Museum of the Cherokee Indian

Cherokee, North Carolina

This museum opened in 1948, but it wasn't until the late 1990s, with an influx of Indian casino cash, that it moved into its current home.

Its exhibits go back 11,000 years, when the Cherokee were killing mastodons with spears. Memorable highlights include a sad wax dummy diorama of a Cherokee couple burying their child along the frozen Trail of Tears; the bloody -- or perhaps just rusty -- ax of Bob Benge, who used it to kill white settlers in Virginia; a hologram of an old Cherokee man telling tribal stories beside a campfire; and the rifle used to execute Tsali, a Cherokee who killed a U.S. soldier, then turned himself in so that other Cherokee could flee into the hills, where their descendants eventually established Cherokee and founded the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.