10 



Beaded panel hung as decoration from a back rest. Collected by S. C. 

 Simms among the Plains Cree in 1903. Photo b} Ron Testa. (19801 



here before the harvesting of hay and grain starts. 



I have done pretty thoroughly about 12 reserves, 

 and with poor results. Have seen no very good speci- 

 mens. Plenty of Hudson's Bay things etc. but not much 

 of the things to make your heart glad. Until a few days 

 ago, have had rain, snow and hail and travelling in this 

 country has been wretched. 



Was greatly disappointed in not being able to get to 

 Nut Lake country — from the little I have seen they are 

 the best, and had the country been at all passable should 

 have made it. 



Remember this. The time to get to these places is 

 'Treaty time' early June. 



Although Simms may have visited 12 reserves, as 

 he says, he appears not to have travelled much beyond 

 those reserves clustered in the southeast corner of Sas- 

 katchewan. Nut Lake, which seemed like a panacea to 

 the weary ethnographer as he struggled with the snow 

 and had weather in the south, is east of Saskatoon in 



country occupied by the Plains Ojibwa. Simms was 

 doubtless correct in assuming that "Treaty time" would 

 be the ideal time for collecting, at least in terms of find- 

 ing the maximum number of Indians congregated in one 

 place. Once each year the Indians of each reserve 

 gathered to receive the cash payments due them under 

 the terms of their treaty with the Canadian government. 



Simms left the Plains Cree country shortly after 

 writing the letter just quoted. On September 23 Dorsey 

 had suggested in a telegram that Simms collect in north- 

 em Minnesota on his way home and although there is 

 no related correspondence, he apparently spent a month 

 on the Leech Lake Ojibwa reservation, near Bemidji. 



Although Simms later carried out fieldwork in the 

 Philippines, which included recovering the body and 

 field notes of Curator William Jones, murdered by the 

 Ilongot of Luzon Island in 1909, his trip to Saskatchewan 

 was his last North American field trip. In June 1907, 

 Simms received an invitation from the "Inspector of In- 

 dian Agencies of Northwest Canada," apparently some- 

 one he had met during his fieldwork, to accompany him 

 to reservations in central Saskatchewan. In a memo 

 requesting permission to make this trip, he reminded 

 Dorsey that he had not been able to reach this area on his 

 previous trip. Dorsey, however, refused permission for 

 the trip on the grounds of lack of funds. 



Several things are apparent from this correspond- 

 ence between Simms and Dorsey. First of all, the pri- 

 mary objective of field workers in the early years of the 

 century was to fill gaps in the collections. Dorsey was 

 determined that along with the ethnographic objects 

 collected, as much documentation as possible should 

 also be obtained to enhance their scientific value. 

 Neither he nor Simms appear to have been interested in 

 acquiring objects that showed the influence of European 

 contact. Above all, it is clear, that Dorsey expected re- 

 sults and was not overly concerned about how they were 

 achieved. Simms and his colleagues in the department 

 did their best to live up to his expectations. 



NOTE 



This article was adapted from J. VanStone, "The Simms 

 Collection of Plains Cree Material Culture from Southeastern 

 Saskatchewan" (Fieldiana: Anthropology, new series, no. 6, 

 1983). Most of the information was obtained from correspond- 

 ence files in the Department of Anthropology and from 

 Annual Reports of the Museum. An obituary of Simms 

 appeared in Field Museum News, vol. 8, no. 3, 1937. For an 

 excellent overview of the history of Field Museum's North 

 American Indian collections, see P. Rabineau, "North Amer- 

 ican Anthopology at Field Museum of Natural History" 

 (American Indian Art Magazine, vol. 6, no. 4, 1981, pp. 30-37, 

 79). 



