Indians will be a Feature

Boston Herald

The Pan-American Exposition would scarcely be worthy of its name did it neglect to illustrate so important a subject as the aboriginal inhabitants of the new world, their customs, institutions, and daily life. The great Exposition to be held at Buffalo next summer will, therefore, give especial attention to this subject and aim to present it on a more extensive, and popular scale than has ever been attempted before.

Object lessons in the life, customs, and history of the aborigines of the various portions of the continent will be given chiefly in four departments of the Exposition, in the exhibits of the building devoted to ethnology and archæology, in the Indian congress on the midway, in the Six Nations village, and by means of the mounds intended to reproduce some of the best known and most typical of the works of the mound builders of North America.

The building devoted to exhibits in ethnology and archæology will be filled with relics of the occupancy by the red men of the continent of America. The museums of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South America will contribute generously of their priceless treasures to make this exhibit the most complete ever collected for a similar purpose, and to the student, and, indeed, every thoughtful person, the remains of the aborigines here gathered will be full of interest and significance.

In the Ethnology Building the collections will be such as to attract and instruct both the student of ethnology and archæology and the average visitor who knows little of such study. That is to say, they will be scientific in character, but popular in their manner of presentation. For instance, there will be an art gallery in which will be paintings representing with as great a degree as possible of historical accuracy the life of the pre-historic peoples of America and the scenes which Columbus and his contemporaries witnessed when they visited the shores of North America and beheld in Central and South America the cities of the Aztecs and ancient Peruvians. Another feature of a popular character will be the large model on the ground floor portraying the historic Niagara frontier and showing the sites of some sixty aboriginal villages. Real water will flow through the Niagara River and the campfires will be represented at night by red incandescent lights. By graphophones and possibly the kinetoscope vivid reproduction of many rites and ceremonies of Indians of the present day may be given. The collections on the main floor will consist chiefly of exhibits from large museums of the United States and from those of Canada and Latin-American countries portraying the archæology of the United States, including Alaska, of British America, Mexico, and Central America and the South American countries which are prolific in the relics of the semi-civilization of pre-historic times.

The co-operation has been secured of such bodies as the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History, the Peabody Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. The ministers of the various South American countries are co-operating with the director-general of the Exposition and the superintendent of ethnology, and it is now certain that a large amount of valuable archæological material will thus be secured. Through the co-operation of the departments of agriculture and horticulture exhibits will also be made of the plants cultivated in both North and South America before the great discovery.

It may surprise many readers to learn that within thirty miles of the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo the dances and other pagan ceremonies of the Indians of the Iroquois confederacy are practised much as they were when what is now known as the Niagara frontier was, so far as the white man was concerned, a wilderness unknown and unexplored.

There is much misapprehension as to the dances of the Indians. Comparatively few understand that they are of the nature of religious ceremonies and are observed in some-what the same spirit as the different festivals of the church among Christians. The Six Nations dance was observed by the Seneca Indians of the Tonawanda reservation during the week of September 16. There will be many Indians from this reservation in the Six Nations village on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition, and the various ceremonies of this festival, as well as of others, will be there reproduced.

The most extensive Indian exhibit on the grounds and the most interesting and comprehensive exhibit of its kind ever shown will be the Indian congress on the Midway, which, by the way, has no connection with the Six Nations exhibit, which is made by Exposition and is no concession.

Boston Herald.

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October 25, 1900

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