NEW YORK — A Smithsonian museum in Manhattan presents a sharply critical account of George Washington, the Revolutionary War and America’s early years, while some historical context that complicates that narrative is omitted or given less prominent treatment, Fox News Digital found.
The findings come as the Smithsonian faces heightened scrutiny from the Trump administration over how it presents American history. President Donald Trump has ordered a review of the institution’s exhibits and educational materials as part of an effort to change what his administration says is an overly negative portrayal of the country’s history.
Fox News Digital visited the Manhattan branch of the National Museum of the American Indian earlier in September and found exhibits that emphasize the destruction suffered by Native communities while offering comparatively little context about the conflicts and events surrounding American military campaigns.
One display near the center of the museum’s “Native New York” exhibit features an illustration of Washington’s profile — similar to the one that appears on quarters — over a label that reads “town destroyer.”
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The description underneath the image recounts how “American armies destroyed 40 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) towns and burned their harvests while residents fled,” noting that “the Haudenosaunee still call George Washington and all U.S. presidents Hanadahguyus. The name means ‘town destroyer.’”
The panel does not mention the raids on American settlements that led to the campaign or explain why Washington ordered the attack.
“The American destruction of the Six Nations’ homelands came as a result of the destructive raids carried out by the Indians and American loyalists on the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania in 1778,” an excerpt from the National Park Service reads. “The raids crippled the American Continental Army by depriving it of food and manpower and spread terror by destroying frontier settlements and taking prisoners.”
The exhibit comes as the Trump administration continues its broader dispute with the Smithsonian over how the institution presents American history. Specifically, the president has taken issue with the institution allegedly seeking to divert the telling of American history “away from America’s Founding and the Founders and towards a narrative of a deeply flawed creation of the country.”
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The administration has threatened changes to Smithsonian funding and federal-agency support as it presses the institution to alter what it describes as divisive or historically inaccurate portrayals of the country.
Many of the other exhibits in the museum take a similar line to the display on Washington, highlighting the alleged brutality of American settlers while downplaying the violence of natives.
One placard, recounting the history of the Iroquois between 1779 and 1804 from the point of view of a native woman, states that “it was peaceful, she said, until the white men began their revolution.”
For roughly 100 years, between 1609 and 1701, the Iroquois were engaged in a series of conflicts with other native tribes over access to animal pelts.
Even before the Trump administration’s current dispute with the Smithsonian, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., attracted criticism over how it presents American history.
“In recent years, I have been chronicling the evolution of the ‘identity museum’ … designed to affirm a particular group’s claims, outline its accomplishments, boost its pride,” a cultural critic wrote for the New York Times in 2010. “The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington — a pioneering example of the genre — jettisons Western scholarship and tells its own story, leading one tribe to solemnly describe its earliest historical milestone: ‘Birds teach people to call for rain.’”
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“Through a gauze of romance, that museum portrays an impossibly peace-loving, harmonious, homogeneous, pastoral world that preceded the invasion of white people — a vision with far less detail and insight than the old natural history museums once provided,” the critic continued.
The exhibits acknowledge some conflicts involving Native tribes but focus far more heavily on the violence inflicted on them than on the events that led to the fighting.
The museum also maintains a catalog of online materials geared towards middle school students that generally take the same editorial line.
Teachers, for instance, are instructed to show a video to students that opens by saying that “the American War for independence was such a disruptive and dangerous project.” It goes on to frame the actions of American colonists negatively, referring to them as trespassers and squatters.
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In several displays dealing with the Revolutionary War, the exhibit portrays American actions toward Native allies in sharply negative terms.
A video display near the beginning of the exhibit claims, unequivocally, that an American soldier shot and killed Chief White Eyes, a Lenape chief who had allied with the Americans. The cause of White Eyes’ death, however, is historically contested — something the museum outlines in relatively small text underneath the video display, which states that White Eyes was “probably” murdered by an American soldier.
The museum is housed within the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, a building formerly used for collecting trade duties and named after the Founding Father to commemorate his role as the first secretary of the Treasury.
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Just before exiting the building, visitors pass a museum store where several books present sharply critical accounts of American history. “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” for instance, is displayed prominently on the store shelves.
Among other things, the book criticizes Americans for having a “cult-like” dedication to the Constitution, suggests that the United States was founded upon White supremacy and genocide and claims that the federal government is still carrying out ethnic cleansing against natives. A graphic novel adaptation of the text marketed toward younger readers was also available.
Other titles on display included “Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History,” “An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States,” a tome about the “two spirit” gender identity and a children’s picture book about Deb Haaland, President Joe Biden’s interior secretary.
The Smithsonian did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Monday.
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