REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I918 IO5 



epidemic, all the children and grandchildren died save one married 

 daughter, and two little grandchildren. Of the large Cornplanter 

 family that Corporal Jesse Cornplanter left, only one sister will greet 

 his return, and there will be two destitute children of a dead sister to 

 care for. This is a tragedy in peaceful America that a returning 

 Seneca warrior must face. 



The Lewis Henry Morgan centennial. The year 1918 marked the 

 centennial anniversary of the birth of Lewis Henry Morgan. Mor- 

 gan's achievements as an ethnologist at a time when there was no 

 organized science known as ethnology, entitle him to grateful recog- 

 nition. Through his study of the New York Iroquois he laid the 

 basis of a life work that resulted in the publication of numerous 

 papers, reports and volimies dealing with Indian topics. His first 

 great work, " The League of the Iroquois " was the first systematic 

 account of an Indian tribe ever published and an estimate of its 

 importance in later years has given to Morgan the title, " the father 

 of American anthropology." 



Mr Morgan in 1849, through the aid of James Hall, State Geologist, 

 was commissioned by the Regents to make a systematic collection 

 of Iroquois ethnological material. This Morgan did, collecting his 

 material not as former collectors had done, merely as curious examples 

 of native art, but in so thorough a manner that his collection, once 

 arranged, illustrated the raw materials, the processes of manufacture 

 and the varieties of the finished products of the tribes he studied. 

 Morgan seems to have been the first to recognize the value of detailed 

 studies of the material culture of a people. He looked at the culture 

 as a concrete whole, to be understood only by an examination of all 

 its constituent parts. Morgan communicated his reports to the 

 State Museum in the second, third and fifth reports of the Museinn, 

 and these were the first scientific papers of notable merit thus pub- 

 lished. Some of Morgan's later works were, " Systems of Consan- 

 guinity and Affinity of the Hiraian Family," Smithsonian Contri- 

 butions, voliime 17 (1871); "Ancient Society," Henry Holt (1877); 

 " Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines," voliune 4 of 

 the United States Geological Survey (1881). 



Some of these have been translated into foreign languages. This 

 is particularly true of "Ancient Society," which has passed through 

 numerous editions in foreign languages as well as in English. The 

 " League of the Iroquois," however, has been the most popular of his 

 works and has won him wide recognition among students of American 

 archeology and ethnology. 



