Abstract
SOME notable additions to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution illustrating the culture and history of the North American Indian peoples are recorded in communications recently issued by the Institution from Washington. The ethnographical interest of these objects is considerably enhanced by their historical and personal associations. Two corn husk dolls, for example, presented by the widow of the late J. N. B. Hewitt, who was the foremost authority of recent times on Iroquois culture and philosophy, are notable as being an exact reproduction of the dress of a man and woman of the Iroquois as described in contemporary accounts at the close of the eighteenth century. The Iroquois Federation of the Five Nations, founded in the seventeenth century, played a part of no little importance in the War of American Independence, though disrupted by a divided allegiance. The dresses of both male and female are of blue broadcloth decorated with glass, shell and porcelain beads and coloured ribbons. That of the woman is particularly elaborate.
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Amerindian Relics. Nature 146, 488–489 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146488d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146488d0