Wooster library exhibit offers a different perspective on Lewis and Clark Expedition

  • By Kelley Mohr
  • October 13, 2011
  • 300
                        
Summary: The Wayne Country Public Library will feature lectures and activities throughout the run of the Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country exhibition, including a talk by Dr. Frederick E. Hoxie, an expert on Native American history and culture. Story: Everyone has heard the famous story of the Lewis and Clark expedition to America’s western lands. But who knows the whole story? Roughly two hundred years after that monumental journey west, the story will be retold at the Wayne County Public Library when the Wooster Friends of the Library present Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country, an exhibit running from Nov. 6 at 3:30 p.m. through Dec. 28. The library is one of only 23 libraries in the nation to host this exhibit. Along with the exhibit, a talk by Dr. Frederick E. Hoxie will be held at the Wooster Red Cross Building on Thursday, Nov. 10 at 6:30 p.m. “The exhibit focuses on a really important aspect of the expedition, which was the very numerous encounters that the people of the expedition had with the Native Americans; how they helped, how they hindered, and indeed whether the expedition could have been successful without the help that they got, in fact, that they counted on getting,” said David Wilkin, a retired College of Wooster professor and member of the Wooster Friends of the Library. This expedition was an important milestone in the nation’s history, Wilkin explained, the reason it is being both celebrated and analyzed with this exhibit. “Everything that was learned was extremely important to the history of the country, to western expansion and so forth, for good or ill,” said Wilkin. “This exhibit takes into account the impact that the expedition had on Native Americans; how things were beforehand and how things were for them afterwards.” This traveling exhibit was developed by the American Library Association and is designed to give a fresh perspective on the encounters between Native Americans and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, as well as to develop an understanding about the impact of those encounters in the following years. The exhibit will use photographs and texts to portray the untold story of the American West, and the library will offer numerous lectures and activities in the theme of the exhibit. One of these lectures will be given by Dr. Hoxie, a Swanlund Professor of history and law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who specializes in American social and political history, race and ethnicity and Native American history. Hoxie will be giving a lecture titled “Getting Lewis and Clark Right: Who Cares? Why Worry?” Hoxie will describe the mythology that has clouded the present-day memory of the famous Corps of Discovery and introduce many new themes that are covered in the exhibition. Hoxie, who has authored seven books on Native American history and culture, is truly an expert in the subject of the exhibit, especially the dynamic interaction between Lewis and Clark and Native Americans on their famous expedition to the west. As curator, he pioneered the Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country exhibit at the Newberry Library, a private research library in Chicago, where the exhibit was first displayed. Besides his lecture for the Wayne County Public Library, Hoxie will be meeting classes at the College of Wooster and meeting teachers at the Tri-County Educational Services in an effort to offer a new historical perspective to students and teachers of American History. “[Hoxie] is among the foremost historians of the American West, and a true expert on the Corps of Discovery, especially regarding the interactions between the men of the Expedition and native peoples,” said Wilkin. Hoxie’s focus will be to the other side of the famous Lewis and Clark story, one that tells of a meeting of cultures that changed the course of history for Native Americans forever, Wilkin said. The lecture will explain the real reasons and real consequences of the expedition for both Euro-Americans and Native Americans. “There is another way of looking at this very important event in history, the Corps of Discovery expedition to the west. It is important to recall the place in American History of the people who were here before the Europeans.” In addition to Dr. Hoxie’s lectures, the Wayne County Public Library will offer multiple other lectures and activities from Nov. 6 to Dec. 13, including five lectures to be held in various places throughout and two Lewis and Clark film documentaries. For teachers, the Children’s Department has created age-appropriate kits to instruct students about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The exhibit, lectures and activities offer an entirely new perspective to a familiar story, said Linda Davis, Adult Reference Manager at the library. “The Lewis and Clark Expedition dramatically changed the way of the Native Americans forever: their lifestyle and their native lands, everything was totally changed by the expedition,” she said. “That’s something that we didn’t necessary learn in our history classes.” For a list of exhibit activities, contact the Wooster Main Branch at 330-262-0916 or email Reference@WCPL.Info.


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