
West WING 
COLLECTIONS FROM AFRICA 
Opening to the north from this hall of North American Archeology is 
the African Hall. This differs from other halls in containing besides 
ethnographical specimens a number of characteristic African mammals. 
The future extension of the Museum will provide room for groups of 
African mammals, including elephants. The installation is geographical, 
i. e., as the visitor proceeds through the hall from south to north he 
meets the tribes that would be found in passing from south to north of 
Africa, and the west coast is represented along the west wall, the east 
coast along the west wall. 
There are three aboriginal races in Africa: the Bushmen, the Hotten- 
tot, and the Negroes. In the north the Negroes have been greatly 
influenced by Hamitic and Semitic immigrants and become mixed with 
them. 
At the south end of the Hall the wall is decorated with reproductions 
of cave-paintings made by the Bushmen, the most ancient and primitive 
of African natives. These works of art are remarkable for their realism, 
i and should be compared with the reproductions of old European cave- 
: , paintings in the tower of the adjoining hall. 
Nothing is more characteristic of the Negro culture, to which the rest 
of the Hall is devoted, than the art of smelting iron and fashioning iron 
| tools. The process used by the African blacksmith is illustrated in a 
: eroup near the entrance, on the west side, and the finished products, 
such as knives, axes, and spears, are amply shown throughout the Hall. 
The knowledge of the iron technique distinguishes the Negro culturally 
from the American Indian, the Oceanian and the Australian. 
All the Negroes cultivate the soil, the women doing the actual tilling 
while the men are hunters and, among pastoral tribes, herders. Cloth- 
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