Every day, I see a new item for sale on Ebay or listed with an auction house...pictures and letters from our past. Items that someone thought enough of to "collect" because of some connection they felt to a memory or event in their life. I share their passion for some of these items. As a child, I was fascinated with Native Americans. Many were considered the greatest horsemen to have ever existed. They seemed bound to the earth and nature and wise in their use of resources. Noble, I suppose would have been a word I used to describe them however, quaint the concept of "noble" might be. It had been some 50 years since they'd been vanquished from the land. It was difficult to find anything here in the East about them, other than the "family encyclopedia sets" that traveling salesmen convinced the "lady" of the house her family just had to have in order to appear well-educated and modern. I soaked up everything about them I could. I can still envision the artwork of those treasured volumes.......
But, what about the authentic articles ? Not paintings, but actual photographs of the Indigenous people? Picture postcards were all the rage...where did the originals end up? Actual photographs of historical events? Priceless treasures that document more than one side of the story of our nation's past.
I'm sad to say that many ended up in private collections and are now being sold as those collectors pass on to the Great Beyond. Evidence of our actual history is being dispersed. Let us hope the true stories of our past don't vanish into the vaults and personal albums of those who do not know or understand the details of history.
