HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM 



Ethnology 



North 



American 



Indian 



Research 



Fund 



Expedition, 



1899-1907. 



Indians of 

 the Plains. 



Indians of 

 California. 



Researches among the Indian tribes of North America were begun 

 in 1899 under the North American Research Fund which was estab- 

 lished through the liberality of Mrs. Morris K. Jesup, Mr. C. P. Hunt- 

 ington, and Mr. Henry Villard. Later the funds for continuing this 

 work were provided by Mr. Archer M. Huntington, Mrs. Arabella 

 Huntington, and Mr. Morris K. Jesup. Special attention was given 

 to the ancient customs which were rapidly disappearing. The decora- 

 tive art was also carefully studied by all the collectors, and the Museum 

 now possesses an unrivaled collection illustrating primitive art. Col- 

 lections were obtained from the Eskimo of Baffin Bay and Hudson 

 Bay, and the following tribes in western United States, Canada, and 

 British Columbia; the Sioux, Sauk, Fox, Comanche, Ute, Blackfoot, 

 Gros Ventres, Assiniboine, Maidu, Arapaho, Pitt River, Shasta, Yurok, 

 Crow, Alsea, Shoshone, Ojibwa, and Iroquois. 



Another important investigation — the study of the Shoshone 

 and Algonkin tribes — was carried on jointly for the Museum and 

 the Bureau of American Ethnology, by Mr. H. St. Clair and Mr. Wm. 

 Jones. The ethnological work was done for the Museum, while the 

 linguistic researches, largely based on records of tribal traditions, 

 were made for the Bureau of Ethnology. 



The collections from the Plains Indians have been made largely 

 from the point of view of illustrating their decorative art and cere- 

 monials. The tribes included in the Plains culture are the Blackfoot, 

 Cheyenne, Arapaho, Gros Ventres, Sioux, and Shoshone. The ex- 

 hibition series from the Arapaho is especially complete and contains 

 among other things life-sized models of the Arapaho dressed in the 

 regalia used in the various dances. Of special interest in the Black- 

 foot collection is the Medicine Man's tepee, which was obtained by Dr. 

 Clark Wissler in 1904. 



The culture of the Indians of California is shown particularly by 

 their baskets, of which the Museum has gathered a very extensive 

 collection — the exhibition series alone taking up half of one of our 



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