WASHINGTON, D.C. - It's already been consecrated a cathedral, a spiritual marker of the ages, a beautiful Native place, a monument of magnificence.

And the National Museum of the American Indian has been open for only a few days.

Its breathtaking nature - an architectural sensation housing the world's most extensive collection of Native objects - is not disputed.

But as museums go, it is a paradox.

It evokes life. And some say it hides death.

The life is in the corn gardens outside, the stories of the people, the building's structure.

As the sun rose Wednesday, marking the fall solstice, the morning light bathed its exterior walls. It poured through eastern windows and caressed the same sand-colored limestone inside. The rock absorbed the sun's energy and released it with a golden hue.

After the museum's grand opening Tuesday, 17,700 people walked through its doors during the first 24 hours. It remained open through the midnight-to-dawn hours to accommodate an additional 3,200 visitors without passes. The opening brought with it a weeklong schedule of festivities.

"To open up the museum, we needed a celebration," said Eloise Cobell of the Blackfeet Nation. "We needed to feel good about ourselves and who we are. That's what we did. We all came away so empowered and ready to get back to our communities."

Early reaction to the museum invoke its splendor.

"This is what our tribal members said: it's beautiful. It's all naturally beautiful," said Tom Jones, a Yavapai from the Fort McDowell Reservation in Arizona.

"The museum made me feel proud of who I am," said Sara Young, a Crow. "It made me know other people were going to see the beauty also the wisdom of Native American cultures."

But for some, that is not enough when telling the story of Native people.

Some have noted the museum's 8,000 works of art on display and its major exhibits evoke more joy than pain. A CNN report asked: Are Indians hiding their history? Where is Sitting Bull? What happened to the tragedy of the Americas?

"American society is much more comfortable in dealing with us in the past, then they don't have to deal with us as contemporary beings," said Henrietta Mann, a semi-retired Indian Studies professor at Montana State University-Bozeman.

"There is a very tragic history that one has to deal with, but that is certainly not the focal point of the National Museum of the American Indian."

Mann, vice-chair of the museum's board of trustees, said the museum aims "to provide bridges of understanding for contemporary Americans so they know that we are still here."

The museum's contemporary take - its lack of Sitting Bull images, for instance - doesn't include the familiar reference points some need to understand Native peoples.

But for Natives, the pain of the past and present is there.

"As an Indian, just looking at the pictures of the modern day Indian - as an Indian - you know where people come from. There's a lot of tragedy. Just look at the faces of them people," said William Walks Along, a Northern Cheyenne Tribal Councilman.

Leaders of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis are among those who describe the museum as a "magnificent institution" that will "stand forever in displaying the beautiful culture of the indigenous people."

But in a statement signed by AIM leaders - Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Dennis Banks and Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt - that display is not enough:

"The museum falls short in that it does not characterize or does not display the sordid and tragic history of America's holocaust against the Native Nations and peoples of the Americas."

If visitors are looking for in-your-face tragedy, it's there. They can meet death on the fourth floor in the "Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories" exhibit.

As if anticipating controversy, a video narrator tells of how makers of history have a point of view, an agenda. Museum makers are no different, he implies: "View what's offered with respect but with a skepticism. Explore this gallery. Reflect on it. Argue it."

Inside are the stories of indigenous struggle. It's a pain and tragedy that spans centuries, an historical grief that lives today.

It starts with the biological catastrophe brought on by European swords, disease and divide-and-conquer tactics used on Native peoples.

The text on the wall here reads:

Mexico 1520: "It was a dreadful illness, and many people died of it. No one could move, not even to turn their heads. If they did move, their bodies, they screamed in pain. They could not get up to search for food, so they starved to death in their beds." - Fr. Bernadino de Sahagun.

Caribbean 1493: "There occurred an epidemic of small pox so virulent that it left Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba desolated of Indians" - Gonzalo Fernandez De Ovido y Valdes.

New England 1616: "The Indians died in heapes as they lay in their houses And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle that, as I travailed in the forrest near the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new found Golgotha." - Thomas Morton, New English Canaan

Indigenous people nearly ceased to exist between 1492 and 1650, the writing on the wall said, a decimation of life unseen in the course of history.

Although less exhibit space is devoted to tragedy, people are getting the message.

"Whoa," Anne Marie Abrigo, a visitor from San Jose, Calif., said to herself as she began to read the text on a wall. When she finished the short paragraph, she was stunned.

"It's incredible, nine out of 10 people died of disease because the Europeans came over. I knew that happened, but not as severe as that. I'm glad this is here; more people ought to know this," she said.

The story of decimation is not hidden in the museum. The fact that indigenous people survived it led to the creation of the museum.

"Our cultures are still vibrant and alive and we bring them with us today This museum stands as that symbol, that our spirit is indomitable," said Mann, the Indian Studies professor from Montana.

"I consider the museum our ultimate blessing as people."

(Jodi Rave, who covers Native issues for Lee Enterprises, can be reached at 406-523-5299 or jodi.ravemissoulian.com.)