Indian Collection

TWO EXTENSIVE COLLECTIONS of North American Indian relics and of mineral and fossil specimens, assembled by the late Col. and Mrs. Frank C. Churchill of Lebanon, N. H., have been recently acquired by the Dartmouth College Museum, it was announced by W. Wedgewood Bowen, director. The first collection numbers over 1400 Indian relics and the latter contains some 2000 specimens.

Some of the finest ethnological specimens which the Churchills had in their private museum in Lebanon were added to other museum material for a special exhibition of American Indian Art in the Carpenter Galleries here. The exhibition was open to the public throughout the months of September and October.

As special inspector in the Indian Service of the U. S. government from 1899 to 1909, Colonel Churchill visited over too tribes throughout the nation and crossed the continent ten times. In later years the Churchills traveled widely in the Southwest and augmented their collection among the Pueblos. A fine series of forty Navajo blankets and another of large ollas, or water jars, from Acoma, New Mexico, are included. Beaded artifacts from the Plains Indians to the north represent such tribes as the Sioux, Kiowa, Blackfoot and Cheyenne.

In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt named Colonel Churchill as special emissary to Alaska to investigate Eskimo schools and the government program for domesticating reindeer. This trip resulted in the collection of nearly 200 Eskimo artifacts, including many fashioned from fossil ivory and whalebone, and a number of Tlingit wood-carvings.

Perhaps the most interesting unit of the Churchill collection is a series of about 300 baskets representing 38 tribes north of the Valley of Mexico. The acme of Indian artistry is seen in the small, delicately coiled and feathered baskets of the Pomos of California, the containers of Aleutian grass and spruce tree roots from southern Alaska, and the sacred meal plaques fashioned by the Hopi from yucca fiber.