THE PEABODY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARCHÆOLOGY.
In respect to her facility and opportunities for advancing the cause of scientific knowledge, Harvard University certainly stands pre-eminent. She has a splendid astronomical observatory, and laboratories for chemistry and physics unexcelled elsewhere. Her botanical garden is the only one for instruction of any consequence in the Union, and its director, Asa Gray, is the chief of American botanists. In the Museum of Comparative Zoology, founded by Louis Agassiz and sustained by his son, Alexander Agassiz, Cambridge possesses the most productive, and in some respects the completest, museum of animal life in the United States, while it offers to the laboratory student of natural history advantages which he can find equalled nowhere else in the whole world. Last, and most modern, it has a museum of anthropology which in point of material is rivalled only by the National Museum at Washington, and in point of instructiveness is probably in advance of anything yet attained in the United States, despite its youth and small resources. This school and storehouse is the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology, whose merits deserve a wider recognition than they have yet received.
When, in 1866, George Peabody, of philanthropic fame, was distributing his bequests among the educational institutions of the Eastern States, he was desirous of giving to Harvard a certain sum of money, but was puzzled as to its proper application. It was suggested to him to endow a department of archæological research, and his proposition to that effect was considered by several friends of the university. The institution had peculiar needs at that time. Its finances generally were weak. The library and the zoological museum especially needed money, and the idea of a special department of prehistoric science was entirely new. It was decided, however, not to attempt to influence Mr. Peabody away from his own plan. President Walker saw that European minds were eagerly turning toward studies of primitive man, that the interest in the subject would grow from year to year, and that, as the first museum in the country devoted to this branch, it would have the best chance for securing collections rapidly going to destruction or distributed through private cabinets. More than all, the fittest man to take charge of it was at hand, in the person of Professor Jeffries Wyman. On the 3d of November, 1866, therefore, the arrangements were completed, and Mr. Peabody delivered to a board of trustees one hundred and fifty thousand dollars as an endowment. On the first of the following month Dr. Wyman began his curatorship.
As yet, of course, there was no museum. As a nucleus, Professor Wyman contributed some Indian implements and crania, the nooks and corners of the college were ransacked for stray skulls, stone axes and arrow-heads, pottery that had been ploughed up in the suburbs, and relics of colonial days, all of which, when brought together, served to fill a few empty cases in a room of Boylston Hall. Soon afterward, printed circulars were issued, and gifts began to flow in from the neighborhood, illustrating the life of the native races at and just before the time of the Pilgrims' landing. Several societies in Boston made permanent deposits of ethnological accumulations in the infant establishment; Mr. E. G. Squier, the Peruvian explorer, sent a Peruvian mummy of great value, with seventy-five crania, and promised larger gifts; the Smithsonian Institution gave a lot of duplicates, many of which were gathered by the great Wilkes Exploring Expedition; the Honorable Caleb Cushing forwarded antiquities gathered by his command during the Mexican war; and several famous collections were bought in Europe, illustrating the stone and bronze ages. Thus public interest was stimulated, and even at the end of the first year a very presentable sketch of a picture of the aboriginal people of the world was to be seen in that small room in Boylston Hall. It was accessible to any interested visitors, and began to receive attention from the scientific world, particularly after the first annual report appeared in January, 1868, containing an original essay by the curator and a full statement of the growing importance of the museum.
From this beginning the work went steadily on. Contributions from private and public sources came without stint. The fund of the museum available for explorations and the purchase of collections was judiciously expended year by year, and each annual report contained news of great interest to savants. The amount of material gathered speedily outgrew its original quarters, and a new story was added to Boylston Hall for the reception of the museum. At the end of seven years the catalogue showed over eight thousand entries, one entry in many cases covering a series of objects. Then a great calamity happened: Jeffries Wyman died.
Wyman had been the soul of the whole enterprise. At the founding of the museum he gave up those studies in anatomy and natural history which had made him famous and furnished him so sure a foundation as an anthropologist, in order to devote himself entirely to the new enterprise. His death occurred in September, 1874, closely following that of his great associate in Cambridge, Louis Agassiz.
Dr. Wyman had found an eager companion in his studies and excursions, during several years preceding his death, in Frederick W. Putnam, who was almost the only man in the neighborhood of Boston having either interest or capability (not to speak of opportunity) for such pursuits. A Salem lad, he was one of that group of students whom the elder Agassiz gathered round him when he began teaching at Harvard,—a group comprising Alpheus Hyatt, A. E. Verrill, J. A. Allen, Edward S. Morse, N. S. Shaler, A. S. Packard, Jr., and others now of worldwide reputation. Putnam was an all-round zoologist, but his specialty was fishes. Accident, nearly thirty years ago, turned his attention to the shell-heaps and the primitive implements of his home-neighborhood. The only man to whom he could go for guidance in studying these was Dr. Jeffries Wyman, at that time his instructor in comparative anatomy. Thus the two men were drawn more and more together, and when Wyman organized the new museum Putnam found much time for helping him, although at that time he was in charge of the Salem Museum, an editor of "The American Naturalist," a publisher, and the permanent secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a position which he still retains. It happened, consequently, that upon Dr. Wyman's decease Mr. Putnam was the only man suitable and available to become his successor, and he was quickly appointed to fill the vacancy.
Sixty thousand dollars of the original fund had been set aside by Peabody as a building-fund, but he decreed that this sum should be allowed to grow until it amounted to at least a hundred thousand dollars. This limit was attained in ten years, and in 1876 a building was begun for the accommodation of the museum. The college gave the ground,—a lot on Divinity Avenue, nearly opposite the old Divinity School, and close to the great structure occupied by the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Surrounded by green lawns and avenues of old trees, it is the pleasantest spot in all that charming city. The building was completed and entered in 1878. It is of brick, four stories in height, thoroughly fire-proof, simple in design, and tasteful in ornamentation. The present structure is only a fifth of what the whole building is designed ultimately to be. Two rooms yet remain to be opened to the public, but their fitting will not long be delayed. Its spacious doors open on Divinity Avenue, and there let us enter and glance at its treasures.
The entrance-hall is a square well in the centre of the building, accommodating the broad stairways and galleries, and affording room for many large objects, such as carved figures of stone and the models of the ruined houses and present pueblos of the village Indians of the Southwest. The walls are of finished brick.
On the left a large room is devoted to the office, to the reception of new specimens, and to the library, which is intended to include only works pertaining to this special study. On the right opens the room where naturally and properly begins our survey of the museum. Like the other apartments, it occupies the whole of one side of the building, and is about thirty-five by forty feet in dimensions. Its ceiling is twenty-two feet in height, but a broad gallery runs around all four sides, which adds almost as much exhibition-space as would a second story, without spoiling the open and well-lighted effect of a lofty room. Glass cases cover the walls above and below; upon the floor stand combined upright and table cases, resting upon long cabinets of interchangeable drawers, and the gallery-rail supports a line of narrow, flat cases. In each room is a fireplace, while all are well heated in winter and comfortably ventilated in summer, so that they are attractive to visitors.