death penalty say it is a deterrent to crime. other people say it is violence trying to answer violence and creating reciprocity between nonstate and state-mandated violence. there are a lot of similar debates. recently, states have attempted to make and keep secret what drugs are used in lethal injection. that mirrors the decision a lot of states were making during the progressive era to put the death penalty behind closed doors. >> how does the history of executions in the south in the period you are studying different or like that in the north at the same time? bob hutton: a lot of states retained the death penalty up until the present. a lot of states that decide to do away with execution circa 1900 are mostly in the northern

great plains and new england. most of the former confederacy keeps the death penalty up until the present. there are a few exceptions. >> are you continuing to research this topic now? bob hutton: i am beginning to move on to other things. >> what are you working on now? bob hutton: i'm looking at the usage of private detectives during the gilded age and progressive era and how that related to labor issues as well as jim crow. >> what led you to this topic? bob hutton: sheer happenstance. it is something that has been percolating for more than 10 years. i could not tell you the moment i became interested in the history of american private detectives, except to say it is not something that has been written about much in the context of the gilded age. although that was sort of a golden era for that particular profession. >> why was that? bob hutton: there were a lot of wealthy men who needed surveillance or enforcement in

their workplace or household or what have you. there was a lot of cheap labor available for people willing to carry a gun and tin badge for a paycheck. >> bob hutton, thank you very much. >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming every weekend on c-span3. join us online on c-span history for the latest programs. and to keep up with the latest news. all weekend, american history tv is focusing on lincoln. we recently traveled to lincoln to explore the city's rich history. learn more about lincoln all

weekend here on american history tv. >> the state museum is located on the university of nebraska will stop it is one of the oldest natural history museums west of the mississippi. the gallery that we are currently in is the first people of the great plains, traditions shaped by land and sky. we are all familiar with the number of these tribes, whether it is the cheyenne, arapahoe bonnie, the suit, the various subgroups. there are probably 20, 30 plus tribes that occupied the great plains. in nebraska, they had a great presence in nebraska. and other groups moved through the planes or occupied portions

of the planes out west, say, the cheyenne for example. the groups moving down say from the dakotas. we also had along the missouri river the missourian, the winnebago, the omaha, and the ponca. i would venture to guess we had 300,000, 400,000 objects. many of the great plains items were as i mentioned collected after the civil war when euro-americans cannot to the great plains. they were surveyed for railroads, if they are establishing missions, even in terms of military, they would collect various items of material culture. we have those inestablishing missions, even in terms our gallery as well as about 98% of our

collections are housed elsewhere. in a museum, you typically don't see more then 2%-3% of the collections that are on public display. and the planning for the gallery, we work collaboratively with the number of native americans. this is important because historically we see a lot of times museums interpret native american life for the native americans. it is seen from someone else's perspective, perhaps someone not native american. we wanted to work with native people to get a their views and their input as to what they would like to see in the gallery. we wanted to create a number of exhibits that were subject-based like clute, shelter, clothing, childhood, so that would feed

into the school curriculum and teachers could use those as sort of lessons that could be developed and then dovetail with what we have and so within each of the exhibits we have objects that was selected that we thought would best reflect how do you get food so you have some bows and arrows that we chose from the collections representative of native peoples here in the planes. we have a clay pot. we wanted to use them to highlight and to represent what we were talking about in text as well as what was included in historic photographs. to kind of show that there is a correlation between the material object and actually human behavior. how they were behaving historically, prehistorically.

i thought it would be important to talk about women and children . we have a number of artifacts in the museum that reflect the life of children as well as women and the work that they basically provided for the settlement. the children, we have one exhibit that contains a cradle board. a crow cradle board. this is very critical for transporting children. they could basically hang it on the side of the horse and the baby could be traveling along with the group. women could carry their infants on their backs. they could then set them up once camp was established. the babies were with the family's full-time face-to-face and it was a very convenient way to keep them safe, transport

them. in some ways they were more of a member of the family 24/7 than a lot of times that we see today. then we have another exhibit that deals with closing adornment. it was very important that plains indians basically reflected their identity, not only tribal identity but ethnic and basically family identities. they did this a number of ways, with headdresses of various kinds, different hairstyles as well as beaded garments and different items that could reflect their membership in various groups. this is a set of open display drawers that we wanted to have as a part of our gallery, it gives the visitor a pretty good idea as to the range of things that we have in our collections.

there are two general types of moccasins in this particular tour. three of the pair are needed moccasins and they are beaded with so-called seed beads. these are very very small needs that were made in europe. perhaps in venice various items. they were very highly valued by native americans because they could elaborate on their skills, designing decorative elements for moccasins, for saddlebags, for saddle blankets, bridles and so forth. but there is another pair, the fourth pair that is decorated with porcupine quills. those preceded the introduction of the trade beads.

some of these may not have been viewed directly as art by native people. they were part of their traditional dress, sending other kinds of messages to their neighbors or to neighboring groups, tribes, and so forth. the title of the gallery is the first people. they were a great experiment. the americas were unoccupied until after either during or after the last ice age. so, 22,000, 20,000 years ago. we wanted to reflect kind of problem solving on the part of these earliest americans and later native people living on the land. they were living on the food that was being produced day by day in the ecosystem.

traditional knowledge can traditional knowledge can be a rich source of clues and information that perhaps we can use currently to help solve some problems. we don't want to lose track of that. >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring, lincoln nebraska. our staff recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about lincoln and other stops on our tour. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. >> coming up next, the former national security council and state department officials from the nixon administration discussed the president's efforts to normalize relations with china in the early 1970's. they detail national security advisor henry kissinger's