EXHIBIT AT THE COTTON STATES EXPOSITION. 635 



also a Crow warrior painting his blanket, and a Ohippeway writing an 

 inscription on a tablet of birch bark. Another very striking group of 

 seven figures represented a religious ceremony practiced by the Indians 

 of Prince Rupert's Sound. The principal figure is an Indian who is 

 personating a cannibal, and who is about to leap into tlie house through 

 a circular door. Two men are holding him back, while four musicians 

 in front are playing upon their rude instruments. The remainder of 

 this space is occupied by an exhibit prepared at the express desire of 

 the ladies in charge of the Woman's Building, showing the arts which 

 are practiced by Avomen among primitive peoples, especially in North 

 America. This collection includes implements for basket making, pot 

 tery, weaving, beadwork, sewing, agricultural implements, and appli- 

 ances for burden bearing. These are all fully named and explained 

 upon the labels. The theory which has guided Prof. O. T. Mason in 

 the selection of this series is explained by him as follows: 



The object of this exhibit is to show the share that women have had 

 in the industrial progress of the world. 



In that continual struggle called Progress or Culture men have played 

 the militant part, women the industrial part. A study of modern sav- 

 agery is a guide to the activities of our own race in primitive times, 

 and this teaches us that women were always the first house builders 

 and furnishers, and that they devised the utensils of the humble apart- 

 ments. They were the first clothiers, whether in skins at the north or 

 in vegetable fiber nearer the equator. It was the women who went 

 first to the field with baskets that they themselves had fabricated. They 

 gathered the seeds of plants, bore them home on their backs, ground 

 them in rude mortars, and from the flour made their mush or dough. 

 They invented all sorts of fireplaces and ovens, pottery, and cooking 

 utensils, and the many things employed in the serving and consuming 

 of food. 



In early society women were literally the first beasts of burden, and 

 it was they that devised all sorts of frames for the carrying of children, 

 and bands and baskets for carrying loads. 



Both men and women in savagery are touched with the sense of 

 beauty, the former in the adornment of the person, the weapon, and 

 the canoe, the latter in the technique of basketry, weaving, embroidery, 

 and pottery. 



In a small space it was designed to bring together a few examples 

 of primitive woman's work in order to show the paths along which the 

 sex has traveled in time past. The bead work, the embroidery, the per- 

 sonal ornament, the blankets, mats, belts, and looms, the utensils con- 

 nected with food the conveniences of housewifery, the bark cloth, the 

 delicate handwork in palin leaf, the pottery, the exquisite skin dressing, 

 and implements of Americans, Africans, and Polynesians were silent 

 witnesses of the genius, patience, and skill of women in savagery. 



It is hoped that many thousand of those who for the first time viewed 

 a portion of the collections of the National Museum at the Atlanta 

 Exposition will hereafter have the opportunity of seeing the Museum 

 in its entirety in Washington. 



