New display cases at the Peoria Riverfront Museum hold an impressive collection of hand-carved waterfowl decoys, but they’re also the symbol of a new business relationship between a Native American tribe and the city that bears its name.
The cases are the result of a nearly two year-long collaboration between the museum and the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. The 14 cases currently hold around 100 decoys, around 50 of them on long-term loan from the American Folk Art Museum in New York.
The other decoys come from collections around Illinois, including some crafted in Peoria in the early to mid-20th century. Riverfront Museum President and CEO John Morris said the decoys are an appropriate first feature for the new cases.
“[Decoys] are the ultimate invention of indigenous peoples, adapted by immigrants to this country, that have become, in my mind, a metaphor for self-reliance and creativity and competition and love of country and love of the land,” he said on Monday at the museum.

Chief Craig Harper of the Peoria tribe said decoys as a concept reflect a unique trait of Native Americans.
“One of our great skill sets, one of our real great skill sets, is to take a practical thing and make it beautiful,” he said. “And so we see these artists that have done that exact same thing. They took a practical thing, they put their individual artistic impression onto it and made it beautiful. And then, 100 years later, we still celebrate these things.”
According to the Riverfront Museum, the Peoria tribe is a confederation of Kaskaskia, Peoria, Piankashaw and Wea Indians that united under a single name in 1854. They originated in the land surrounding the Great Lakes, as the great mound civilizations of the central United States formed 2,000 to 3,000 years ago.
Morris said this is, to his knowledge, the first business transaction between the Central Illinois region and the Peoria tribe in recent history.
Chief Harper said he’s pleased this means the start of a new relationship between the city and the tribe. He personally selected the men from the tribe who constructed the cases.

“When we have an opportunity to celebrate the craftsmen that created these [decoys] and then to watch our nation and their craftsmen do the same to create these cases and then bring them back to our homeland, what a great day,” Harper said.
The cases were designed in collaboration with the tribe by the Peoria-based Farnsworth Group and Zach Zetterburg, curator of art, folk art and the Center for American Decoys at the museum.
The cases are funded by the museum’s Ronald P. Bonati Fund, while the exhibition of decoys from the American Folk Art Museum is made possible by a grant from Walmart heiress Alice Walton’s Art Bridges Foundation.
The Riverfront Museum already has several pieces from the American Folk Heart Museum on display as part of the “Folk” exhibit.
“We’ve heard a lot this afternoon about what’s the next step, what’s going to happen next,” said Jason Busch, director and CEO of the American Folk Art Museum. “And I can say we’ve got another 200 decoys in New York that, with pleasure, we would like to see on long-term viewing here in Peoria.”
The new cases and decoys, both local and on loan from New York, are available for viewing at the Peoria Riverfront Museum today.