Museum of Native American History

Wide-ranging Native American collection covering 14,000 years of life in the Americas

The Museum of Native American History is one of Bentonville's quieter surprises, a privately founded museum that takes the long view rather than stopping at frontier-era material. Its galleries move from Paleoindian stone tools through Mississippian, Plains, Woodlands, and Southwest cultures, which gives the collection a broader reach than you might expect in a small Arkansas city.

It works best as a slow counterpoint to Crystal Bridges and the Walmart story elsewhere in town. Allow about an hour, longer if you like archaeological detail; the strongest displays are the early tools, pottery, basketry, beadwork, and objects that show how varied Native cultures were across North America.

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