The following are a few examples of the items in the Permanent Collection      

 4000 year old     Historical Yavapai     Prescott Culture           Children’s   

      Artifacts             Baskets                   Pottery              Hands-On Table  

       Models of                 Katsina                Kate Cory’s         Smoki People

       Dwellings                   Dolls                  Paintings               History

For the last six months of 2011, the Smoki Museum had a special exhibit of 18 gouache renderings of sand paintings that were included in the book entitled, When the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial.  These sand paintings were used in the ceremony for departing soldiers and were given by Jeff King, a Navajo Medicine Man.  The book was recently discovered in the Museum’s library collection and reflect the original paintings.  

The prints not only tell a portion of the Navajo creation story, but also are reproductions of sand paintings used in a war ceremonial.  The ceremony was traditionally performed for young men going to war but could also be applied to ward off illnesses caused by contact with enemies.  The person for whom the ceremony is given sits or stands on the paintings absorbing their strength and transferring sickness to the paintings which were destroyed after the ceremony to get rid of the sickness.  

With Jeff King’s permission, Maud Lewis, in the early 1940’s,  reproduced the images to insure they would be preserved when the medicine man was no longer able to draw them.