December 22, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



825 



interest and attraction to visitors, while its 

 results form a substantial contribution to 

 knowledge, 



4. The general view of human develop- 

 ment opens a vista extending so far into 

 the past and so widely into the field of 

 man's activity that the recorded history of 

 any particular province or people seems 

 small in comparison ; yet the history of a 

 province or a people forms an effective 

 introduction to the full history of man- 

 kind : accordingly, the written history of 

 the Louisiana Purchase gave a keynote for 

 the department as well as a motive for the 

 exposition, and the exhibits were chosen 

 and arranged in consonance with this view. 

 Here, too, the work was made feasible by 

 the cooperation of liberal institutions and 

 individuals, chiefly historical societies and 

 working historians. The nucleus, was the 

 collection of the Missouri Historical So- 

 ciety, illustrating by manuscripts and 

 books, relics and portraits, maps and 

 sketches, every important step in the de- 

 velopment of the metropolis of the Louisi- 

 ana Purchase Territory and in the growth 

 of the commonwealth with which it has 

 come up ; and also illustrating by aborig- 

 inal relies the protohistoric development of 

 the district from the times of aboriginal 

 settlement, the building of earthen tumuli 

 and temples, the growth of a primitive 

 agriculture, and the advent of the bison 

 and its hunters, into the period and through 

 the centuries of discovery and acquisition 

 and industrial conquest by white men. A 

 supplementary illustration of development 

 and conquest from the aboriginal condition 

 to that of a great commonwealth comes 

 from the Iowa State Historical Depart- 

 ment; and collections serving to fill in the 

 details of the general outline were exhib- 

 ited by the Franco-Louisiana Society, the 

 Louisiana State Historical Society, the 

 Chicago Historical Society, and other co- 



operating exhibitors. The picture of prog- 

 ress so drawn was extended backward into 

 the unwritten past of protohistory (or of 

 relics interpreted in the light of observation 

 on peoples of corresponding culture) partly 

 by means of the synthetic series, partly by 

 various exhibits representing the period of 

 transition from Indian occupancy to white 

 supremacy ; this outline was then perfected 

 by ar.cheologic collections representing the 

 prehistoric period — and the whole was 

 given meaning and color by the presence 

 on the grounds of living peoples with proc- 

 esses and products corresponding to nearly 

 every step in progress betokened by the 

 protohistoric and prehistoric relics. The 

 typical evidences of human development 

 assembled in the department were enlarged 

 by numerous collections in exhibit palaces 

 and pavilions, and especially in several of 

 the state buildings, of which some were his- 

 torical replicas, while many contained im- 

 portant historical and protohistoric ma- 

 terial. 



5. The relics and records indicate that a 

 leading factor in man's development is 

 progressive acculturation, or interchange 

 and unification of knowledge. At first 

 slow and inimical and effected chiefly 

 through strife and conquest, the accultura- 

 tion of the higher stages is rapid and 

 amicable — schools replace armies, confed- 

 eration supplants conquest, and the white 

 man's burden of the ballad becomes the 

 strong man's burden in the political family 

 of nations as in the personal family of 

 kindred. Long an accident of intertribal 

 enmity, acculturation becomes, under the 

 principles of constitutional government, an 

 intentional and purposeful means of pro- 

 moting the common weal; and the United 

 States government has performed no 

 worthier function than that of aiding our 

 aboriginal landholders on their way toward 



