at the annual meeting. when people ask why should we study history, why is it important? >> why should we study he is history? >> i think history provides us with a way of understanding the world, a way of paying close attention to the sources of the past and trying to figure out how people in the past framed their own lives. i think that's really important to think through for ourselves and to see that we actually have power over the way we think through our lives, not just how we live our lives, and in some ways the structures that frame our lives, but also in the sort of cultural implications of -- of what we think about what we do every day. i think it matters quite a lot, and i really think it's very important that i teach my students to see similarities and differences when they study the past. this issue of college kids leaving school without employment which comes up in my classroom i would say like at least every other day in the semester, you know, especially because i'm teaching a course on

the long 19th century economic history of the semester. you know it's a major issue in these students' lives so i'm constantly trying to get them to see the similarities of the people that we're studying and the sources that we're probing for information and at the same time to recognize that the past is actually rather different, and their own lives can take different forms, that they should be slightly empowered by this thing. i mean, not -- not every financial crisis is a golden opportunity, but that there are moments when we actually have some control over how we shape the future, and that i think that they out to seize these reins of power for themselves, if they can. >> alice o'connor, why study history? >> so many reasons, but just to really to add on to that, i think what history does, it's not uniquely necessarily, but history is in a very good position to do is to draw attention not only to the structural dimensions, right, of things that people often experience on very individualized and in some

ways -- and in very isolated and isolating ways, but i think history also draws attention to the ethical dimension of what is happening right now and draws attention, you know, enables students to get a way of understanding of how, what's unfolding now is really what's the theme of this conference, are very big changes and very big questions about the relationship between capitalism and democracy that has changed over time and that change is really because of human agent. >> i that's right. >> not because of some, you know, inexorable forces. it happens because of choices and especially political choices that are made at any given moment. >> alice o'connor from the university of california, santa barbara and jessica lepler from the university of new hampshire. >> thank you. >> thanks for joining us here on american history tv at the annual meeting of the organization of american historians. really enjoyed talking to you both. thank you. >> thank you.

>> thank you. now more from this year's annual meeting of the organization of american historians and the national council on public history who recently met in milwaukee, wisconsin. next we speak with national park service chief historian robert sutton who tells us about the park's efforts to accurately interpret historical sites. this is about 15 minutes. >> american history tv is at the annual meeting of the organization of american historians in milwaukee, and joining us is the national park service historian, the chief historian, robert sutton. thanks for being here. >> thank you for inviting me. >> what brings you to this meeting other than it's a gathering of historians? >> well, it's a gathering of historians, but we have -- we do a lot of work with the organization of american historians. we have a cooperative agreement so a number of historians within the organization do studies for

us, help us with our interpretation of parks and so we've had a -- a fairly long and very, very beneficial partnership with the organization of american historians. >> and you're participating on a couple of discussions here. >> i am. >> on native americans and also on the civil war. what was the focus of the first one on native americans? >> well, we -- it's very important. we have a number of parks that deal with native american history, and we have a number of parks that the main focus is not native american history but there are amazing stories. so, for example, p. ridge battlefield, the civil war battlefield, it was established as a civil war battlefield, and, you know, for years and years and years we've told the story of the battle that took place there. >> that is in what state, p. ridge? >> that is in northwest arkansas, sort of in the corner between oklahoma, arkansas and missouri, and for years and

years we've told the story of the battle that took place there. it was a union victory. it was critical for trying to keep missouri in the union, and a typical park service fashion we did a lot of telling who shot who where, when, how, so forth, but there are a lot of other interesting stories there as well. there were about 26,000 combatants, about 16,000 on the confederate side. about 10,000 on the union side, and the union won the battle which was unusual at that time. usually when they were outnumbered they didn't win, but, anyway, that's the military story. the other story is that there were about 1,000 cherokee indians fighting for the confederacy, and many of the cherokee leaders, commanders, actually were slaveholers, and so they had a lot more in common -- many had a lot more in common with the confederacy and it's fairlimore complicated than that, but had a lot more in common with the confederacy than they did with the union.

so that's a story that we haven't told before but now we're telling, and we've consulted with the cherokee nation in developing that story. and the other story was about that about half the union soldiers were german, and so -- >> actual german immigrants. >> german immigrants, but there's another story that has nothing to do with the battle at all is the trail of tears on which the cherokees were escorted from their homeland in the east to indian territory in indiana. the trail of tears go to the middle of the park and now it tale the trail of tears as well, and so what's very beneficial with the interpretation, they tell these stories but they also say if you want to learn more about the cherokees, the capital of the carrickee nation is not far away, and we would suggest you go there for a visit as well. >> how many parks do you oversee in terms of looking at the

history in those parks? >> well, i don't really oversee all the parks. what i do is provide guidance and i try parks that have similar themes, try to get them working together so that they can share resources and information. about two-thirds of parks, about two-thirds of all national parks are historic or cultural, and so i have obviously more interest in those parks, but many of the parks that are not primarily cultural have a lot of very important and interesting historical stories as well. >> and the national park service began when. >> the national park service was founded in 1916, but the first national park was yellowstone which was established in 1872. so there were a number of national parks before there was a national park service. >> when did we start to establish a position of historian for the parks? >> there was a chief historian in the 1930s, i believe 1931, so

that's actually one of the oldest positions, you know, upper level management positions in the park service. >> what sort of issues do you have -- you talked about the changing story at p. ridge, and i assume that other places have these sorts of things, but what sorts of information do you have in doing research in an area or a park or whatever that's actually being used by visitors, by tourists and yet you're involved there perhaps on a historical nature, whether that's an archaeological dig or doing further research? >> well, one of the things that we've done before this position, i was a chief historian -- excuse me, i was a superintendent at manassas battlefield, which, of course, is a civil war battlefield. and one of the things that we started doing what i was there, and i've continued since i've been here, is trying to explanned texpand the story of the civil war of who shot who where and when. p.ridge is one example.

the cherokee, the germans, the trail of tears, that really wasn't the reason that congress established that park, but it's -- >> right. >> but it's an important story that we tell, and i think it's much more enriching to the visitors. another civil war battlefields generally across the, you know, across the park service, we have been expanding our interpretation to talk about what cautioned the war, which sometimes isn't a very popular issue. slavery very clearly was the cause of the civil war. we have been saying that through our -- through our interpretation, through our films, through our exhibits, if parks built new exhibits, most of them have included that story, and in our interpretive programs. we talk about the origins of the war, the impact on families. 600 -- the number that we've used and actually was established shortly after the civil was was that there were 620,000 that were killed in the civil war. there's some recent research that suggests that number was

probably higher and some say even as high as 850,000. so imagine what it was like for the families of these either 620,000 or 850,000 who didn't return home. then there were a number, many move than that, who returned home without missing limbs, post-traumatic shock that they didn't even understand at the time so the impact on the country was tremendous beyond, you know, the impact of the civil war itself. it was tremendous impact on families. >> well, starting last year and over the next couple of years on american history tv we are looking at 1950th anniversary of the civil war. >> right. >> you talked about some of the things that you're doing in your park. what else specifically for the 150th should people be on the lookout for? >> well, we just -- one of our parks, homestead park in homestead national memorial in nebraska, that commemorates the very first homestead that was

established under the homestead act. this gentleman filed his claim one minute after midnight on january 1st, 1863 >> how big would his claim have been? >> 160 acres. so that park commemorates the homestead act which was one of the really important pieces of legislation during the civil war, and there was a conference a couple weeks ago in nebraska on the homestead act, the moral act which established the land grant colleges and pacific railroad act, and so there were a lot of domestic, very terribly important domestic pieces of legislation that hadn't been able to -- hadn't been passed. >> that got passed during the civil war? >> that got passed during the civil war. >> right. >> just this past week, april 16th was the 150th anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the district of columbia, so there are a number of things that we've commemorating in in addition to commemorating significant battles of the civil where. >> how long have you been a

historian with the parks service? >> i have been a historian for -- i've been in the park service for about 29 years. part that have time i was in administration as a superintendent which meant at some times i was a historian and sometimes i was not a historian, but i have been a historian -- i've been in the park service and mostly doing history. >> you talked about the changing nature of stories, revisiting stories in places. how have -- how has the way that visitors interact with exhibits, what are -- what's different about the way visitors look at exhibits now? what did they -- what are they more interested in now? does it necessitate, does it mean that you have to have video displays in all of those things? >> well, part of the problem with our exhibits, many of our exhibits, especially in civil war battlefields, are many, many years old. a lot of them were erected in the 1950s and 1960s, and so they are very out of date. the national park service

exhibits are a little bit different from museum exhibits in that the purpose of our exhibits should be and hopefully are to orient people to the historic sites, so what we really want them it do instead of spending a lot of time looking at the exhibits, we want them to understand the significance of the site and then go out and look at the site, so unlike a museum, which is a destination, you go to the museum to look at the museum exhibits, most of our -- not owl, but most of our exhibits are for the purpose of orienting people to the sites so that they understand it when they go for the advice sdplit what's the traffic like? how is visitation in the national parks? >> the visitation is -- it -- the last few years it has been around 170 -- excuse me, 270 million to 280 million a year. >> in all national park services? >> all national parks, and someone asked me about that a couple weeks ago, and i looked

at -- if that were a country, it would be the fourth largest country, if that was a population of a country, so we still have a tremendous amount of visitation. it varies, you know. some years a little lower, some years a little higher but it's around that. >> i'll wrap up in asking you a report which was presented by the national parks service in front of a sizable crowd, what's that report about? >> recommissioned the organization of american historians to do a survey of historians within the park service, and we have a -- in the government there's a classification for different positions, and so the classification for historian is gs-170. i'm sure everybody is thrilled to know that, but we also have a number of employees in the park service who are trained as historians who are different positions so we tried to identify as many as we could of all of the historians in the

park service, whether in the classification or not. and -- so we did the survey of about 1,500 in the park service. we got about 500 responses. so about -- about 30%, 35% responses, and what we were looking at is, you know, what are we doing? how are we doing? are we doing a good job of managing history and historical sites? are we not doing a good job? are we doing some things well, some things not so well? and from my perspective what we're looking for are what things can we do to improve both the profession of history in the park service and not necessarily by replacing anybody, but by providing the tools to do a better job. what are we doing to -- how can we tell, you know, tell stories that are -- that are important to the visitors, are accurate and reflect the most recent research in history, and also we're looking at, you know, what can we do to make the park service better, and we think we

can do a lot of things so -- with this report. >> robert sutton is the historian with the national park service, thanks for joining us here on american history tv. >> thank you. appreciate t. all weekend long, american history tv joins our cox communications cable partners in oklahoma city to showcase its history and literary culture. settled in 1889, oklahoma city is the largest city in oklahoma. it has a population of about 600,000 people and is the sooner state's capital. you're watching american history tv on c-span 3. my name is matt reid, i'm the curator of american indian collections at the american historical society and this is where we hou the storage areas where we house all of our artifacts that deal with oklahoma and its american indian history.

this is a bison teamee. there's not many in the world. this one left the tribe in 1865 and was collected by a colonel william clark. he got the teepee because he was stationed or posted to ft. rice in dakota territory. this is during the american civil war. his volunteers were basically sent there to build roads and infrastructure around the post and to improve the post of ft. rice itself. and while they were there they had fairly amicable relationship with the yankdon who lived in the area and he had an opportunity a couple of times to go out an buffalo hunts with them, and during one of those hunts he had an accident, and that's how it's described in our records, and before he was mustered out of service at the end of the war and sent home, he

had found out home that was a yankton family who had depicted his accident on their teepee so he went and obtained the teepee from the family to take back home with him, and so over here on the back side of the teepee is colonel clarke who has been knocked off of his horse by a buffalo who is running away, so this is the whole story of colonel clarke and his accident. the people that are depicted on here, either the clothing that they are wearing, the color of the horse, the shield design, it's something that's very specific to a person, and a lot of times if you know who it is that's being depicted, you can look at a photograph of them, and you're actually able to -- to see, okay, the guy in the photograph is the person in this pictograph, so over here on this side is a man by the name of motonampa which is two bears,

and this is the man that owned the teepee. he -- that basically matches up a photograph that was taken of him in 1872 by alexander gardner. >> how were these images drawn on the teepee? >> there's varying methods. the one that you're looking at right there was actually probably done with ink. now the pigments could be anything from artist pigments that were traded to the tribe or mineral pigments that were made by tribal members, you know, in the area. some of the black is ash. the red, however, is not vermilion. vermilion that was traded at the time is a mercury oxide, and we tested this red to see if it had mercury in it because it's a toxin, and it's not. so even though it's a very

brilliant color it's not vermilion. >> what is the material that the teamy is made out of? >> this is a bison hide teepee. there's 14 hides on here. it's all sinu-sewn. some of the splotchy commercial tanned deer hide that has been conservation that was done to the tepee in the early 1980s. this is actually commercial tin deer hide that's been made to adhere for loss and then kind of distressed to blend into the original hide. so it's a little rough for wear, but considering it may have been made as early as 1855 originally it's in pretty good shape for something that old. we actually have three tepees. one of them is just pretty much plain. it doesn't have anything on it. it was just somebody's house. the other one is -- i believe

it's this cabinet. is very significant to the kiowa nation. it has a tradition that dates back to 1833 with the tribe. this tepee, you can see some of the paint on here, this is faded from use, but you have yellow stripes and alternating black stripes on one half of the tepee. and then if you can see, we're looking at the interior of the tepee, these designs here as the other half of the tepee is covered with pictographs, pretty much like what we were seeing on the bison hide except this is kiowa. this tepee has -- is called the tepee with battle pictures by the kiowa. it was pretty much handed down in one family by the time it came to the tribe, the initial design came to the tribe about 1835, 1840.

and it would be renewed. now, those early tepees were buffalo hide just like the one we looked at. and it would be renewed every so often as one wore out, they would make a new one. and each time they did the man of -- the head of the family would invite his friends and fellow warriors in the tribe to come and depict something significant from their own personal history to put it onto the tepee. so this goes on and on and on and on. and the tepee we're looking at was actually made in 1916. and a little community called redstone that's southwest of anadarko, oklahoma. the rights to this tepee were owned by a kiowa man named oltoint, which in english he's always called charlie buffalo. he was the brother to a kiowa man named silverhorn. silverhorn figures prominently in the history of indian art. he's kind of like the

grandfather of all indian art. hunguwa and altoint had a nephew that they invited him to depict some of the history of the older members of the tribe. and so because he had artistic talent, he came and he put drawings on this. and his name was steven mopope. now, steven mopope, he was 16 at the time. when he grows up, he goes to the university of oklahoma, takes art classes there, and becomes one of the kiowa five, which is very famous in american indian art. they have paintings in washington, d.c. at the n.a.m.i. here the cowboy hall of fame. the list of institutions where they have paintings would be hard to read out. this tepee pretty much everyone thought that it was destroyed in a house fire in 1924 or 1925,

and it has as far as the world knew, never -- it ceased to exist. so it was really kind of a surprise when i found this tepee about two years ago in our collections. a friend of mine who's kiowa asked if we had any new artifacts that had come into the museum he hadn't seen. and i say, well, i come across where we're supposed to have this tepee in the collections but i had no idea what it looked like because i never had enough room to unroll it. we're standing in a big room, and i pretty much had to clear this room. and i unrolled it, and as i'm unrolling it i couldn't believe what i was seeing. because i'd actually become familiar with this tepee by looking at stills from a silent movie that the historical society discovered maybe five or six years ago. and this tepee actually figures

into a silent film. it's got all -- mostly kiowa with some comanche cast members, but all indian cast. and i had seen it in that film. and so i could not believe that i was looking at the same thing. and it actually took me three days of me looking at stills from the film and then looking at what was on the floor to convince myself that yes, i am seeing what i'm seeing. and then once i did, the first people that i actually told about it were the descendants of the family that made this tepee. and like i said, they thought it had been long gone so, they were ecstatic. it's almost like it's too good to be true. the silent film had been rumored for years that this existed. and there were photographs from it that nobody knew where the film was. and through a series of events o.h.s. was offered the film was

an artifact that we had to purchase it. and we finally raised enough funds, we purchased it, we raised more funds and preserved it. but then to turn it right around within several years and to actually find not only a piece of material culture that was in the film but something that's as significant to the kiowa nation as this tepee. and to put it all together is just unimaginable. and hopefully, here in about a year, we'll have an exhibit that will feature this and that family and that kiowa artistic tradition. over here in another cabinet are some other significant artifacts, not only to indian history but to american history. this letter and then this friendship certificate were carried by lewis and clark when they traveled up the missouri. and the first tribe that they

encountered or met were the oto missouri nation, just a little bit north of present day omaha. thomas jefferson, his signature here. he wrote this out. or maybe his secretary did. but it's written in french because the oto and the missouri both had several hundred years of contact with french traders by the time the united states came along. so there were people in the tribe that could read french extremely fluently. speak it, read it, whatever. so the letters that he sent out, he sent them in that language because it was pretty much a universal language at the time. the otos and the missouris were kind of a small tribe in that they had a lot of he enemies and so they were always looking for allies and resources. so when they came along, lewis

and clark saw this as them notifying that the united states now owns this territory and you're under our control or whatever. the otos saw that as a very important and potentially powerful ally against their enemies. so this was important to them. and that's probably why they kept it. lewis and clark, they met with several oto leaders at that time. one was big ax and one was big horse. now, this is the certificate of friendship that was given to big ax. and you can see his name right here. >> what does this say? >> it basically just says that the man named big ax is a friend of the nation of the united states. and anybody that sees this certificate should acknowledge that, take it into consideration. >> how many of these exist today?

>> i have heard that there is one other one, but i have no earthly idea what institution owns it. they were delivering these to every tribe, or they were supposed to deliver them to every tribe they ran into on their way to the pacific. now, i don't know if they actually were able to give out that many certificates. if they did, it's even more phenomenal that this is the only one perhaps that's left. i see the importance of collecting these things and trying to care and maintain them to illustrate that, you know, there's a long, long history here in this area and with tribes that dates back to even before the beginning of the united states. a lot of times folks forget that when you're talking about tribes you're essentially talking about a nation unto itself. you know, we had our own