Review: Connecticut’s Pequot Museum Recalls War, Despair, Courage, Reconciliation

A few weeks ago, I was in New London in southeastern Connecticut for an exhibition opening at the Lyman Allyn Museum, a small, classy place that’s now part of Connecticut College. The next day, I drove to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, which preserves and interprets the heritage of the tribe that has lived there for thousands of years, more recently on a reservation but scattered through southeastern Connecticut and in southwestern Rhode Island.

With the development of the Foxwoods Resort Casino in the ’90s, the Pequots have prospered. The museum, now marking its 25th anniversary, is a niche place, but it tells the Pequot story with sensitivity and immersion. I’d never been there. It’s fascinating. And it’s a story in which Native Americans and Anglos make a peace for which everyone is grateful, though it took nearly 350 years. That’s my Thanksgiving story.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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A few weeks ago, I was in New London in southeastern Connecticut for an exhibition opening at the Lyman Allyn Museum, a small, classy place that’s now part of Connecticut College. The next day, I drove to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, which preserves and interprets the heritage of the tribe that has lived there for thousands of years, more recently on a reservation but scattered through southeastern Connecticut and in southwestern Rhode Island.

With the development of the Foxwoods Resort Casino in the ’90s, the Pequots have prospered. The museum, now marking its 25th anniversary, is a niche place, but it tells the Pequot story with sensitivity and immersion. I’d never been there. It’s fascinating. And it’s a story in which Native Americans and Anglos make a peace for which everyone is grateful, though it took nearly 350 years. That’s my Thanksgiving story.