FOURTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR IQO/ II3 



value of such demonstrative collections would be of high quality 

 and an essential supplement to the training of the schools. 



New York need not, because of its relative youth, invite the diffi- 

 culties wdiich have confronted other countries with longer histories, 

 in the formation of historical museums. The ma-king of such col- 

 lections has always been too long deferred. But New York may 

 well follow the example and hope for the results which other nations 

 have achieved in this direction, for in all the countries of Europe 

 are no collections of whatever character of so general interest and 

 instructiveness to the public as the Historical Museums such as 

 those of Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Ziirich and 

 Basel. 



Plan for a State historical museum 



There is a vast difference between a miscellaneous assortment of 

 historical objects, each out of its proper association with only its 

 individual story to tell or its personal associations to invite atten- 

 tion, and an historical museum scientifically arranged with its 

 objects all brought into their proper historic perspective. There 

 are thousands of valuable historic relics in local collections of the 

 State, which must by the very nature of the conditions under which 

 they are brought together be left to tell their story as best they can 

 by themselves. There is but one method however in which such 

 objects can be made adequately to present their full signficance and 

 that is the method of proper association. As an outline of what 

 a State historical collection might be the following suggestions are 

 made. 



In general, a portrayal of the successive or contemporaneous 

 cultures in this State by a reproduction of the mode of life and 

 dress in the various phases of our civilization. For such purposes 

 a series of rooms assigned to the various cultures would display 



I The domestic life of the aborigines: an Indian lodge appro- 

 priately equipped with the daily utensils of the aborigines, the squaw 

 at the hand-mill ; the potter molding clay vessels and pipes, the 

 brooch maker and the arrow maker with their equipments. It 

 would be vastly to the credit of a State like New York, the home 

 of the Iroquois Confederacy, the earliest and mightiest of all aborig- 

 inal leagues, the seat of momentous events in Indian and frontier 

 history, the founder and supporter of the State Museum which is 

 the possessor of priceless and unexampled collections of Iroquois 

 culture relics and the official custodian of the archives of the Six 

 Nations, to go still further into the realistic po»-trayal of Indian life 



