Everywhere James Pepper Henry has lived, the same black-and-white photograph has been displayed: a portrait of Kaw Nation delegates who traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1909, including his great-grandfather, James Pepper, or Mokompah, meaning “Medicine Powder.”
“I’ve had this picture hanging on my wall my whole life,” said Pepper Henry, pointing to the man sitting in the bottom row, second from the left, in the digital version of the photo he now keeps on his cellphone, too.
“This gentleman right here is my great-grandfather … and sitting next to him is a man named Mehojah, which means ‘Gray Blanket.'”
As Pepper Henry was interning in the 1990s at the fledgling National Museum of the American Indian in New York, he was looking through the Kaw items in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection when he saw the name “Mehojah” on one of the drawer labels.
“I opened the drawer, and I saw this otter collar … that is being worn by Mehojah in that historic photograph. And that’s what has inspired me,” Pepper Henry said. “I got so excited, I called the grandson of Mehojah … and I told him about the otter collar. And it made me realize, at that moment, that thousands of objects were in the museum (collection), and each one of them had a story and had a family that they were connected to.”