Emily's Memories

Since the best part of elementary school was the yearly field trips, it is no surprise that when I was assigned to write about a physical cultural heritage experience, my mind automatically thought of revisiting one of the many museum trips previously taken. Growing up in central New Jersey right near the state’s capital, I visited the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton when I was younger and revisited this summer for a quick trip. 

Two of the museum’s current exhibitions are dedicated to the history of New Jersey’s first inhabitants, the Delaware Native Americans. The exhibitions entitled “A Much Moved People: Preserving Traditions of the Delaware Indians” and “Cultures in Competition: Indians & Europeans in Colonial New Jersey” are located on the lower level of the main building and are on long-term view. 

Both exhibitions are composed of informative plaques detailing the story of the Delaware Natives as well as artifacts such as clothing and tools. What I found most interesting about the exhibitions was their focus on how the natives were impacted by European settlers. When learning about New Jersey’s history growing up, our lessons were often dismissive of how significantly these two ways of living impacted one another. The exhibitions detailed the lives of natives who moved west in the wake of an influx of settlers as well as those who stayed in New Jersey.

 As of the 2010 federal census, over 25,000 Native American descendants live in New Jersey. I wish the museum had updated the data since this statistic is 13 years old. Nevertheless, the exhibition which mentions the works of the New Jersey Commission on American Indian Affairs and displays the history of the Delaware natives is significant to the state museum as the natives played a vital role in the establishment of New Jersey. Natives were not merely passive individuals in the story of European settlement but were actively impacting and changing in response to their changing world.