Museum Review: The Mashantucket Pequot Museum

Today, if you mention Mashantucket Pequots, most people immediately reply back with the word "casino. " Driving on the land owned by the Pequots it's hard to miss the towering structure that is the reining Guinness World Record holder for largest casino in the world. Driving north on route two a little sign for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum appears exactly one left turn before the new enclosed parking garage for the casino. It's here nestled away in a more rural environment that you will find the history of the people who comprise the 720 or so current tribal members. Drive past the tribal fire department and a $200 million dollar gem will take you through 18,000 years of history.

I grew up in the Washington/Baltimore area and frequently visited the museums located there. The Smithsonian Institutes are recognized as some of the best museums in the world. I've also been lucky enough to visit museums in Canada, Florida, Belgium, and Norway. Finding a museum of this caliber in my own back yard is surprising to say the least. The fully handicap accessible facility consists of 308,000 square feet nestled into the surrounding landscape. Included inside the museum are the Mashantucket Gallery (a gallery for temporary exhibits), classrooms, a 320-seat auditorium, a restaurant, a museum shop and administrative offices. The Research Center, houses a library (with over 40,000 titles), a children's library, reading rooms, stacks, a research department, storage facilities and conservation laboratories.

Groundbreaking for this museum took place in June of 1995 and was completed with an elaborate opening ceremony in August 1998. My tour guide, Aaron Goodday, has been with the museum since construction and provided a wealth of information on native life both in the past and currently. We started the tour at a detailed topographical map of the surrounding area, which showed our relative location and the location of other sites on the land. Next we moved to the cascading escalator with waterfalls that take you back 10,000 years. Soon after exiting the falls there is a section on native creation stories and a film that lets you hear these stories in their original language with subtitles.

The museum integrates technology into the learning process during your tour through its spaces. The caribou hunt exhibit is a great example of the meshing of technology and learning. While viewing the full size replica of a caribou hunt you can learn more through interacting with the touch screens located around the circular exhibit. Pressing various sections on the screen lead to other video and audio options to enhance your experience. The tour moved ahead to the seasonal dioramas, which depicted life in the four different seasons. Each season gets its own space, which in turn represents a different time period in the Pequot life.

This lead us to the true centerpiece of the museum, a full-size replica of a Pequot village complete with every detail you could imagine. Walking through the village is like walking through time because the village is actually split into three sections representing different time periods. Two Pequots in a canoe hold up a fish as an approving female watches. Looking further into the scene a young male runs in the background while another child appears to play with its own reflection in the water. In another part of the village a male Pequot lays on a bed in a hunt as the medicine man chants and cares for him. The realism is unparallel and amazing to interact with.

The Mashantucket Pequot museum passes over 250,000 visitors a year through its doors, 62,000 of them are children. The museum is designed to share the Pequot history and culture with visitors from around the world. The story of this history and culture is told through the eyes of the Pequots. For more information on this hidden Connecticut gem visit www.pequotmuseum.org.