Viewing page 6 of 20

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

                US National Museum Ethnological Section

Prof S F Baird, Director
    Sir The operations of this section of the museum
commenced this month with recording some incidental 
accessions, the most noteworthy of which is a highly ornamented Horsetrapping worn upon the neck of the animal, belonging to Big Bear, a Ponca chief, who presented it to Rev. J Owen Dorsey, a missionary among that people. He transferred it to the Anthropological Society of Washington and thence it was  deposited in the National Museum. Next followed a considerable collection of objects made by Commander L A Beardslee,
USRM, the most of them being devices in use by the Shamans of the NorthWest Coast including a selection 
of curiously carved & painted rattles, a wand similarly decorated, a totem,wooden spoon ^[[&c]] all
of them bearing superstitious figures and employed by
the Medicine Man in exorcising  witchcraft and expelling disease. These were accompanied by prehistoric objects in stone, as a grooved stone axe several pestles and a pounder or grinder. All the above objects have been arranged for exhibition in the museum cases.
  It appearing to be desirable to more easily distinguish the Pueblo Collections made in 1879 from those of 1880, the marks previously stamped upon them having become in many instances nearly effaced by frequent handling in removals, by washing &c, the date 1879

Transcription Notes:
&c is correct, an old form of etc. USRM = U.S. Revenue Marine