After a 14-month closure due to Covid-19, the Mashantucket Museum reopened to the public on May 18, 2021. The 300,000 square foot museum is the largest Native American museum of art and culture in the country. Opened in August 1998, this state-of-the-art research institution was established solely by the funds of the Mashantucket Pequot people as a non-profit cultural resource. Today, the Museum is sustained through tribal support, grants, sponsorships, donations and the support of private and corporate members. Click here for a 3-minute video tour of the major exhibits and here for an 18-minute video of the Museum.

(Above) The building opens into the glassed-in Gathering Space which holds a giant mishoon with a display of tribal members paddling. Displays on the floor below depict scenes of tribal life.

(Top row, above) The tour begins with displays of life in a cold climate by traveling through a glacial crevasse during the Ice Age when all of New England was covered by ice and woolly mammoths roamed the landscape. (Bottom row, above) One scene depicts trading furs and wampum while others show a life-sized re-creation of a caribou hunt from 11,000 years ago when the ice began to retreat.

(Above) Some of archaeologist Kevin McBride‘s tools are on display along with a display about growing corn with squash and beans (the Three Sisters) which fed the tribes for the past 500 years.

Visitors are invited to walk through a Pequot Village and imagine life before the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century.