Material Culture of the Numa: The John Wesley Powell Collection, 1867-1880

Abstract

Between 1867 and 1880 John Wesley Powell made collections of material culture items from several Numic-speaking Indian groups in the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau regions of the western United States. The collections were made in conjunction with Powell&amp;apos;s ethnographic studies of those groups (Fowler and Fowler, eds., 1971). The USNM (United States National Museum) collections, on deposit in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, were studied by the authors in 1967-1968. The items described herein represent approximately one-half of the total collections. The remainder were deposited, on an exchange basis, in other major museums in the United States and abroad in the latter portion of the 19th century.<br/>Several individual items, or classes of items, from the USNM collections, were described by various authors of comparative studies of American Indian material culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, the full range of items in the collections has not been described previously.<br/>The bulk of the items were collected by Powell from various Southern Paiute or Northern Ute bands; the remainder from the Deep Creek Gosiute, and Goose Creek, Bear River and Wind River Shoshoni. The items reflect cultures in the early stages of acculturation to the intrusive Euroamerican cultures. The value of the collections is enhanced by photographs taken, principally in 1873 and 1874, by John K. (Jack) Hillers, Powell&amp;apos;s photographer. The photographs show various items being worn or used by their makers.<br/>With the exception of Powell&amp;apos;s studies and collections, systematic ethnographic work among Numic-speaking Indian peoples was not undertaken until the 1920s or later. By that time, much knowledge of, and use of, aboriginal crafts had been lost or existed only in the memories of older people. In contrast, the collections described herein reflect still viable lifeways of the "Numa" as lived in the 1870s, and add a significant increment to our knowledge of those lifeways.