This pueblo-style museum displays Southwestern American Indian objects – baskets, pottery, kachina dolls – dating from prehistoric times to the present. The museum works with area tribes to instill understanding and respect for the region's indigenous cultures, and Hopi, Apache, Yavapai, Paiute, Papago, Hualapai and other cultures are represented. Surprisingly, the 'Smoki Tribe' (smoke-eye) is fiction – a philanthropic society created by white Prescottonians to raise money for the city's rodeo.
The society's annual Hopi Snake Dance, considered a religious mockery by local tribes, was discontinued in 1990.
