Railroad vs Native Americana

This piece is about an issue that I feel strongly about. The way in which the lands all across America were obtained for European settlers' use were underhanded and often violent. I chose to show the end of the transcontinental railroad as a site where many settlers passed through on their way to use the ill-gotten lands. 

I was really focusing on process during this project. I made all of the artifacts in my display from natural materials that I gathered. I also used glue and some hemp string, but everything else was collected. I used a band-saw a couple of times, but most things were crafted using hand tools. I used a draw knife extensively while making the bow. I also used a hunting knife for almost all of the rough carving on the items. I did this because I felt that a native would have had limited tools and also limited resources. I wanted to really feel the attachment that a native would have had to such items. After making the artifacts, I smashed them with a four pound sledge hammer. I felt that this would be as close as I could get to a train running over them. The war club took quite a while to break in half. I felt sad about crushing the items because I really got into making them. 

The war club represented warfare. I wanted to show with this one that not everything that was taken away from the natives was completely negative (although the point can be made that their original warfare was much less violent than the warfare that was used in obtaining their lands). There is a bison head carved on the war club. While there were no bison in the Puyallup River Valley, there were extensive trade routes not only to Eastern Washington, but across the continent. The bow was a fairly generic stick bow that might have been used for hunting or warfare anywhere in North America except the arctic regions. It was a super light weight bow that would have been useless for hunting, but it did fire the arrow once before I broke it. The bow and arrow were meant to represent hunting and other food gathering. Finally, the dream catcher was made out of a green birch twig that I bent into a circle and tied with hemp string. I then tied the center area with the same twine and finished it with a carved bear claw, a goose feather, and two seagull feathers. This was meant to represent native mysticism. This was a challenge to smash in half. I was concerned that the birch twig would return to a straight line when I broke it. It remained a little curved. I also cut the string in the middle right before placing it in site.