“American Indians and Route 66” guide published

A 68-page “American Indians and Route 66” guide for tourists recently was published, along with its companion website.

“American Indians and Route 66” is a partnership between the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association and the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, which awarded a cost-share grant for the publication. Lisa Hicks Snell, a member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, wrote the guide. It also received help from 19 tribes and pueblos along Route 66.

The entire guide may be viewed online below, or downloaded as a PDF:

The “American Indians and Route 66” guide takes a traveler east to west on Route 66, listing Native American attractions and resources along the way. The guidebook is heavily illustrated. It comes with sidebar stories on each page and quotes from Native Americans about Route 66 and U.S. history.

I lived in Oklahoma for years, so a learned a lot about Native American history simply through osmosis. However, I learned a few things with the “American Indians and Route 66” guide.

A few observations:

— The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 was designed to help Native Americans move from impoverished reservations to five major cities for jobs. However, many Native Americans consider the legislation a “second Trail of Tears.” Chicago, one those five cities, now has 65,000 Native American residents and has an American Indian Center-Chicago organization that throws an annual powwow there.

— More than half of Route 66 — 1,372 miles — is Indian country.

— Route 66 is loaded with well-meaning but wrong Native American designs and symbols. The two Wigwam Motels on Route 66, for instance, don’t contain wigwam replicas, but tepees that were not in that part of the country. Also, the feathered headdresses were worn only by Plains Indians and not by the tribes in the Southwest. The guide cites many years of Hollywood movies as the reason for such pop-culture errors.

— Cherokees consider the Great Depression another Trail of Tears because thousands left Oklahoma to look for work. As a result, California has one of the largest populations of Cherokees.

— Indian mounds once dotted St. Louis, but they almost all were bulldozed to make way for development. Only one of the mounds remains. More are across the river in Illinois, at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.

— The guide contains informative sections about etiquette at powwows, pueblos and Indian ruins.

— The center section also contains an impressive map of all the Native American nations.

— The guide has a fascinating breakdown of the Indian symbols used on the famous neon sign at Tepee Curios in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

“American Indians and Route 66” is a terrific tourism guide, even better than what I anticipated. It will inspire new types of Route 66 journeys or, at the least, give tourists new ideas on where to stop.

UPDATE: A PDF of the publication also may be downloaded here.

(Hat tip to Michael Wallis)