The American Indian

PREF­ACE

This book is of­fered as a gen­eral sum­mary of an­thro­po­log­i­cal re­search in the New World. It is in the main a by-prod­uct of the au­thor's ac­tiv­i­ties as a mu­seum cu­ra­tor in which ca­pac­ity he has sought to ob­jec­tify and sys­tem­atize the es­sen­tial facts re­lat­ing to abo­rig­i­nal Amer­ica. Thus, he is first of all in­debted to the Amer­i­can Mu­seum of Nat­ural His­tory for the op­por­tu­ni­ties and re­sources nec­es­sary to the de­vel­op­ment of the sub­ject and for per­mis­sion to use the ex­pe­ri­ence so gained in the com­po­si­tion of these pages.

Of per­sonal oblig­a­tions there are many. All of my as­so­ci­ates in the Mu­seum have been most help­ful: par­tic­u­larly, ac­knowl­edg­ment should be made to Doc­tor Robert H. Lowie who read the man­u­script and of­fered many sug­ges­tions as to the scope and form of the work. In ad­di­tion, recog­ni­tion should be given Pro­fes­sor A. L. Kroe­ber, Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, for valu­able crit­i­cisms; to Mr. Leslie Spier for data on the ar­chae­ol­ogy of east­ern North Amer­ica; and to Mr. An­drew T. Wylie, Teach­ers Col­lege, for sug­ges­tions as to the form of pre­sen­ta­tion. Fi­nally, it is a plea­sure to ac­knowl­edge my oblig­a­tion to Pro­fes­sor Henry Fair­field Os­born, Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Mu­seum of Nat­ural His­tory, for in­spi­ra­tion and en­cour­age­ment in the ear­lier stages of the work.

The tech­ni­cal prepa­ra­tion of these pages was un­der­taken by my sec­re­tary, Miss Bella Weitzner, who com­piled the ta­bles of lin­guis­tic stocks, the bib­li­og­ra­phy, and the index, and whose long ex­pe­ri­ence, cou­pled with ex­ten­sive an­thro­po­log­i­cal knowl­edge, greatly fa­cil­i­tated all phases of the work. The spec­i­mens il­lus­trated are from the Mu­seum col­lec­tions. The maps, di­a­grams, and many of the draw­ings were ex­e­cuted by Mr. S. Ichikawa who also ren­dered in­dis­pens­able as­sis­tance in the se­lec­tion and arrange­ment of the il­lus­tra­tions.

Clark Wissler, 1870-1947

An introduction to the anthropology of the New World
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923 and is a scarce antiquarian book.
Contains majority of text, as cataloging and observation, but also some scanned original sketches and photos.