INTEODUCTIOX. 



THE National Museum has been for years the depository of large and valu 

 able collections illustrative of North American Ethnology, which now form 

 one of its most important departments. In classifying this rich material for the 

 purpose of exhibition during the Centennial Celebration at Philadelphia, it has 

 been thought proper to separate the objects supposed to belong to times ante- 

 ceding the European occupation of the continent from those that are known 

 to have been manufactured Avithin the period of contact between the Indian 

 and the Caucasian. Only thus it became possible to exhibit, approximately 

 at least, the aboriginal state of culture before it had been modified by European 

 influences. The first or archaeological series, to which the following account 

 more particularly refers, comprises objects found in mounds and other burial- 

 places of early date, on and below the surface of the ground, in caves, shell- 

 heaps, etc., in fact all articles of aboriginal workmanship that cannot with 

 certainty be ascribed to any of the tribes which are either still in existence 

 or have become extinct within historical times. These relics, consisting of 

 chipped and ground stone, of copper, bone, horn, shell-matter, clay, and, to a 

 small extent, of wood, have been grouped according to material, and then 

 classed under such denominations as their forms suggested. Similarity of 

 shape afforded the principal guidance in arranging these specimens, many of 

 which leave a wide scope for conjecture as to the uses to which they were 

 applied by their makers. The second or more strictly ethnological series, a 

 description of which is not attempted at present, consists of articles ob 

 tained from existing native tribes by private explorations as well, as by 

 expeditions undertaken by order of the United States Government, and con 

 tains almost every object tending to illustrate their domestic life, hunting, 

 fishing, games, warfare, navigation, traveling by land in short every phase 

 of their existence that can be represented by tangible tokens. The use of 

 these objects, many of which show forms copied from the manufactures of the 

 whites, is in most cases well understood, and they have been arranged accord 

 ing to their mode of application, and without reference to the substances of 



