Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum

The Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum in Warner, New Hampshire is great. I visited in September of 2012. It covers all the major Amerindian groups in North America, such as the Eskimos, the Navajo, and the local Abenaki. I loved the art. I found the simple tools and technologies interesting, such as canoes and the domestication of animals. There is a teepee outside and a garden with information of what plants were used as what medicines, which they learned about through trial and error.

What I really wanted to know was why dream catchers were the shape that they were and why so many of the exhibits spoke of a “circle of life.” The ancients would not have known of the water cycle or the carbon cycle. What exactly did it refer to? The employees thought that dream catchers might be a modern invention based on no particular ancient custom and they claimed that “circle of life” only referred to the fact that all life is connected. Connected in what way? By gravity? Why can’t it be connected in a triangle or a pentagram instead of a circle? They did not know. Nobody ever knows the answers to my questions.

Please comment.