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Diversity on display at Stauth
Published 5/22/2009 in Local News
By SHAJIA AHMAD
MONTEZUMA — The tranquil face of Moses Jay Nesahklauh reveals much from his black and white portrait.
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Shajia Ahmad/Telegram — Museum director Kim Legleiter describes the town of Nicodemus to a class of second-graders from Sublette. The planned Kansas community was devoted to Black settlement in the years after the U.S. Civil War. Kansans of African descent is one of seven mini-exhibits at the Stauth Memorial Museum detailing ethnic groups that have been instrumental in shaping the state's history.
The Kansas American Indian whose name means "glittering rainbow" in the Apache language returned to Kansas a decorated World War II veteran and is portrayed in regalia he wears proudly as a member of the Wichita Intertribal Warriors' Society.
"In my mind, body and soul, I still have a grip, a hold, on my family member and friends," reads the narrative accompanying his photograph. "Once we become friends, we stay friends for life."
Unlike historic photographs that have presented American Indians in artificial environments and frequently wearing regalia of tribes they do not belong to, the Kansas Indians showcased in this photographic narrative have chosen their own settings: the wheat fields around which they were raised or their sons and daughters to whom they pass along their traditions.
The Indians of Kansas is one of seven exhibits from the Kansas Historical Society on display this month at the Stauth Memorial Museum in Montezuma. The exhibits detail the lives of Kansas immigrants from an era prior to statehood to the present day through photos, oral histories and maps.
"Kansas is like its own melting pot," said Kim Legleiter, museum director, while giving a tour to second-graders from Sublette Elementary School on Thursday. "Those who were persecuted elsewhere came here to form new communities and a new life, while maintaining their own heritage and traditions."
Early Kansans
Thousands of Russians left for Kansas in the 1870s, just a century after they had emigrated from war-torn Germany. They were lured to the new continent by advertisements for free farm land by railroad companies and businesses in the Midwest that were eager to settle new immigrants on their property.
The early Kansans, many of them Catholics and others Mennonites, a Protestant sect, also were looking for freedom from religious persecution under their Russian rules, Legleiter said.
"What's persecution?" some of the students from Leigh Bird's second-grade class asked, as the museum director explained that the early Kansans brought their religious traditions and hard-winter wheat along with them to the new state and were finally free to practice their own faiths.
By the late 1880s, Kansas had welcomed nearly 12,000 Russian-Germans, and the community helped turn Kansas into the nation's breadbasket, adding millions of dollars to its burgeoning economy.
A 1901 Kansas City Star article on exhibit details their success: "They refute the statement so often heard in Kansas that a farmer cannot make money on wheat alone — they have grown nothing except wheat for 25 years and are prosperous."
Kansans Today
In addition to the stories of Kansas' American Indians and earlier immigrants, the Stauth Memorial Museum exhibit also recounts the stories of other Kansas ethnic groups, including the early Arab Christians, pioneering Kansans of African descent, Mexican-Americans from the early 20th century and Southeast Asians, the newest settlers in the state.
Along the walls of the exhibit detailing the stories of Southeast Asians, bright hand-woven cloths patterned in intricate designs color the scene.
Laotian Kansans brought the craft of hand weaving with them when they were forced to flee war and persecution after the fall of Laos in 1975. They, along with communities of Cambodians, Hmong and Vietnamese, have assimilated into communities across the state, but maintain their cultural tradition, Legleiter said.
"Can anyone tell me what this is?" Legleiter asked her tour group, pointing to a picture of a Hmong woman carrying her baby on her back.
One of the Sublette second-graders had an answer.
"They carry their babies on their backs so if they need to pick something up, they can do it," said Jaren Geisick, 8.
Legleiter explained that the patterns on the baby carriers are unique to families and were used especially by mothers while they farmed in fields.
Legleiter said fewer schools are scheduling field trips to the museum in recent months and speculated that budget cuts and tight funding is to blame.
"We used to get 15 to 20 school tours in May, and now we are lucky to get four," she said.
All seven of the mini-exhibits can only be seen together in one location at this time, the museum's director said, and will be on display through June 21.
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