By: William Curtis Farabee
Volume VI / Number 2
The Conebo is one of several related tribes occupying the territory along the Alto-Ucayali River speaking dialects of the Pano language. Their cultures, while not identical, are very similar. One tribe may excel in the manufacture of one thing and supply its neighbors with that particular article. For example, the Piros make the best canoes […]
By: W. C. F.
Volume VII / Number 4
The Indians of South America are physically so similar to those of North America, and so unlike any other possible progenitors, that we must believe that their ancestors migrated across the Isthmus of Panama in very early times. That migration ceased so long ago that little resemblance remains in the languages or customs of the […]
By: WM. Curtis Farabee
Volume VIII / Number 1
To the Head Waters of the Amazon After returning from the Guianas, we made a journey of 2,200 miles up the Amazon River in an English ship to Iquitos, Peru. The first night after leaving Para, while threading our way among the numerous islands, we ran aground on a sandbar and were unable to get […]
By: Wm. Curtis Farabee
Volume VIII / Number 2
The Tapajos Our next long journey was made up the Tapajos River, to the state of Matto Grosso, where the Sao Manoel and the Juruena unite to form the Tapajos. Here we visited the last remnant of the Apiacas, once a large and ferocious tribe, speaking a dialect of the Tupi language. At the time […]
By: Wm. C. Farabee
Volume IX / Number 1
In common use the term “art” is confined to the designation of the Fine Arts and is limited in its application to sculpture and painting. In this sense there is no art among primitive peoples, for their arts are instinctive in the beginning and confined in their use to decorative purposes. The human body and […]
By: Wm. C. Farabee
Volume IX / Number 1
In the discussion of the art of the Amazon it was stated that the realistic figures had no social nor religious significance, but that they were used for decorative purposes only, expressing nothing more than the ideas of animate objects and giving pleasure by the interpretation of the forms. Pictures are usually employed as aids […]
By: Wm. C. Farabee
Volume X / Number 3
After floating with the tide up the Amazon River for several days in a small canoe we turned north into a large river and continued our journey for some hours, or until we received a commanding signal, from a house on the left bank, to come ashore. Two statements must be amplified before proceeding with […]
By: Wm. C. Farabee
Volume X / Number 3
While at Waynesburg to deliver a Fourth of July address, I took advantage of the opportunity to spend a few days in archaeological investigation. Several years ago a farmer, while plowing on a hilltop, uncovered a large flat stone which excited his curiosity. Upon lifting the stone he found, in an excavation in the yellow […]
By: Wm. C. Farabee
Volume X / Number 4
The custom of taking the head, eyes, scalp, hands, teeth, or other part of the body as a trophy was widespread in the New World. The trophy was nearly always taken from the dead body of an enemy belonging to an alien tribe. The taking of the whole head was common in many places and […]
By: Wm. C. Farabee
Volume XI / Number 1
It is a well-known fact that wampum, or shell money, was in general use throughout the Atlantic coast in very early historic times and it is quite probable that the American Indians employed it as a true medium of exchange in a manner corresponding to our use of money even before the advent of Europeans. […]
By: Wm. Curtis Farabee
Volume XI / Number 3
The objects described in this article comprise the main part of an exhibition that was shown to invited guests of the Museum on April 26th last. Since then they have remained on exhibition, under temporary conditions, on the main floor of the University Museum. This exhibition, the first one of the kind that the Museum […]
By: William Curtis Farabee
Volume XI / Number 4
The long period of infancy has been the one stabilizing influence in the foundation of human society. Around the mother and her helpless child is built the home which is the basis of all social systems. The cradle therefore has become a sacred emblem among civilized men. Even in primitive society the child is the […]
By: William Curtis Farabee
Volume XII / Number 1
As long as prehistoric man was held down to the use of bone and stone implements he could make very little progress in civilization and culture, but with the discovery and use of metals his advancement became rapid and continuous. The first period may be measured in tens of thousands of years while the second […]
By: William Curtis Farabee
Volume XII / Number 1
The fine collection of prehistoric American Indian gold objects from Ecuador in the University Museum was found in 1912 by Sr. Pablo Isaias Sanches in the edge of an artificial mound on the island of Tola at the mouth of the Santiago River in the province of Esmeraldas. The island is low lying and swampy, […]
By: William Curtis Farabee
Volume XII / Number 3
Of the whole drainage of the Amazon, the great island of Marajo, lying in its mouth like an egg in the mouth of an elongated serpent, is of most interest to the archaeologist. The ancient inhabitants of this one island achieved a higher civilization as indicated by the development of their arts than that of […]
By: William Curtis Farabee
Volume XII / Number 4
THE culture of the Plains Indians was characterized by a lack of practically everything we today consider essential in the life of any people and yet, in the minds of most of us, they were the typical Indians of America. We see them in imagination all clad in buckskin and feathers. The limits of this […]
By: William Curtis Farabee
Volume XIII / Number 1
During the summer of 1921, Doctor Gordon, the Director ofthe Museum, in company with Doctor Leon Legrain, paid a visit to the Cathedral at Chartres, France, and discovered in the crypt of the Cathedral in the Chapel of _Saint Savinien and Saint Potentien, a gilded wooden frame containing two wampum belts made by the American […]