ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE OF THE COLLECTIONS OBTAINED FROM THE INDIANS OF NEW MEXICO AND ARIZONA IN 1879.
By James Stevenson.
[INTRODUCTION].
It is not my intention in the present paper—which is simply what it purports to be, a catalogue—to attempt any discussion of the habits, customs, or domestic life of the Indian tribes from whom the articles were obtained; nor to enter upon a general comparison of the pottery and other objects with articles of a like character of other, nations or tribes. Occasionally attention may be called to striking resemblances between certain articles and those of other countries, where such comparison will aid in illustrating form or character.
The collection contains two thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight specimens. Although it consists very largely of vessels and other articles of pottery, yet it embraces almost every object necessary to illustrate the domestic life and art of the tribes from whom the largest number of the specimens were obtained. It includes, in addition to pottery, implements of war and hunting, articles used in domestic manufactures, articles of clothing and personal adornment, basketry, trappings for horses, images, toys, stone implements, musical instruments, and those used in games and religious ceremonies, woven fabrics, foods prepared and unprepared, paints for decorating pottery and other objects, earths of which their pottery is manufactured, mineral pigments, medicines, vegetable dyestuffs, &c. But the chief value of the collection is undoubtedly the great variety of vessels and other articles of pottery which it contains. In this respect it is perhaps the most complete that has been made from the pueblos. Quite a number of articles of this group may perhaps be properly classed as “ancient,” and were obtained more or less uninjured; but by far the larger portion are of modern manufacture.