Symposium: CLOSING THE CIRCLE  

Exhibition QAQA'PE: Flat Twined Bags of the Columbia River Plateau 

Life of a Flat Twined Bag | History of the Oberlin Bag

 Biographical Sketches of Spalding and Allen

Links

Welcome to CLOSING THE CIRCLE!
    On April 27, 2002, the Oberlin College Department of Anthropology returned to the Nez Perce Tribe a twined root bag that had been lost in their ethnographic collections for over a hundred years. This bag was collected by Henry Harmon Spalding, missionary to the Nez Perce, in the 1840's, and is part of the Spalding-Allen Collection that is on display at the Nez Perce National Historic Park in Spalding, Idaho. The symposium consisted of lectures on the history of the collection and the development of flat twined weaving in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as panel discussions on museum collections and repatriation of Native American cultural patrimony.
    The symposium was accompanied by an exhibition at the Allen Memorial Art Museum titled, QAQA'PE: FLAT TWINED BAGS OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER PLATEAU, and an exhibit in the Oberlin College Library about the early missionary movement in the Oregon Territory.
    The purpose of this page is to provide a virtual version of the AMAM exhibition, as well as to provide historical background on the people and the events leading up to the return of this root bag to the Nez Perce Nation.

Any questions or issues with this page, please contact Gwendolyn.Kelly@oberlin.edu

 This page is under construction, sorry for any inconvenience.

This page written and maintained by Linda Grimm and Gwendolyn Kelly. Last updated 10 May 2002.