104 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



Around the Gulf of California are the Piman and Yuman stocks, 

 and these, owing to their homogeneous environment, furnish better 

 materia] for the student of comparative ethnology. 



In exhibiting material from the Pacific slope, owing to the great 

 variety of stocks crowded in circumscribed areas, the study was made 

 of special regions offering natural conditions. Between Vancouver 

 Island and Mount St. Elias is a vast forest region, the waters abound- 

 ing in fish. Here are the Koluschan, Chimmessyan, Skittagetan, and 

 Wakashan stocks, and their homogeneous environment enables the 

 ethnologist to study the diversities of tribes and stock, so far as they 

 are expressed in natural things. 



The Salishan and Shahaptian stocks together occupy the drainage of 

 the Lower Prazer and Columbia rivers and could easily be considered 

 apart. But from the mouth of Columbia River to the Santa- Barbara 

 Islands there is such a confusion of languages that we should hardly 

 expect to find a new set of activities corresponding to each one of 

 them. 



The effort was made during the year to set up in proper costume 

 groups of men, women, and children belonging to the largest of these 

 stocks, engaged in some characteristic operation, so as to give to the 

 visitors to the exhibition some idea of how the people would look in 

 their homes. In addition to this, an arrangement was made for a series 

 of alcoves, each one devoted to a separate stock. The objects were to be 

 arranged in these alcoves to show the habitation, industries, and activ- 

 ities of the tribes belonging to the several stocks. Supplementary to 

 this, a series of alcoves was devoted to characteristic arts, and in these 

 the materials, apparatus, and products of each art were arranged upon 

 an ethnographic basis, enabling the beholder to compare tribe with 

 tribe upon the basis of a single industry. 



Inasmuch as a large amount of American aboriginal handiwork is 

 made by women, it has been thought advisable to devote one alcove 

 exclusively to woman's work. The object of this is especially to show 

 that the seeds of our modern industrial life were sown by women in 

 savagery. Whether we regard the exploitation of the earth for min- 

 erals in the shape of day for pottery or materials for cooking vessels 

 and cutlery, the gleaning of the fields and forests for plants to be 

 worked up into food and textile, or the manipulation of animal sub- 

 stances of food, shelter, clothing or useful apparatus, the result is the 

 same. It has been decided to exhibit these results in an alcove espe- 

 cially set apart for women's work. 



ACCESSIONS. 



The following accessions, made during the year, deserve special men- 

 tion : 



Asa result of the patenl congress, Miss Nellie Long Maynard loaned to the Na- 

 tional Museum, through Mr. George W. Maynard, the collection <>t' models and fire- 



