It is the country's table of contents writ in stone and artifact and it is where thousands upon thousands of America's native people came yesterday to proudly inscribe the final entry: a museum dedicated to Indian existence, located on this pantheon's last bit of available land.
From the first breaks of sun, indigenous people from Peru to Alaska began drumming and dancing, chanting and celebrating the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, a curving limestone creation, largely a product of the continent's native inhabitants.
"What's important is that native people are recognized after hundreds of years in our own museum," said Vicky Holt Takamine, as she led her Hawaiian tribe in a traditional chant that urged, "stand together; stand in unity."
"There are still many issues, yet we survive," she said. "We are not here for the government but for native people. This is a milestone."
The museum -- the latest in the Smithsonian's collection -- is the culmination of two decades of Indian persistence, backed by senators Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), who addressed yesterday's gathering. It draws greatly on consultations with tribes. Three with lucrative casinos -- including New York's Oneidas -- each contributed $10 million to the roughly $220-million cost; the United States put in $119 million and private donations provided the rest.
Run by native people, the museum tries to show them as a diverse, vibrant ethnic group, rather than a quaint curiosity of the American past. It is also yet another high-wattage sign that Indian country is in a new era of advancement and hope, even as it continues to be weighed down by poverty, poor education and social and medical ills.
"We know the reality of our lives: There has been a great tragedy and holocaust of sorts with Native American people," said Ray Halbritter, the Oneida's nation representative. "But today is a story of celebration, it's about the future as much as it is about the past."
W. Richard West, the museum's director and a Southern Cheyenne, told the crowd the space on the mall symbolizes a "cultural reconciliation that for so long has alluded American history."
As they waited to get a first viewing, or just revel in the weeklong festivities taking place around the opening, those gathered here sensed they were making history.
"You have to start somewhere," said Lance Gumbs, the chairman of the trustees of Long Island's Shinnecock Nation who brought about 80 members to Washington. "It's an uplifting feeling for our people to know that we are not alone."
Indeed, the museum presents an overwhelmingly positive, peaceful and dynamic representation of Indian life: everything from modernistic painting and sculpture to fishing poles and baseball caps to the indigenous foods featured in the cafeteria.
But with its billing as history, the museum is also taking on a burden that some Indians worry it may not be fully embracing. There is little in the way of gut-wrenching confrontation with the epic American persecution of Indians.
Robert Odawi Porter, a Seneca and the director of Syracuse University's Center for Indigenous Law, Governance and Citizenship, said the museum, the largest of its kind in the world, needs to be more than "the equivalent of a pow-wow."
"Americans have been engaged in a systematic effort to eliminate the indigenous people of this continent and most Americans don't know that. No one is saying build a temple to that, but if it's all about warmed-over happy Indians it is going to be a lost opportunity."
The museum is still a work in progress. Its designers promise additional exhibits and its supporters stress it is showing Indian history and culture in the first person.
At one of the largest gatherings of so many different tribes, Ron His Horse is Thunder, the president of Sitting Bull College in North Dakota and a Standing Rock Sioux said: "Everybody wants to push us back to the past. But this museum brings us into contemporary society and it shows people we are alive."
Inside the sanctuary visitors seemed satisfied at least that their people had finally claimed a prime spot in the American historical landscape.
"I'm speechless," said Ory Cuellar, a Shawnee from Oklahoma, as she watched a video of traditional native stories. "This not a collection of things from the past, it is a link from our people's past to the present.
"This shows us as we were and as we are."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.