesting. So interesting. So, thank you so much, Sally. We hope we can stay in touch and benefit from your knowledge and the future. So it has been a great joy and thank you. And let me add also we do have a catawba pottery bowl that I didn't I did not bring in I should have somehow I just ran out of time with the objects but that was found in Charleston. And I would just love to say that anyone when we're back up and running and when we are able to begin taking visitors into the collection. I hope people will feel free to contact us and come in and take time to explore with us because it's only through looking at these objects through the lens of other viewers and other expertise that we learn. So true. So we hope you can open soon and again many, many things. I'm very conscious of time we have a few minutes left and I think all of us want to transition to the next session which is really, which is really working hand in glove with your work. And it's about the objects that the missionaries, the Moravian missionaries collected globally really so all of you who send us a question thank you we have a few more. If you could simply send them to our registrar Victoria Lang and this way we can forward them to Sally again and if Sally is can make time for it and I'm sure she will answer the questions we couldn't get to today so thank you so much to you Sally to our audience to all of your good questions. And I will see all of you shortly and don't forget that tonight's event is specifically about the policies that started in 1802 of forcefully removing some of Eastern Indian nations west of the Mississippi. So there's a very strong connection between our session today and and this evening so I hope to see you there. Enjoy the conference. Many many thanks Sally, and see you in a few Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye everybody. Bye bye.