24 COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



of several minor collections the property of different individuals or 

 different institutions which were necessarily kept apart. This also 

 interfered with the systematic display, such as would be desirable for 

 scientific purposes. It may be noted further that in many instances, 

 indeed in most, there was no relation expressed between the objects 

 displayed and the tribes or nations which occupied the localities from 

 which the objects were derived within the historic period. 



It will be a prominent purpose with me in this report to point out 

 this connection wherever practicable. As to the ethnologists, the most 

 if not the only value of the study of such works, is to illustrate the cul 

 ture and development in art of a given tribe or nation, or, in default of 

 that, to show that the tribe dwelling in a given locality within historic 

 times were not the authors of a series of works found Avithin their area, 

 and that these, therefore, are witnesses to a migration apart from the 

 history of the country as it is known to us. The absence of such iden 

 tification is always to be regretted. 



This observation, however, does not reflect in any way on the board 

 of directors of the Exposition, inasmuch as it was not in their power 

 to secure information of this kind after the materials had been sent to 

 the museum. Much of it, moreover, had been collected by persons who 

 gave little or no attention to close identification of locality, and much 

 of it also had been transmitted from earlier generations, before arche 

 ology had reached the dignity of a science, and its rules were not yet 

 formulated. 



THE MEXICAN DEPARTMENT. 



A large portion of the Mexican exhibit related to the researches of 

 Sefior Plancarte, derived from his excavations in the State of Michoa- 

 can. These were made with much care, and the results clearly cata 

 logued and displayed. The catalogue, which has been referred to, gives 

 minute descriptions where the various objects were found, and also 

 assigns them to their probable original makers. 



The most ancient of these relics are attributed by the finder to cer 

 tain prehistoric peoples whose names are unknown and of whose work 

 we have only a few specimens, three of which are shown and described 

 in the catalogue as belonging to &quot; prehistoric races.&quot; 



One of these is a rough stone, somewhat circular in form, rudely 

 worked and with an elliptical cavity in the center; the second repre 

 sents a human head roughly outlined, the eyes shown by mere cavities 

 and the nose by a protuberance ; these were found together near 

 Jacona, along with an obsidian lance head, the surface of which indi 

 cated marks of extreme age. The human head was of a basaltic lava 

 with a circumference of a little less than half a meter. The evidence 

 would not seem to be conclusive that these objects are to be attributed 

 to a race foreign to that known by history to have inhabited that local 

 ity, although the fact that no signs of pottery were found along with 

 them is negative evidence of some weight. 



