BANDELIER 



PIONEER STUDENT OF ANCIENT 

 AMERICAN RACES 



By Clark Wissler 



ADOLPH FRANCIS ALPHONSE 

 BANDELIER died in Madrid, 

 Spain, on March 18, 1914. He 

 was born at Berne, Switzerland, in 1840 

 and came to America while a youth. In 

 early life he resided in Highland, Illinois, 

 where he was married to Josephine Huegy 

 in 1862. He was always a student and 

 during the formative period of his life 

 came under the influence of Lewis H. 

 Morgan, one of the world's most noted 

 social philosophers. In conversation. 

 Dr. Bandelier always referred to Morgan 

 as "my revered teacher." That the 

 influence of Morgan was fundamental is 

 clear from Bandelier's writings, for he 

 never approaches the social problems 

 of ethnology from any other than the 

 Morgan point of view. This is espe- 

 cially true of his first important work, 

 an epoch-making study of the Aztecs, 

 published in 1877-8. 



Dr. Bandelier's first important work 

 in archaeology began with his commis- 

 sion by the Archaeological Institute of 

 America to survey and report upon the 

 pueblo ruins of New Mexico. This work 

 occupied his whole time from 1880-1889. 

 He traversed, chiefly on foot, the entire 

 Rio Grande Valley, examined and sur- 

 veyed all the known village sites, made a 

 careful study of the historical traditions 

 of the living Indians and made masterly 

 use of the Spanish archives. By corre- 

 lating the accounts of the surviving 

 Indians and the records of the early 

 Spanish explorers with his own objective 

 study of the ruins, he was able to sepa- 

 rate the historic from the prehistoric 

 ruins. His reports extend through sev- 

 eral volumes and constitute the great 



classic of American archaeological re- 

 search. 



In 1892, Dr. Bandelier began collect- 

 ing and investigating the archaeology 

 of Peru under the direction of the late 

 Henry Villard. In 1894, Mr. Villard 

 presented the collection to this Museum. 

 The Museum then took up the work 

 and supported it continuously until 

 1901. During this time Dr. Bandelier 

 was working systematically and steadily 

 in Peru. With the approval of Profes- 

 sor F. W. Putnam, then curator of 

 anthropology, he set out to do in Peru 

 what he had done in Arizona and New 

 Mexico: i. e., to make an exhaustive 

 investigation of the Peruvians by corre- 

 lating historical, ethnological and archae- 

 ological researches. 



In 1903 he came to New York to 

 work up his data and was officially con- 

 nected with the American Museum un- 

 til 1906, when he resigned to take up 

 some research work in the Hispanic 

 Museum. Shortly after, illness over- 

 took him and left him permanently 

 disabled. In consequence the results of 

 his Peruvian work remain unformulated, 

 the task he had undertaken being too 

 exacting for his declining years. Thus, 

 unfortunately, his most distinctive work 

 will be the archaeology of the Rio 

 Grande Valley and the ethnology of 

 the Aztecs. 



The selection of Dr. Bandelier by the 

 directors of the Archaeological Institute 

 to carry out their plans in the Southwest 

 was chiefly due to the strong indorse- 

 ment given him by Lewis H. Morgan. 

 In the report of the Archaeological Insti- 

 tute for 1881 announcing his appoint- 



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