The Indian Arts Project (1935-1941)
In the midst of the great Depression, Haudenosaunee people had few jobs. They shared
resources with their relatives; some worked in government-funded programs to benefit
the community.
Rochester (NY) Museum Director Arthur C. Parker, a grandnephew of Ely S Parker,
created a project to help his Seneca relatives and friends. With federal funds available
through the Works Progress Administration, Parker began the Indian Arts Project. The
program employed people of Tonawanda and Cattaraugus Reservations to recreate the
objects of their everyday lives, giving jobs to the Senecas and building an collection for
the Museum.
From 1935-41, 31 men and women living at Tonawanda, and in 1935, 39 people from
Cattaraugus, worked for $.50 an hour producing almost 6,000 objects. Arthur Parker had
strict ideas about the quality of the workers’ products. At the same time, he established
the standards for the styles and designs that qualified as Seneca—standards that today are
accepted as “typically Seneca.”. The materials they made were brought to the museum in
Rochester where they were used in exhibits or sent to schools as part of Parker’s
traveling exhibits program. Parker also traded some of these materials to other museums
across the United States in exchange for Indian materials he could exhibit in Rochester.
The Project workers produced wood carvings, beaded outfits, silver jewelry and other
accessories, baskets, cornhusk dolls, and bottles, as well as more than 200 easel paintings
illustrating ceremonies, traditional stories, historic events and daily activities of the
people of the Reservation. They saw themselves as renewers and reclaimers of Seneca
traditions and values, once expressed primarily orally, now pictured in paintings and
carvings. Beadworkers, recreating patterns found at Tonawanda in the late 1700s as
revealed through Morgan’s collections, stated that their work strengthened their
connections with the ancestors.
Each piece is documented with a time card that tells who made the piece, what day(s) that
person worked on it, the cost in materials and labor, how many hours it took to complete,
and what specific materials were used. Because of this excellent documentation, staff at
the Rochester Museum & Science Center can help the project workers’ descendants find
materials made by their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.
Parker hoped that the Indian Arts Project would nurture craftswork that could help the
participants continue to earn a living. Only a few, however, continued with painting or
carving that could be sold to collectors. Their work remains one of the best documented
collections of Seneca materials in the world.
IAP Workers from Cattaraugus
IAP Workers from Tonawanda
Everett Parker works on weaving basswood bark strips to make a burden strap at
Tonawanda. Carvers Elon Webster and Kidd Smith sit in back of the schoolhouse.
Beadworkers Lillian Blackchief, Alice Poodry, and Stella Blackchief demonstrate
their work at the Rochester Museum in the 1930s.
Seneca Ernie Smith sketches a picture of a fellow worker at the
school house on the Tonawanda Reservation.
One of the Tonawanda Reservation schoolhouses used as a workshop
for the Indian Arts Project, 1935-1941.
Indian Arts Project workers Ira Mitten and Elon Webster
Demonstrate silverwork and carving at the Rochester
Museum in the 1930s
Indian Arts Project workers at Tonawanda, 1930s.