ART on view FIG. 18: Sue Kononwa’tshén:ri Herne (Mohawk), Mohawk Samsonite. 2002. Installation, various materials. H: 122 cm. Property of the artist. 74 number of artifacts, many associated with warfare, collected by soldiers in the theater of war and by the European works of art of the period depicting its prominent figures, most notably the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant. The nineteenth century brought to the Iroquois the necessity for an often painful adaptation to a life on reservations on both sides of the international border between the United States and Canada. “Reservation Life and Adaptation” focuses on the rise of the Iroquois beadwork industry, especially near tourist attractions such as Niagara or Montreal, the transformation of basketry from commodity to works of art, and the rise and fall of Iroquois silverwork. It gives a special place to the work of anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan and his relationship to the Parker family (a prominent Seneca family), notably Ely S. Parker, who would rise to become General Ulysses S. Grant’s aide-de-camp during the Civil War and the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs. His sister Caroline Parker’s beadwork inspired generations of Iroquois women, not the least through the Seneca Arts Project, which was initiated by Ely’s nephew, Arthur C. Parker, between 1935 and 1941 with funding from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to create both traditional and innovative artworks for the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences, of which he served as director. Iroquois men and women also found economic niches in the White Man’s world as members of “Wild West” shows entertaining European audiences or as ironworkers helping to build the skylines of Manhattan and other major cities. Despite—and partly because of—attempts by the Canadian and American governments to undermine the imported epidemics or where economic or political interest in closer ties with one of the colonial powers paved the way for conversion. The choice between divergent life designs quickly led to a pluralism of values within Iroquois culture, a situation that neither the Christians nor the traditionalists desired. Situated between two domains of power, the Iroquois exploited the rivalry between the British and the French to their advantage, but in the end this could not prevent the different interests of the members of the Iroquois Confederacy from endangering its internal political unity. The 1710 visit to Queen Anne’s Court in London by the “Four Kings of Canada” (three of which can now be seen in Bonn in Jan Verelst’s paintings) illustrates the increasingly closer relationship of the Mohawk with the British Crown. The American Revolution was a turning point in Iroquois history. As a result of their loss of unity (with the Oneida siding with the Americans, while the Mohawk led a majority of the other tribes into an alliance with the British) and the victory of the patriots, the Iroquois lost their central military and political position in eastern North America as well as the major part of their land. Derailed from their seemingly inescapable track to glory, the now Six Nations (after the admission of the Tuscarora to the League in 1715) plunged into a profound crisis of meaning accompanied by factionalism and poverty. As at the time of the founding of the League centuries before, this was a “time of troubles.” It was also the zero hour of a tradition-minded future. The section in the exhibition that addresses this transitional period is called “Revolution and Revitalization.” It profits from the great FIG. 19: Installation view. Photo: Mark Brandenburgh, 2013. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
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