Back in 1941, the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged a major exhibition called "Indian Art in the United States", a seminal show which demonstrated that scholars and curators had recognised the unstoppable force of a key area of aesthetics and felt obliged to say: "Yes, we recognise this art, these artefacts, for the divinely inspired wonders which they often are." One man who summed up what the American public were seeing, in many cases for the first time, was the ethnographer and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. "Before long," he noted, "these works will appear in museums and galleries of fine art."
He was quite right. But, my God, the new enlightenment has been a long time coming. Indeed, there remain more than a few ethnographers who wonder if it is truly here yet. Many feel that their vitally important discipline is still regarded as a poor relation of the ludicrously labelled "higher arts".
Last year, the British Museum moved its main ethnographical collections back from the Museum of Mankind in the West End of London to its main Bloomsbury site. For a while, certain leading ethnographical staffers tell me, they wondered if their speciality was on the ropes. Now they have been fed a more positive message. The huge Chase Manhattan Bank has endowed the thoroughly impressive Gallery of North America at Bloomsbury, and its first show, "First Peoples, First Contacts", tells the story of the interaction of native Americans with the multifarious incomers. It will feature rotating temporary exhibitions and, essentially in its launch form, will stay in situ for at least five years.
Naturally we shall be beset by bellyachers who complain about the museum accepting the largesse of a vast multinational finance house, but I call their cavils poppycock. The British Museum is one of the treasure houses of the world and costs a fortune to run, and, as the man said in the song: "Round here, baby, you have to take what you can get." Far from trying to brainwash us with a McAmerica of Coca-Cola, Disney and General Motors, the new gallery leads those who enter it on a stylishly researched and illustrated tour of native America. As we wander round it clockwise, we meet myriad peoples and utterly beguiling cultures that many in today's USA, never mind here, simply know nothing about.
The gallery pulls no punches. It explains unsentimentally how initially curious explorers, Columbus and Vancouver among them, sadly opened the gates for the colonialists, sharks and expropriators. Where these buccaneers didn't simply slaughter the "Indian" peoples of America, they herded them ruthlessly from their ancestral lands on to reservations where they were often demeaned, abused and soused with alcohol to keep them quiet, the better for the incoming opportunists to clear vast swathes of land for the plantations of the slave trade.
Oklahoma was a particular favourite among such unsought destinations. The incomers saw little obvious use for it, so the ethnics could have it. But even there, in their own nation, proud peoples found themselves permanently 24 hours from Tulsa, and further still, if the more blatantly greedy and bigoted arrivistes could arrange it.
Yet the curators stress that native Americans are no longer a people in retreat, unlike their less fortunate counterparts in Australasia. Demographers tell us that there are now more than three million native Americans, and they are swiftly starting to reclaim their lands, cultures and identities. Enter the Chase Manhattan Gallery and you start with the north-eastern woodlands, which are now lush, leafy New England; soon you are deep in the heart of Texas; next you are overawed by the vastnesses of the great plains of the American West; then you will be seduced by the far-flung, animist cultures of the Pacific north-west, Canada and the Arctic.
A superbly researched and illustrated book tells us the intricacies of the historical interactions between natives and newcomers. It can be a nasty story. There are endless battles, naked repression and the cruel seize. But as you marvel - as you will, or you've a hole in your soul - at Navajo jewellery, Cree fashion, Mohawk surrealism, Creek crafts, Inuit masks, Huron textiles and Kwakwaka'waka sculpture, you enter a world of half-forgotten, disgracefully patronised, different and enduringly fascinating peoples.
You will hear of spirits, of dreamplans used by hunters before a whale or caribou chase, of sacred objects viewed as having human souls, and be entertained at lengthy, joyous potlatches or "tribal" shindigs. You will learn how many native peoples are now insisting on involving themselves in how their simultaneously functional and beauteous heritage and artefacts are preserved and represented in museums and galleries. Already there are plans to enlarge the basic Chase Manhattan Gallery, and new temporary shows are even now being planned. I should certainly like to see separate exhibitions on commendably recalcitrant peoples such as the Seminoles of Florida, who simply would not be moved. However, this is a fine start to a continuing survey of a vast land, where, before English, Spanish and French incomers arrived, 25 per cent of all known world languages were spoken.
We should salute the natural pride of the indigenous peoples of North America. We should remember, too, that four years ago, the country rocker Tim McGraw caused a stir with an ostensibly excellent record: "I'm an Indian outlaw/Half-Cherokee and Choctaw/My baby she's a Chippewaw/She's a-one of a kind." Curiously, once ethnic groups tuned into this fine song, more than a few radio stations found it in their interest to demur, when urged by listeners with red necks, white socks and Blue Ribbon beers, from permitting it to blare through the heat haze of a still-divided Bible belt and across the Gulf of Mexico. Oh - and why does neither American nor British English boast a suitably acceptable term for those of mixed native and incomer ethnicity like the Spanish mestizo or the French Canadian metis? I suppose that even the sparkling and inspiring new Chase Manhattan Gallery cannot be expected to answer every question, on every potentially turbulent topic, at once.
The Chase Manhattan Gallery of North America is at the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1. Tel 020 7636 1555. The accompanying book/catalogue to "First Peoples, First Contacts" by J C H King costs £14.99
