There was a scene of Indians returning from a caribou hunt, and villagers at a waterside settlement where nets had been strung to catch fish, and native people paying respects at a sacred burial place. "A walk with the people," said artist David Bunn Martine, museum director and curator, who painted the historical pieces.
Martine said the burial spot became a home site several years ago. The owner flattened the mound. "He built a mansion on top," said Martine.
With the U.S. Open golf tournament scheduled across the tracks at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club (neither the club, nor the tourney, are Indian enterprises), the tribe is getting a periodic dose of media attention. But soon the excitement will be over and the Shinnecocks say they will go on as they always have - continuing their long walk with history. "We are still here," said Martine.
Continuity is central to the Shinnecock ethic, said elders who came to the cultural center one recent morning to talk about the tribe and its traditions.
Elders spoke with pride about their ancestry, with disappointment about the nature of prejudice, and with a wry sense of humor about stereotypes.
"I've had people pass by my house and get out of their car and say, 'Mister can you tell me where the Indians are?' " recalled Edwin Garrett, 78, who ran his own dental prosthetics business in Manhattan until 1995. "I said, 'Well, this is the reservation. We're all Indians here.' But they expected to see tents - a real Indian village living like they did back in 1640."
Mainly, though, Garrett, who is president emeritus of the museum's board of directors, and another elder, Arlene Dyson Butler, 81, recalled old times on the out-of-the-way reservation, or "rez" - 800 acres with a year-round population of about 600. The number doubles in summer when many in the Shinnecock diaspora come "home."
"When I think of Shinnecock, I think of my youth," said Garrett, who spent school vacations with his grandmother, Adelaide Cogbill, on the reservation.
They dug clams with their toes, caught crabs, gathered bay scallops and hauled firewood. Butler, who spent much of her life in the city, earned a degree at New York University and pursued a career in civil service - recalled a Sunday ritual.
After services at the Shinnecock Presbyterian Church, Butler said, children were expected to say a good morning to Rebecca Kellis, "Aunt Becky," the oldest member of the tribe, who lived across the street.
"When I got home, Mom would say, 'Did you see Aunt Becky?' and you wouldn't dare say no," said Butler.
"Even if you didn't see her," joked Garrett.
His family lived in Yonkers, but Garrett, too, spent summer in Southampton. "I loved it," said Garrett. "Running around with the little fellas, here."
There was a sense of being where you were supposed to be, the elders said. "It's tradition," said Butler. "It's what we mean by culture, I think."
They are native people, Garrett and Butler said, and they are American. In a diverse culture, the trick is to be part of the whole without sacrificing group identity.
"I think of myself as a Native American," said Butler. "I don't think of myself as just an American. I have to. I was trained this way. I was taught this way. This is how we grew up."
Society still makes distinctions along racial lines, Butler said. "People don't look at you and say, 'oh, you're Native American, I respect you.' " Often, she said, the message is - "you're backward, you're stupid."
Some Shinnecocks have done well. There are plenty of nice, well-kept homes on the reservation. But many have not prospered. The 2000 census shows that half the people on the reservation live in poverty.
Just down Old Montauk Highway is Southampton village - one of the ritziest spots in the nation. And the famous Shinnecock Hills golf course, built in the 1890s by Indian work crews, is a stately, splendid testament to the good life. John Strong, a retired Southampton College historian who studies Native American cultures and has written about the Shinnecock, said the tribe has adapted to the 21st Century - emphasizing health care, nutritional services and education. He said there have been no dramatic demographic shifts on the reservation.
The elders - including another, Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile, 74 - said they were cheered because young people seem dedicated to preserving tribal ways. They mentioned the "June meeting," an annual family church gathering, and "Pow-Wow" festivities on Labor Day weekend and Thanksgiving observances - the Indian holiday on the third Thursday of November and then another meal to mark the national holiday a week later.
But the old ways do not cancel the new. Among notices on a bulletin board near the center parking lot was one for "a fitness program designed by and for Native Americans to promote healthy lifestyles in our community." Come one, come all, it said, to "Rez Robics."
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