A JOINT expedition of Columbia University and the University Museum, under the auspices of the Latin-American Institute, is leaving at once to undertake the investigation of the Goajiros, an Arawak tribe dwelling in Colombian and Venezuelan territory.
The Goajiros have checkmated any attempt to Christianize or subjugate them, but we have the utmost confidence in the ability of Vincenzo Petrullo, director of the expedition, to analyze unfriendly natives.
The members of the party are Dr. Petrullo, Dr. Paul Kirchoff, Mrs. Hanna Kirchoff, Mrs. Gwyneth Browne Harrington, Miss Lydia du Pont and Mr. Lewis Korn.
This expedition represents the Institute’s first opportunity to carry out the purposes of its foundation; for Columbia University and the University Museum met and laid the necessary plans on the common meeting ground of the Institute Council.
Later in the season Columbia University will send Dr. Jules Henry to Brazil on a similar ethnological investigation.
THANKS to a very generous grant from the American Philosophical Society, the Museum is able to carry on two phases of a project long dear to its heart: the study of migrations between the Asiatic and American continents
Dr. Frederica de Laguna will return to Alaska for a fifth season of archaeological research. She will undertake a survey of the lower Yukon, between Koyukuk and Holy Cross, a region archaeologically little known. She hopes to determine the prehistoric boundary between Eskimo and Indian territory and to recognize traces of early migrations along the river. Dr. J. A. Eardley and Mr. Kenneth Gorton of the University of Michigan and Mr. Norman Reynolds of the University of Washington will join Dr. de Laguna’s expedition. Her project has received further welcome support from the National Research Council.
Dr. Edgar B. Howard will journey to Leningrad and Moscow to arrange with Russian archaeologists for the exchange of information on the antiquity of man in America and to plan for profitable future work in Siberia on this problem.
DR. and Mrs. Erich F. Schmidt left this country on April 6 for Rayy, accompanied by the following technical staff: George C. Miles, assistant director; Van W. Knox, Jr., architect; J. A. Bornholdt, artist, and James H. Gaul, assistant.
The airplane presented to the expedition by Mrs. Schmidt will be piloted by Lewin B. Barringer of Haverford. In addition to being used for mapping Rayy and for surveying Luristan from the air, it will enable Dr. Schmidt to keep in constant touch with the Oriental Institute excavations at Persepolis, of which he is also to be director.
The March Bulletin contained an article on Rayy by Dr. Schmidt.