764 The Smithsonian Institution 



It drew largely in its illustrations from specimens in the 

 museum, and was accompanied by a vocabulary of the Makah 

 tribe. The Institution was fortunate in having this memoir 

 edited by George Gibbs, whose valuable and enthusiastic 

 work in other departments of ethnology has been commented 

 upon elsewhere. A few years later Swan prepared another 

 work on the Indians of the Northwest coast, which was 

 published in the twentieth volume of the " Contributions to 

 Knowledge." This article, consisting of eighteen pages of 

 text, with seven plates, two of which were in color, treated 

 of "The Haidah Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands." 

 The people considered in this publication are best known by 

 their exquisite carvings of ivory, and the lofty heraldic poles, 

 called totem posts, which are placed before their dwellings 

 as indicative of the gentes of the occupants. The museum 

 collection is especially rich in objects from the Indians de- 

 scribed by Swan in these two memoirs, and their publica- 

 tion led to a new interest in northwestern coast villages. 

 This rich vein of ethnographic material was found to extend 

 along the whole coast from Washington Territory to the 

 Aleutian Islands, and was successfully worked by Niblack and 

 Dall. The former author published, in the Report for 1888, 

 an elaborate monograph of " The Coast Indians of Southern 

 Alaska," in which will be found a detailed account, with 

 figures of many objects in the museum which were deposited 

 there by him. A large and unique collection, which can 

 probably never be duplicated, was made for the National Mu- 

 seum in this region by E. W. Nelson. John Murdoch, at one 

 time librarian of the Smithsonian, had earlier been attached 

 to one of the circumpolar stations at Point Barrow, Alaska. 

 He thus had a rare opportunity to study the Eskimo of 

 that high latitude, which he improved, bringing back much 

 valuable information. His ethnographic report, extended by 



