Native Americans

Arkansas State University Museum

portals pots portals

Native American Gallery

Portals of the Soul: Ancient Peoples of Northeast Arkansas is the current exhibition in the Native American Gallery. Portals of the Soul presents the story of Arkansas’s first civilization—the Native Americans who tamed this land thousands of years before Anglo-Europeans set foot in North America. Skilled artisans in prehistoric Arkansas painted and inscribed images of hands, eyes, serpents, crosses, and a host of other visually powerful designs in works of pottery, shell, copper, and stone.  In concert with oral traditions still told by the living descendants of these ancient peoples, these images represent the mythical creation of the universe, its division into realms, and the very doorways, or portals, through which spirit beings traveled from realm to realm. The artifacts presented in this exhibition attest the great achievements of Northeast Arkansas’s native peoples.

Portals of the Soul: Ancient Peoples of Northeast Arkansas is the capstone project of museum studies courses taught by Dr. Marti L. Allen.  The Museum thanks and congratulates the two Heritage Studies students who co-curated this exhibition:  Leslie Hester and Marlon Mowdy.  


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Click here to access the Arkansas Curriculum Frameworks for this exhibit.

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