A Journey of Reconnection

In November, 2024, a delegation of travelers from the Reclaiming Stories team traveled to Paris, France, for a research trip. Our travelers included:

George Ironstrack, Miami Tribe Citizen and Associate Director, Myaamia Center, Miami University of Ohio
Nate Poyfair, Miami Tribe Citizen and ARPA Project Manager, Miami Tribe Cultural Resources Office
Liz Ellis, Peoria Tribe Citizen and Princeton University
Charla EchoHawk, Peoria Tribe Citizen and Director of Cultural Preservation, Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma
Bob Morrissey, University of Illinois

This was the third time that individuals from our project have made the trip to Paris, but it was the first time that a delegation included an elected official (Charla) from the Miami or Peoria Nations.

Reconnecting with Patrimony

The main purpose of our trip was to further our ongoing research on minohsayaki – “painted hides”— a traditional art form that members of the Miami and Peoria Nations are currently working to revitalize and reclaim. Important examples of this artwork reside in collections at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. Building on our research on different aspects of hide painting traditions (hide tanning, tattooing, design and painting itself) this research trip gave members of our team the chance to visit the four iconic Illinois robes preserved over generations in French collections and now in the custody of this museum. Working with the curators at the MQB, our team continued our long-term study of these incredible objects of patrimony.

These research trips represent a momentous reconnection, as members of the modern-day Miami and Peoria Nations make contact with artworks created by their ancestors more than 300 years ago. This “reunion” is one of our project’s primary goals. Situated in a museum three thousand miles away from Miami and Peoria homelands, the minohsayaki and other objects of Indigenous cultural heritage have been preserved in French collections even as descendants of their makers endured removal, dispossession and cultural loss. Over the last 50 years, however, these Nations have reversed much of this loss, embarking on a trajectory of recovery, revitalization and reawakening that is one of the most extraordinary in Indian Country. Our trip is just one chapter in that ongoing story, a quite tangible manifestation of the reclaiming that is at the center of modern-day Miami and Peoria history. Visiting the minohsayaki in person gave members of our team new insights into their creation and meaning, allowing us to “make contact” with their makers across a vast gulf of time and space.

George and Jonas Musco discussing the hides

The hides have been preserved in French collections for 300 years

George and an ancient minohsaya, “painted hide.”

Charla and Bob consulting the minohsayaki

The group examined several kinds of material culture in MQB collections

Walking in the Footsteps of Chekagou

The second purpose of our visit was to contribute to an exhibition that is upcoming in 2025 to mark the anniversary of an important occasion in the history of France and the Miami and Peoria Nations alike. In 1725, almost exactly 300 years ago, a delegation of Indigenous travelers boarded a ship in Mobile Bay and sailed across the Atlantic for a months-long visit to France. They landed in l’Orleans, headquarters of the Company of the Indies, and proceeded to Paris, where they spent several weeks.

Among the Indigenous travelers were five chiefs including Chekagou of the Metchigamea, a group later incorporated into the Peoria Nation. Chekagou was one of the most important Indian leaders in the Midwest, and this diplomatic visit was a momentous episode in the political relationship between France and the Indigenous Nations of North America. Curators from several French museums have planned a major exhibition for 2025 to commemorate this important episode of French and Indigenous history. The setting will be the Palais de Versailles, the seat of French Royal government during the Ancien Regime, and one of the many locations that the delegation visited.

Members of the Reclaiming Stories team have been researching the 1725 delegation as part of our work on minohsayaki and painted hide traditions, and Liz and George have joined the Versailles exhibition team as official partners. During our visit last month, our group joined several French curators from the MQB and other national monuments to tour locations on the itinerary of the 1725 delegation. These included Versailles where we spent an afternoon exploring the palace, imagining Chekagou in its ornate halls, at the chapel, at the opera. We imagined him visiting with the Duchess d’Orleans, who gave him a cherished snuffbox which he kept the rest of his life.

We also walked in Chekagou’s footsteps at other locations, such as the Palais de Fontainebleau, where Chekagou delivered important diplomatic speeches before hunting with the 15-year old Louis XV in the forest preserve surrounding the chateau. It is likely that Chekagou prayed the Catholic mass at the chapel in this palace, very possibly in the Miami-Illinois language. It was here that he may have delivered a wampum belt identified with the Illinois in the collections of the musée du quai Branly today.

This second component of the trip – walking in Chekagou’s footsteps around sites in Paris—was equally powerful. By traveling to these locations—many preserved just as they were when Chekagou encountered them 300 years ago—we not only related to his experience in a quite personal way, but we also re-imagined these French places as Indigenous places too, part of Indigenous history. Like our encounter with the painted hides at MQB, this part of our trip was a powerful chapter of reconnection and reclaiming of Miami and Peoria heritage.

In the King’s apartment at Fontainebleau, where Chekagou likely delivered diplomatic speeches in 1725

Liz Ellis interviewed in the famous Hall of Mirrors at Versailles

George and Liz are assisting the curation of an exhibition in 2025 to mark the 300 anniversary of a visit by Indigenous travelers in Paris

Curator Muriel Barbier helps us explore the experience of Indigenous travelers at Fontainebleau in 1725, including a hunting trip with Louis XV

The Chapel at the Fontainebleau palace where Chekagou likely prayed the Mass, perhaps in the Miami-Illinois langauge

Chekagou may well have gifted this wampum belt to the King in 1725

George and Charla at Versailles, another stop on the 1725 delegation’s tour

Continuing the Work

The trip to Paris built momentum for our project. Perhaps above all, the trip was a chance to build ever stronger relationships among people working together on this project. Those include relationships between members of the Miami and Peoria Nations, two distinct Nations with a shared history and culture. They also include relationships between curators and academics and Indigenous scholars, officials and artists.

In that connection, the exhibition at Versailles in 2025 will be an extraordinary output of this work. The consultation by members of the Reclaiming Stories team in this exhibition will present French visitors with perspectives that have often been excluded in curatorial practice but are now front and center thanks to the work of this collaborative group. The Reclaiming Stories grant will support a return visit of Miami and Peoria travelers—hopefully including more Council members and elected officials— for the opening of the exhibition at Versailles in November 2025.

Moreover, all of this work and relationship-building continues to lay the groundwork for what we hope will be the climax moment of the Reclaiming Stories project, a traveling exhibition to bring the minohsayaki in the MQB collections to Oklahoma (likely Tulsa) for a community-curated exhibition sometime after the 2025 exhibition at Versailles is complete. Our group has begun discussing funding possibilities and the practicalities of this next step. We are moving towards a shared vision for bringing these important pieces of patrimony to Miami and Peoria homelands for the first time in centuries, continuing this important chapter of revitalization for these Nations.

See large-resolution versions of the photos on this page here.