Ice Ages and Canals OR The History of Hoosiers

One of the oddities of modern life is that we only go to museums on vacation or field trips. Unless, of course, you're a weirdo like me. In that case, you'll be pleased to follow along with my trip to the Indiana State Museum.

The impressive front entrance that nobody uses
because they all enter from the parking garage.

For those of you who didn't know (I certainly didn't), Indiana was the 16th state, and joined the US in 1816 after being part of the Northwest Territory. Incidentally, the Northwest Territory was part of Quebec that US took from the British after the Revolutionary War. It later became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and parts of Minnesota. Not exactly sure what point I can make with that piece of info, but it's certainly fascinating.

Anyway, the Indiana State Museum wants reminds you that there's a lot of things that happened before Indiana became a state. You know, like 99% of time.

Oh, and the Earth was born in there somewhere.
I guess that's important, too.

This whole sections has all sorts of fascinating geologic information and astronomic information about the forming of the earth and rocks and other such things that don't make good blog reading. (Unless it's a geologist's blog.)

I like to call this section: In the beginning, there was nothing. And then there was Indiana.

Even if it happened to be underwater at the time.

Truth be told, the sequence of prehistoric ocean and land maps was pretty interesting, and the Indiana dot helped keep your oriented correctly. (Though I'm pretty sure they just guessed on a lot of those locations.)

On the bright side, all the time underwater means that Indiana evidently was a lot of undersea fossils.

And they find your puny lungs hilarious.

They go pretty all out with the prehistoric section, which is good, because one can only see so many fossils before they all just look like rocks. Especially if you're a kid on a field trip. (They know their audience.) So they also built large scale exhibits like sections with glacier recreations and various animal models.

They say this mammoth was drowning in ice.
I say he was waving to the mammoth ladies from his hot tub.

Next step on our prehistoric journey? That's right: Mankind.

If these look familiar to you, then you get an Easily Fascinated Gold Star.

If you're mourning your lack of gold star, then you can check out this post for more info about those. Turns out there were a great many sprawling prehistoric structures all over this state, and we have no idea why many of them are the way there are.

So let's declare them fascinating and move on to just before Indiana became a state.

It was a time of guns, horns, and flags...

A time when the clay Native Americans roamed free...

There's a lot of neat stuff about that, most of which I had never even heard about. Turns out that our educational system is pretty focused on the history of our state and our state alone, whatever that state is. (Probably because all the field trips go to State Museums.)

For example, I grew up in California, so my timeline of the US pretty much went like this:

Indians

Spanish Missions

Mexico

Revolutionary War somewhere back East.

Gold Rush, California becomes a state.

People back East fight again, this time with each other.

See what I mean? Nowhere in there was there anything about tribal wars, battles with Canadians, or these things that happened in Indiana.

Look at those old clothes in the background.
Californians started wearing jeans in the Gold Rush and never looked back.

And, it turns out that while those of us out west were digging holes in the ground looking for yellow rocks, Indiana was busy building canals to take advantage of the river that went through Indianapolis.

As shown in the avant garde model photo.

Also, while no major battles of the Civil War were in Indiana, that doesn't mean it wasn't involved. Evidently.

Why else would they have all this Civil War stuff?

I'll stop boring you with each exhibit now, but needless to say, they had a lot of fascinating stuff highlighting the good of Indiana...

Like the many household goods and inventions from the late 1800s & early 1900s

...the bad...

The KKK got a strong footing in Indiana in the early 1920s...
...Fortunately everyone came to their senses around 1927, so it didn't last long.

...and the morally ambiguous.

I forget why there's a trophy next to the illegal still.
Maybe it won the "Most Likely to Make You Blind" award?

We then passed through the history of the 1940s and 1950s, before ending up at the "Hall of Famous People From Indiana."

James Dean, Steve McQueen, and more...
The list of cool people who left Indiana is a long one!

We also happened to go on a gorgeous summer day, so got to enjoy some of the outside trails through gardens that only have native Indiana plants in them.

The path is not native.
...But it is made from Indiana limestone, if that helps.

And remember those canals in the model? They're still there today, and, coincidentally, right outside the museum, winding their way through downtown Indianapolis.

Evidently they made them into a recreation path a few years ago.

Hope you've learned something and enjoyed this romp through Indiana's history. If not, then I suggest getting the other kids together for a field trip. Make sure you have all your permission slips signed!