IN PREPARATION:
CARL LUMHOLTZ: “Conventionalism in Designs of the Huichol Indians,” Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History.
The present volumes give a succinct account of my travels and work among the remote peoples of the Sierra Madre del Norte and the countries adjacent to the south and east as far as the City of Mexico. Most of what I tell here refers to a part of the Republic that is never visited by tourists and is foreign even to most Mexicans. Primitive people are becoming scarce on the globe. On the American continents there are still some left in their original state. If they are studied before they, too, have lost their individuality or been crushed under the heels of civilisation, much light may be thrown not only upon the early people of this country but upon the first chapters of the history of mankind.
In the present rapid development of Mexico it cannot be prevented that these primitive people will soon disappear by fusion with the great nation to whom they belong. The vast and magnificent virgin forests and the mineral wealth of the mountains will not much longer remain the exclusive property of my dusky friends; but I hope that I shall have rendered them a service by setting them this modest monument, and that civilised man will be the better for knowing of them.
That I have been able to accomplish what I did I owe, in the first place, to the generosity of the people of the United States, to their impartiality and freedom from prejudice, which enables foreigners to work shoulder to shoulder with their own advance guard. I wish to extend my thanks in particular to the American Geographical Society of New York, and still more especially to the American Museum of Natural History of New York, with whom I have had the honour of being connected more or less closely for ten years. To its public-spirited and whole-souled President, Mr. Morris K. Jesup, I am under profound obligations. I also take pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who initiated my Mexican ventures with a subscription of $1,000; furthermore to the Hon. Cecil Baring, Mr. Frederick A. Constable, Mr. William E. Dodge, Mr. James Douglass, Mrs. Joseph W. Drexel, Mr. George J. Gould, Miss Helen Miller Gould, Mr. Archer M. Huntington, Mr. Frederick E. Hyde, Mr. D. Willis James, Col. James K. Jones, the Duke of Loubat, Mr. Peter Marié, Mr. Henry G. Marquand, Mr. F. O. Matthiessen, Mr. Victor Morawetz, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mrs. Edwin Parsons, Mr. Archibald Rogers, Mr. F. Augustus Schermerhorn, Mr. William C. Schermerhorn, Mr. Charles Stewart Smith, Mr. James Speyer, Mr. George W. Vanderbilt, Mr. William C. Whitney, of New York; to Mr. Frederick L. Ames, Mrs. John L. Gardner, Mrs. E. Mason, Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, Mr. Samuel D. Warren, Dr. Charles G. Weld, of Boston; to Mr. Allison D. Armour and Mr. Franklin MacVeagh, of Chicago; to Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, Mr. Frank G. New. lands, Mrs. Abby M. Parrot, Mr. F. W. Sharon, of San Francisco; to Mr. Adolphus Busch, of St. Louis; to Mr. Theo. W. Davis, of Newport; and to the late Mr. E. L. Godkin.
Much valuable support or assistance I have also received from Mrs. Morris K. Jesup; Mrs. Elizabeth Hobson, of Washington, D. C.; Miss Joanna Rotch, of Milton, Mass.; Mrs. Henry Draper, of New York; Mrs. Robert W. Chapin, of Lenox; the late Mr. E. L. Godkin; Professor Alexander Agassiz; Professor F. W. Putnam, Curator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia; Professor Franz Boas, Curator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Dr. B. L. Robinson and Dr. M. L. Fernald, of Harvard University; Professor J. A. Allen and Mr. L. P. Gratacap, Curators of the American Museum of Natural History.
I am under obligation to Mr. Marshall H. Saville, Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, especially for the placing of the names of the ruins of Southern Mexico on one of the maps; to Miss Alice Fletcher, of Washington, D. C., and Mr. Edwin S. Tracy for transcribing from the graphophone three of the songs rendered in this book, and to Mrs. George S. Bixby for aid in transcribing the native music. Finally I desire to express my appreciation of the untiring services of my private secretary, Mrs. H. E. Hepner.
The upper illustration on [page 65] is a reproduction of a photograph kindly furnished me by Mr. Frank H. Chapman, and the illustration in Vol. I., pages [145]–146, is made from a photograph acquired through the late Dr. P. Lamborn. The illustration in Vol. II., pages 464–465, I owe to the courtesy of Mr. D. Gabriel Castaños, of Guadalajara.
The coloured illustrations are represented as the objects appear when the colours have been brought out by the application of water.
The maps do not lay claim to an accuracy which, under the circumstances, it was impossible to obtain, but they will, I hope, be found to be an improvement on the existing ones.