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e investigation of those who come afterward. The first and foremost object of this museum--as it should be of every such institution--is the preservation of historical evidence; the second, the making it accessible in its original aspect for study. Ornamental display, when in the least degree inconsistent with scientific uses, has no place in any of the rooms. Nothing is put up because it is pretty; and if the history of any specimen is at all doubtful, it is kept out of sight, or else its label contains the proper cautions and queries. Having scanned the relics of that far-away time which seems to have preceded the coming even of the red men into the United States, let us now see what the museum has to show of the arts and industries and amusements of those "Indians" who were found in possession when Europeans came to the New World. The whole continent was inhabited by what was substantially the same race of men, divided into many language-stocks, subdivided into a still greater number of more or less cohesive tribes, and segregated into innumerable bands or villages. As they varied in dialect, organization, and environment, so were they greatly diversified in mental accomplishments and in outward customs and belongings. In subordinate points the characteristics of some divisions contrasted most pointedly with those of others; yet in certain cardinal aspects the whole population known in historic times from Tierra del Fuego to Eskimo-land was a unit. All were red-skinned Americans, "tarred with the same stick."[1] Moreover, it has been supposed that no race other than these red men has ever permanently occupied any portion of the United States between the departure of the palaeolithic Eskimos and the advent of Europeans,--the "Mound-Builders" not excepted. To the prehistoric relics and the modern manufactures of these natives of America the Peabody Museum is chiefly devoted. The material preserved was obtained by its original collectors in a variety of ways. Much of it was gathered in farm-fields, where it had been turned up under the plough one piece at a time. All parts of the United States are represented, but some regions more plentifully than others, not only because one district may contain more persons interested in the matter, but because of the comparative scarcity of relics in some parts. One of the most densely populated districts in the whole Union in Indian life was the Atlantic slope of the Alleghani
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