One hundred years ago this year (when the Penn Museum was just celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding) a letter arrived on the desk of then Director, George Byron Gordon. The post was from James H. McGlaughlin, who ran a trading post on Standing Rock Reservation, in North Dakota. In it, McGlaughlin replied to [...]
This Ainu robe was collected by Hiram M. Hiller (1867-1921) a physician and amateur ethnologist during a trip to Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan. The trip itself lasted only a month but covered an area stretching from the southern coastal villages of Hokkaido, near Shiraoi (where this piece comes from), to a circuit around [...]
