38 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
ETHNOLOGICAL LOAN COLLECTIONS. 
Encouraged by the results of the use by the school children through- 
out the city of the circulating nature study collections, our Department 
of Anthropology has prepared several series of specimens pertaining to 
different topics in Ethnology. One of these series illustrates the poem 
of Hiawatha and thus shows the life of the Ojibwa Indians. ‘This was 
deposited first in the children’s room at the branch of the New York 
Public Library on Amsterdam Avenue near Eighty-first Street. The 
collection consists of a cradle-board, an arrow, a flute, rolls of birch 
bark, cedar-bark fish-line, model of dug-out canoe, war club, mat, 
invitation-sticks for feasts, stone pipe, tinder, rattle, model showing 
picture-writing, medicine bag, wooden bowl for gambling dice, wooden 
cooking dish, bark food dish, wooden spoon and paddle, splint basket, 
model of snow shoes, busts of Ojibwa youth of the type of Hiawatha, 
of a Siouan maiden representing Minnehaha, of an Ojibwa warrior 
with painted face and of an aged Ojibwa woman of the type of Nokomis. 
The collection is furnished with descriptive labels showing the con- 
nection of the objects with the incidents mentioned in the famous poem. 
Story hours were held each week during the period of the exhibition, 
and the attendance during six weeks has been about three thousand. 
The children have shown a great deal of interest in the exhibit, and 
the circulation of books about Indians has been noticeably increased. 
Another of these loan collections is known as “’The Arctic Exhibit” 
and consists of some excellent artist’s drawings of the Polar Regions, 
old prints of explorers, Eskimo garments, hunting, cooking and fishing 
utensils and other articles. Vhis was first placed in a new branch library 
at St. George, Staten Island, where it remained for nearly four months, 
beginning in June, 1907. It was next placed at East 67th Street near 
Second Avenue, where it was kept from the last week in October until 
December. ‘The third place of exhibit was at the Hudson Park Branch 
on the lower west side, where the collection remained for five weeks, be-- 
ginning Christmas Eve. 
A great deal of interest was aroused by this exhibit, as was evidenced 
by the large attendance at the different libraries, more than five thousand 
persons, mainly but not exclusively children, visiting each branch for 
the express purpose of seeing the collection or reading books referred to: 
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