516 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
among the Indians of the Northwest, stressed both the urgency of 
collecting Indian materials and the need for accurate identifications 
of the artifacts obtained. Gibbs wrote: 
. .. It is especially important to make immediate collections, as many articles 
are of perishable nature, and the tribes themselves are passing away or ex- 
changing their Own manufactures for those of the white race. It is hardly 
necessary to specify any of particular interest, as almost every thing has its 
value in giving completeness to a collection ...In making these collections, 
care should be taken to specify the tribes from which they are obtained, and 
where any doubt may exist, the particuiar use to which each is applied. (Gibbs, 
1863, p. 4.) 
Cooperation was enthusiastically offered by men in the Army and 
Navy, Indian agents and agency doctors, consular employees in Latin 
America, and by missionaries and other individuals. Especially im- 
portant were the contributions of field officers of the Army Medical 
Corps, men of scientific training and interests, who, while stationed at 
isolated frontier forts in the West, devoted their spare time to collect- 
ing artifacts from Indians whose confidence they enjoyed. A decade 
before the battle of the Little Big Horn these men were collecting 
among the warlike Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche of the 
Great Plains. Before the Apache Wars in the Southwest they were 
collecting Apache weapons, costumes, and handicrafts. In 1869 the 
Army Medical Museum began to transfer these Indian materials, 
obtained by Army doctors at many field: posts, to the Smithsonian. 
The approach of the great Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 
which was planned for 1876, offered still another major opportunity 
for the Smithsonian to enlarge its North American Indian collections. 
The Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior and the Smith- 
sonian Institution received an appropriation to develop a joint display 
of the ethnology and archeology of the United States at that expo- 
sition. Since the specimens were to be transferred to the Smithsonian 
after the exposition’s close, field collecting for this display was con- 
fined primarily to “those parts of the United States which were not 
already properly represented” in the museum. (Ann. Rep. Smith- 
sonian Inst., 1875, p. 60.) 
The Smithsonian still had no ethnologist on its staff, but a number 
of experienced and able men were active collectors of Indian materials 
for this popular exposition. Swan collected on the Northwest coast, 
Stephen Powers among the Indians of California, Maj. John W. 
Powell in the Great Basin, and Governor Arny in the Southwest. 
Prof. Otis T. Mason of Columbian (now George Washington) Uni- 
versity was engaged to prepare a pamphlet listing over 600 classes 
of artifacts desired for the exhibition. Copies of this pamphlet were 
sent by the Indian Bureau to all its field agents and by the Smith- 
sonian Institution to its correspondents. ‘The response was hearten- 
ing. Among the many small but important collections received was 
