450 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



warfare, council, ceremony, industry and agriculture and quickly 

 give an impression of New York Indian life not possible to obtain in 

 any other way. At the east end of this hall is a bark cabin fully 

 furnished and of the type once occupied by the Indians of our 

 State. 



In the east mezzanine hall is the collection of archeological speci- 

 mens. There are more than 12,000 articles displayed, including 

 about 40 pottery vessels, 680 pipes, 250 polished slate objects, and all 

 the varied forms of stone, bone, shell and copper articles that char- 

 acterize the ancient material culture of the New York natives. The 

 collections are arranged in several ways, as follows : ( i ) by localities 

 to show the various parts of the State from west to north and south 

 to eas.t; (2) by types of implements in a classified order; (3) by cul- 

 tures, as Iroquoian and Algonkian ; (4) by methods of manufacture 

 in which the processes of making aboriginal articles are illustrated ; 

 (5) by uses, in which the use of articles is explained. 



The study collection consists of about 100,000 specimens, stored in 

 drawers and cataloged. Most of the archeological material has been 

 acquired since 191 1, the old collections having been destroyed in the 

 Capitol fire in March of that year. By gift and purchase the arche- 

 ological section has added largely to its own field collections. Among 

 the notable collections now on exhibition are the following: the 

 Museum field accessions, the Raymond Dann, the Fred H. Crofoot, 

 the Joseph Mattern, the Alvah Reed, the C. A. Holmes, the R. Van 

 Valkenburg, the Vanderveer-Auringer, the Otis M. Bigelow, the 

 L. D. Shoemaker, the Ward E. Bryan, the D. W. Thompson, the C. 

 P. Oatman, the R. S. Loveland, the R. W. Amidon and the Alvin H. 

 Dewey. 



Each specimen is so cataloged as to give credit to its collector, but 

 in a scientific museum such as this, specimens are placed in exhibits 

 to which they logically belong, regardless of the collection of which 

 they once formed a part. The object is to make an intelligent display 

 of naturally related material and not to mass together unrelated curio- 

 sities. All the pages of each book of nature though found scattered 

 over the surface of the land must be brought together, sorted and 

 placed in order, that the story may be correctly read. Each speci- 

 men is a letter, a page or a chapter, important to our problem, and 

 each is therefore placed where it belongs. 



Several notable men of science have served the archeological sec- 

 tion of the Museum in various capacities, among them Henry R. 

 Schoolcraft, Lewis H. Morgan, Frank H. Gushing and \Mlliam ^I. 

 Beauchamp. 



