Ray, Christine, and John Fadden opened the Museum for its first season during the summer of 1954. The wood that went into the lumber of the initial structure was milled at a local saw mill from trees felled by Ray Fadden. The museum, originally two rooms large, expanded to four rooms producing a building approximately 80' x 20'. The Museum's design reflects  the architecture of a traditional Haudenosaunee (Six Iroquois Nations Confederacy) bark house. The long bark house is a metaphor for the Six Nations Confederacy, symbolically stretching from East to West across ancestral territory. The Mohawks are the Keepers of the Eastern Door, the Senecas are the Keepers of the Western Door, the Onondagas are the Fire Keepers and the Oneidas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras (admitted into the Confederation in the early 18th century) are the Younger Brothers.