09/15/2026
Our next features from Sa:gwáyoˀ Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ/Cayuga People, We Returned are the Passenger Pigeon and Two Row Wampum Belt.
The exhibit closes on Saturday, September 19 with a Curators’ Talk from 2 - 4 PM, join us!
Passenger Pigeon
Taxidermy
N.d.
Courtesy of Roosevelt Wild Life Collection, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
The Passenger Pigeon: From Abundance to Extinction:
Once so abundant that their tremendous flocks were said to darken the sky for hours at a time, the passenger pigeon was an important relative for Hodinǫhsǫ́:nih communities and played a vital role within broader ecological systems.
The birds moved across eastern North America in vast numbers, shaping forest environments through their feeding, migration, and nesting patterns while participating in complex relationships with other species, such as the American chestnut that evolved alongside them. These trees provided passenger pigeons with shelter and chestnuts, while the latter’s movement helped disperse the former’s seeds. Yet, American commercial hunting operations killed millions of birds annually, while large-scale deforestation destroyed critical habitats. By 1914, the passenger pigeon became completely extinct, marking a devastating human-driven extinction.
For the Hodinǫhsǫ́:nih, the passenger pigeon existed not simply as a resource, but as part of an interconnected network of reciprocal relations between human and non-human relatives. The Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ once used the Pigeon Dance as a spring ceremony, and they prepared pigeons as a customary dish at that same time of year. With the passenger pigeon’s extinction, though, the Pigeon Dance is now conducted as a social dance, and seasonal dishes rely on different birds such as chickens and wild turkeys. Ultimately, the expansion of American settler colonialism in the nineteenth century violently disrupted the relationship between the passenger pigeon, the American chestnut, and the Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ people.
Tony Gonyea (Onoñda’gegá’/Onǫdagehó:nǫˀ/Onondaga Beaver Clan)
Two Row Wampum Belt
Wampum Belt Replica
2013
Courtesy of New York State Museum, Albany, NY
Modes of Diplomacy Before and Duri
