28 Report of the President 



The attention of the Trustees and Members is directed espe- 

 cially to the report of the Curator of Anthropology (page 84). 

 During the past ten years the Museum 



Discovery and Research has expe nded on the subject of anthro- 

 m Anthropology r J . 



pology alone nearly $500,000, derived 



partly from the Jesup Fund and partly from generous con- 

 tributions from Mr. Archer M. Huntington and others. Dur- 

 ing this time more than 300,000 specimens have been added, 

 of a value estimated to be considerably beyond the actual cost 

 of collection. 



As planned by Curator Wissler, who in 1907 succeeded the 

 anthropologists Professor Franz Boas and Professor Frederic 

 W. Putnam as Curator, the anthropological work of the Mu- 

 seum is pursuing definite lines of research in all parts of North 

 America, with two objects in view : 



First, to secure a knowledge of the language, customs, re- 

 ligion and mythology of the primitive peoples of America be- 

 fore the last traditions of their original life have been entirely 

 eliminated by the advancing system of American education. 

 This great undertaking, which supplements the work of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology, has been carried on through the able 

 field work of Curators Clark Wissler, Pliny E. Goddard and 

 Robert H. Lowie. 



The second, historic and prehistoric, division of work ex- 

 tends principally into the Southwest, Mexico, Central and 

 South America, and is designed to establish the chronology 

 and date the monuments of this great region through the very 

 careful study of economic and architectural cultures. To this 

 division have been especially assigned Dr. Herbert J. Spinden 

 for Mexico and Central and South America, and Mr, N. C. 

 Nelson and Mr. Leslie Spier for the pueblos and cliff dwell- 

 ings of the southwestern United States. This work is sup- 

 ported chiefly through the Huntington Fund, known as the 

 Anthropology of the Southwest Fund. It is most gratifying 

 to report that at last a secure basis for chronology has been 

 established, through the exact exploration of ancient sites of 

 the kind which has so long been practised by the archaeological 

 investigators in France. This is chiefly the work of Mr. N. C. 



