466 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



yielded up through necessity their old-time ways, and the modern 

 substitutes for their ancient usages are often pitiful caricatures. 

 For instance, in the council house upon ceremonial occasion, we 

 find, not the buckskin legging, noisy with rattles of deer hoofs, nor 

 the white doeskin body wrappings, symbolic with colored cjuill em- 

 broidery, nor do regal eagle feathers or white heron plumes wave 

 from chieftains' heads, nor belts of wampum hang from war poles 

 or long wampum strings dangle from the moving hands of speakers. 

 Instead of these things, overalls of blue jeans, gingham jumpers, 

 broad brimmed hats or tattered caps or perchance upon the occasion 

 of the feasts some modern makeshift for the old-time requirements. 

 This exhibition of departed glory is pitiful and pathetic; or if one 

 should say this picture is of the " pagans " only and then not cor- 

 rect entirely, let us look at both " pagan '" and Christian Indian upon 

 other holiday occasions. Men, young and old, with kid gloves, stifif 

 hats, stiff collars, stiff shirts, stiff shiny shoes ; women, young and 

 old, with kid gloves, feathery hats, rustling petticoats, lace shirt- 

 waists, kid bootees. Some of these ultramodern Indians will not 

 be found on the reservations but out in the strenuous white man's 

 world struggling side by side with the pale invader as college 

 students, teachers, nurses, clerks, accountants, engineers, electricians, 

 newspaper men, athletic trainers, bandmasters, musicians, doctors, 

 philologists, anthropologists and what not. And among these 

 modern people of the ancient Five Nations one must conduct his 

 researches in ethnology, folklore and philology. It is late, far too 

 near the hour when a new epoch will dawn and there will be no 

 more red men as such. Yet in the short time that remains it is our 

 purpose to save at least a part of the tattered fringe of the ancient 

 fabric that was, and from this small part learn something of its 

 entirety. It will be apparent that as far as collecting ethnological 

 material from the Indians themselves is concerned, there is little to 

 be obtained, except slowly and in small quantities. 



The purpose of archeology. Specifically, archeology is the 

 science which relates to the conditions, culture and circumstances of 

 prehistoric man. Man is a problem to himself. His remote origin, 

 his ancestry, his early struggles for existence and his evolution are 

 from the standpoint of science, things veiled and obscure. Man 

 struggles to learn the causes which impel him to certain actions, the 

 facts of his origin, evolution, distribution and development, in order 

 to get a better understanding of himself as an individual and as a 

 race. What man was has an important bearing on what man is and 



