EEPORT OF THE SECRETARY. , 25 



The family groups illustrated the most effective museum method 

 of presenting ethnological material. The catalogue describes the 

 groups as follows: 



The Eskimo family gi'oup comprises seven life-size figures clad in the native 

 costumes and colored according to life, engaged in the usual summer vocations 

 and amusements. At the left a woman is cooking meat in a primitive pottery 

 vessel, and another woman is putting dried fish in the storehouse. In the back- 

 ground a man with a sinew-backed bow is watching a youth practicing with his 

 sling. On the right another man is seated on the ground carving, a wooden 

 dish with a curved knife, and two little girls are playing with their native toys. 

 The structure in the back of the case is a representation of the storehouse 

 commonly used by the western Eskimo. The dwelling groups show the houses 

 to be dome-shaped, made of earth piled over a -cobwork of timbers erected in 

 an excavation in the ground. In the summer a passageway gives entrance, but 

 in the winter a tunnel is built. A bench on which the people sleep runs around 

 the wall on the inside of the house. The cooking within the dwelling is done 

 in a pottery vessel suspended over a lamp. 



The group representing the Zulu-Kaffir and Bantu tribes, which live in the 

 semiarid southern extremity of the African continent, depicts the natives as 

 physically strong and energetic and not so dark as the true negro. This race is 

 superior in military and social organizations and compares favorably in the 

 arts and industries with other African families. The group shows a section of 

 a house with a doorway, a fireplace on which a woman is cooking mush, a 

 woman dipping beer from a large pottery jar, a woman from the field with a 

 hoe, a water carrier with a jar on her head, a man playing a marimba or 

 xylophone, and a boy driving a goat. The natives are represented as they 

 existed some years ago, before they were affected by contact with the white 

 man. Other cases include models of the native African dwellings and examples 

 of the handiwork of these people, an interesting feature of which is the primi- 

 tive ironwork in which many African tribes were highly skilled. 



The next group takes the exposition visitor from Africa across the Atlantic 

 to northern South America, where dwells the Carib in the forested tropical 

 interior of British Guiana. Some of the tribes of this great race have only 

 recently been visited by white men. Here is to be seen a Carib warrior with 

 his blowgun, a woman and a child squeezing cassava in a primitive lever 

 press, another woman decorating a tree gourd with characteristic interlocking 

 designs, and a child playing with a pet parrot. A hammock swung between two 

 house posts represents the form of bed in general use in ancient as well as 

 modern Latin America. Among the articles manufactured by these natives 

 examples of ceremonial objects and articles of personal adornment are ex- 

 hibited, including headdresses, earrings, belts, arm bands, necklaces, and capes. 



A fourth family group represents the Dyaks of the island of Borneo. They 

 are expert house and boat builders and skilled in the use of the blowgun. 

 Rice, sago, tropical fruits, monkeys, wild pigs, and other game, yield them 

 subsistence. The men are warlike, and are still, to some extent, head-hunters, 

 their weapons being spears, short swords, and blowguns with poison-tipped 

 darts. The Dyak family group is represented on the porch of a communal 

 house, carrying on various occupations. A woman is pounding rice in a wooden 

 mortar, while another is represented as bringing in a basket of rice on her 

 back, a third is making a basket, a man armed with a bayoneted blowgun is 

 approaching with a freshly killed monkey, and two children are shown playing 

 cat's cradle, a popular native game. 



