REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR, 1922 39 
Through the fortunate fact that descendents of the Iroquois, the 
latest of the aboriginal inhabitants of New York, live within our 
borders, still in tribal relation, it is possible to obtain many interest- 
ing and valuable facts concerning the ethnology of these people. 
Many of the Seneca and the Onondaga people still continue their 
native ceremonies and rites, and not a few of the members of the 
other nations remember their folk tales and music. There is thus a 
rich field for the student of aboriginal things. 
Information is sought from this office by high school and college 
students, for essay material, by artists, playwrights, sculptors, 
musicians, writers, by historians, ethnologists, archeologists and 
museum men, by various experts, as lawyers, department men and 
sociologists, and by a large body of citizens requiring certain specific 
information. 
Donations. The Museum has been fortunate in receiving a 
number of interesting and valuable donations in archeology this year. 
Among the donors and specimens are the following: 
George G. Champlin, of the State Library, a terra cotta pipe hav- 
ing an animal head effigy of the bowl, from Ontario county; Dr 
R. W. Orr, director of the Provincial Museum of Ontario, parts of 
a skeleton and skull stained with red iron oxide, from an ossuary 
near Dunnsville, Ontario; Pheobe P. Smith, of Jewett, Indian mor- 
tar found at Ashland, N. Y.; Mrs Hattie Janson Vosburg of Cox- 
sackie, stone mortar from Mine Hill, through Dr. Andrew Webster 
Van Slyke; James A. Clark of Middletown, 2 grooved axes, 2 ban- 
nerstones, 2 argillite cache blades and 6 finely chipped points from 
the vicinity of Horse Island; Mary Meredith of Euclid, N. Y., col- 
lection of flints and polished stone articles from the Seneca River 
region, in memory of her brother William Meredith; Otis Mason 
Bigelow, of Baldwinsville, platform pipe with a buzzard effigy on the 
bowl, from Three River Point; Dr Luzerne Coville, of Ithaca, carved 
stone amulet of lozenge shape; the Rev. W. R. Blackie of Williams- 
bridge, collection of prehistoric implements, splinters, slips and frag- 
ments of animal bone from the caves of Madeleine, France; Jeffer- 
son D. Ray of West Coxsackie, a fine series of chipped articles from 
Four Mile Point and from Old Orchard Point. 
Excavations at Vine Valley. For a number of years the State 
Museum has been receiving specimens from a certain site situated 
on the McCombs farm in Vine Valley, Yates county. These speci- 
mens, sent for examination by the McComb family, were of such 
unusual interest that the Museum acquired all that came in from 
