ON ETHNOLOGICAL EESEARCH. 



A COMMUNICATION FROM DR. E. H. DAVIS, OF NEW YORK. 



New York, December I, 1^65. 



Dear Sir: In your last favor, (nearly a year since,) yon suggested that in 

 case my collection went to Europe, it would be highly important that casts be 

 taken of the most interesting objects, and inquired the cost of the same. Hear- 

 ing nothing more from you on the subject, yet believing it so important to the 

 interest of American ethnology that a suit of casts should remain here, I deter- 

 mined at once to complete the undertaking myself. I have accomplished it by 

 the aid of two artists — one to mould, the other to color — completing two full sets 

 at an expense of five hundred dollars. They have succeeded so well that it 

 reconciles me much to the loss of the collection to this country. With these 

 casts and contributions from the west, with Dr. Berendt's collection, which I 

 have purchased, as well as others sent by my former students from Central and 

 South America, I shall soon again fill up my cabinet with specimens illustrating 

 the development of the arts on this continent. 



Some years since I informed you that I was engaged in constructing an eth- 

 nological map of the United States, locating merely the mural remains. Since 

 then I have changed my plan by locating the tribes instead of their remains, 

 and for my own convenience have extended it to the whole continent. For in- 

 stance, the great satisfaction it affords one to be able, on receiving relics from 

 any part of the continent, to refer to a map showing the family or tribe of In- 

 dians now or formerly occupying that spot. 



It is by a careful study and comparison of this kind only that wc may be 

 able to arrive at any reliable conclusions concerning the relative culture of the 

 various tribes. 



Formerly the sources for constructing such a chart were scarce and unreliable. 

 But few travellers attempted to locate the tribes they visited, and none pretended 

 to do so with any degree of accuracy. Adair, Carver, and some others accom- 

 plished something by accompanying their works with maps giving the names 

 of tribes they visited, but without limits or boundaries. 



Albert Gallatin was the first to construct anything like a comprehensive eth- 

 nological chart, locating, according to language, most of the tribes of North 

 America. So far as he went, it was undoubtedly much in advance of anything 

 down to bis day. Since his time, by the philological studies of Hale and our 

 late lamented Turner, we were able to correct some and add much to his labors. 

 Yet the honor of completing the finest ethnological chart of America has been 

 secured by a foreigner, the learned German anthropologist Waitz, (now dead.) 

 He, by the aid of Gallatin, Ludwig, Turner, and a host of other authorities, has 

 almost exhausted the subject. Still, much remains to be accomplished by local 

 explorers, who may add new facts, or correct inevitable mistakes in a work 

 covering so extensive a field as all America. In illustration of this remark 

 comes the work of Manuel Orozco, "Geografia de los Lenguas, y Carta Etno- 

 grafica de Mexico," published last year under the auspices of Maximilian. This 

 is a work of immense labor, continued through a long series of years, performed, 

 too, under the disadvantage of working almost alone, cut off very much by the 

 unsettled condition of the country from the results of co-laborers and societies 



