AN ERIE INDIAN VILLAGE AND BURIAL SITE 465 



welcome to this historic city, and provided a dinner for the dele- 

 gates on their arrival this noon. The Albany City Railway courte- 

 ously put at their disposal special cars and the senior members of 

 the University staff who met them at the train have acted as their 

 escorts, showing them through the University offices, the State 

 Library, the Indian museum and the chief rooms of the Capitol. 

 Rev. Dr Battershall, rector of St Peter's will extend the welcome 

 for the city. Regent T. Guilford Smith, chairman of the museum 

 committee, who has from the first shown the most active interest 

 in the Indian museum and its welfare, will speak for the Regents. 

 Mr Paige as the lawyer who drew the papers and who has carefully 

 attended to all the legal details, will announce the transfer, and by 

 special request Mrs Converse will speak to us briefly of the Iroquois 

 women, among whom she is proud to take her seat here today. 

 Then we are to hear, as far as time permits, from one or more 

 representatives, of each of the nations. 



By the provisions of a law which states that " all scientific speci- 

 mens and collections, works of art, objects of historic interest and 

 similar property appropriate to a general museum, if owned by the 

 State and not placed in other custody by a specific law, shall con- 

 stitute the State Museum ..." the State Museum became the 

 custodian of the wampums of the New York Iroquois. The 

 Director of the Museum thus virtually holds the title of Official 

 Custodian of Records and Wampum Keeper of the Six Nations of 

 Iroquois of New York. 



The collections secured by Mr Richmond and Mrs Converse came 

 under the immediate charge of the Director of the State Museum 

 and were installed in cases in the corridors about the w^estern stair- 

 case, on the fourth floor of the Capitol. At this time Dr William 

 M. Beauchamp, the well known authority on New York archeologv^ 

 was engaged to write a series of bulletins describing the imple- 

 ments and ornaments of the New York aborigines and this series, 

 now completed, has attracted widespread interest and has greatly 

 stimulated archeologic research in the State. 



With the sudden death of Mr Richmond in 1898, the Indian sec- 

 tion of the museum lost its foremost worker. Field work in lines 

 of archeology entirely ceased. Likewise the fruitful work of Mrs 

 Converse which brought to the State treasured ceremonials, the 

 medicine masks, silver crowns, brooches and hundreds of other ob- 

 jects of historic and ethnic interest was soon thereafter closed by 

 death. 



Time has slipped by. The Iroquois have become in a measure 

 anglicized. Robbed of their forests and hiding places they have 

 been pushed back in small corners called reservations and have 



