The Years To Come

I realized yesterday that I had not put a summer header in, and here we are starting to stare down the last weeks of summer. This is taken last year, from a visit to Kiweki Point overlooking the Ottawa River. I have to get back up there sometime soon. 

This part of the exhibit evokes a Blackfoot tipi, with a buffalo hide at its heart.

The Blackfoot tribe had a tradition called the Winter Count, noting the most important event of the year.

In 1874, Canadian and American surveyors marked what is now the border across the West. The Blackfoot homeland became separated on both sides.

These are powwow regalia for boys and girls from the Blackfoot people.

The timeline that started the exhibit winds its way towards its end. In 1872, President Grant was elected to his second term.

The following year saw economic collapse, and its impact on Reconstruction.

Soldiers under George Armstrong Custer found gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1874. It was predictable that speculators would rush in. The Hills were sacred to the Lakota.

Two years later, Custer would lead the 7th Cavalry to a quick death by attacking a force of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho at the Little Bighorn. The arrogant, reckless, and frankly stupid officer had it coming to him.

With Grant's two terms ending, a new president, Rutherford Hayes, was elected, but only through compromise- it was at the expense of Reconstruction. Federal troops withdrew from occupation positions in the South, Reconstruction was brought to an end, and black people in the South would find themselves subjected to the so called Jim Crow laws in the years to come.

The Civil War had been the defining chapter of American history, and with its aftermath, the country still feels its effects to this day, a century and a half later.