50 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1907. 



The amount allotted from the former appropriation to the Institu- 

 tion and Museum by the Ter-Centennial Commission was only 

 $16,000, with which to prepare and install a comprehensive collec- 

 tion illustrating the aboriginal, colonial, and national history of 

 America, but it is believed that an effective result has been attained 

 even with these slender means. A separate building connected with 

 one of the main Government buildings by an open colonnade, known 

 as Annex B, and containing about 6,000 square feet of floor space, 

 was assigned to the Institution and its branches. 



Mr. W. de C. Ravenel, Administrative Assistant of the Museum, 

 was designated to represent the Institution and the Museum, and the 

 preparation of the collection was carried forward and completed in 

 accordance with plans submitted by him and approved by the Secre- 

 tary. The following account relates only to the part taken by the 

 Museum. A more detailed report of the entire exhibit under the 

 Institution will be published later in the report of the Smithsonian 



propel'. 



The object sought by the Museum was to convey a correct impres- 

 sion of the character and culture of the aborigines, of the principal 

 events in American history during the three hundred years succeed- 

 ing the arrival of Capt. John Smith, and incidentally of the progress 

 made in certain fields of invention. This plan was carried out by 

 the assembling of collections of prehistoric Indian household imple- 

 ments, and of representations of the arts of Alaska and the outlying 

 possessions. Porto Rico, Hawaii, Samoa, and the Philippine Islands: 

 by means of groups of life-sized Lay figures, photographs, paintings, 

 engravings, and colonial and revolutionary relics, illustrating certain 

 periods, costumes, and historic events; by the use of models illustra- 

 tive of primitive methods of land transportation in America and 

 early water transportation by steam, including some of the impor- 

 tant early railway locomotives, such as the Stevens locomotive of 

 1825; the "Tom Thumb." constructed by Peter Cooper, which in 

 1829 drew a car of passengers 13 miles in fifty-seven minutes: the 

 English "Stourbridge Lion;" the American "Best Friend." built 

 in 1831, and others; by means of models of the Morse telegraph and 

 Iiell telephone apparatus, pieces of apparatus used by Prof. Joseph 

 Henry in connection with his electrical researches, and a series of 

 American small arms, muskets, rifles, and carbines, illustrating vari- 

 ous stages of development down to the United States army rifle of 

 1903. 



The most interesting group historically, prepared under the super- 

 vision of Mr. W. II. Holmes. Chief of the Bureau of American Eth- 

 nology, depicts Capt. John Smith accompanied by ten of his com- 

 rades in the costumes of 1607, with arms of the same period, trading 

 for corn with a party of Powhatan Indians at the mouth of the 



