66 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



ground. Months of study and visits to large museums have been 

 made to estabHsh the feasibility of this plan. The cases in which 

 the groups are to be installed have a front of a little more than 

 20 feet and a hight of about 17. The depth of the case and the 

 foreground in which the group is to be installed is about 12 feet. 

 The glass front will be about 9^ feet in hight and 15 feet long. 

 The case is so planned that when the visitor views the group no 

 part of the interior of the case is visible. The point where the 

 painting meets the top can not be seen, neither can the points where 

 the sides meet the front of the case be observed. The object is 

 to create the illusion that one is looking out through a large win- 

 dov^ at nature itself. The painting is made in such a way that the 

 foreground with its artificial foliage and natural work meets almost 

 imperceptibly with the painting — one seems a continuation of the 

 other. 



To' illustrate the activities of hunting six Seneca Indians were 

 selected as models and brought tO' New York city where they were 

 posed in characteristic attitude and cast in plaster. Such figures 

 show the tree chopper with his stone ax busy felling a tree by the 

 charring and chopping process, the old hunter bringing in a deer, 

 a boy with his traps and birds he has killed, a hunter with bow 

 pulled back in the act of shooting a flying partridge, and two 

 women one of whom is skiving a deer pelt and the other cutting 

 venison into strips for jerking. These figures it must be borne 

 in mind are exact casts from life, limb for limb, feature for fea- 

 ture, and even pore for pore, so exactly does the plaster reproduce 

 the living model. As a background for this group of Seneca 

 hunters a scene on Canandaigua lake was chosen. The Archeolo- 

 gist in company with an artist made a trip up the lake above men- 

 tioned and chose a site where a good view of Bare hill, the ances-- 

 tral hill of the Senecas, might be had. Early Seneca history and 

 tradition is so inseparably interwoven with associations with Bare 

 hill and Cianandaigua lake that it seems most appropriate to^ em- 

 ploy the scene as a background for the group of '' primitive " 

 Senecas. 



As hunting is the most primitive activity of savage hfe, the 

 hunting group will be the first of the series. 



The second group for which casts have been made is that which 

 illustrates some of the characteristic war 'customs of the Mohawks. 

 The group is called The Return of the Warriors. It embraces six 

 cast and modeled figures with others in the painted background. 

 The group shows the advance party of warriors bringing in two 



