Photograph of the construction of the Caracol Tower, Southwest Museum circa 1913
Braun Research Library Collection, Autry National Center, Los Angeles; Photo #S1.493
We are so fortunate to have Kim Walters as our film's Advisor and knowledgeable member of our creative engine. She recently shared with us this great article that she wrote about the founding of the Southwest Museum.
CHARLES F. LUMMIS AND
THE FOUNDING OF THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM
Kim Walters ©
The Southwest Museum founded in 1907 is a product of the
period in the United States when museums, educational institutions and academic
fields of study were being created to acquire archaeological and ethnological
material, knowledge of Southwestern and Native America and other cultures throughout
the world, and it is an excellent example of this type of institution which
focused on acquiring knowledge through systematic study and education
dissemination programming. Contextually it relates to the realization of the
importance to study archaeology throughout the United States and, specifically
in California and the Southwestern United States. Further the distinguished
work of various professionals associated with the Southwest Museum is important
to the development in the academic fields archaeology and ethnology and study
of American and Southwestern United States cultures, and museums in the United
States with education programs related specifically to Southwestern and Native
American material.
In the United States during the mid to late nineteenth
century the majority of museums which collected archaeological and ethnological
materials relating to Native Americans were established. Many of these new
institutions were natural history museums. The academic disciplines of
anthropology and archaeology were beginning in the United States. In
mid-nineteenth century Europe, anthropology as a discipline grew out of natural
history, as the study of human beings. The study of language, culture, physiology, and artifacts of European
colonies was more or less equivalent to studying the flora and fauna of those
places. Anthropology as a professional discipline in the United States
was established in the early 1900s with the first Ph.D. program at Columbia
University under Franz Boas. This is the cultural and social context in which
Charles Lummis founded the Southwest Museum.
The founder of the Southwest Museum, Charles F.
Lummis, had many colleagues from these eastern institutions and was concerned
about material leaving the Southwest and what this meant to future generations.
He transformed his vision into a viable institution with the Museum's
incorporation in 1907. His life long friendship with Adolph Bandelier exposed
Lummis to many cultures in the Americas. Lummis’ experience with Bandelier in
Peru and Bolivia on an archaeological expedition in 1893 influenced his ideas
about archaeology. Lummis also had a close friendship with Frank Hamilton
Cushing whose work and collecting for the Smithsonian Institution, the British
Museum and a national Museum in Germany further helped to form Lummis’ vision
for establishing a museum in the Southwest.
When Lummis became the editor of the Land of
Sunshine magazine in 1895, in his earliest issue he wrote his editorial
comments about establishing a museum dedicated to vast and varied interests in
Southern California. Lummis wanted the museum’s mission to include a range of
scientific and aesthetic interests that would highlight the seven counties in
Southern California. The collection and study of flora, fauna, ethnology and
archaeology were to be paramount to this new institution. In the next three
issues he wrote articles dedicated to important private collections of
Palmer-Campbell and Yates that focused on materials relating to Southern
California. His idea for a museum took tangible form in 1903 with the founding
of the Southwest Society, the western branch of the Archaeological Institute of
America (AIA).
When Francis W. Kelsey, general secretary of the
Archaeological Institute of America, wanted to expand the influence of the
Institute beyond the East through local affiliates, he reached out to fellow
Harvard graduates for support. Kelsey was trying to get more people to focus on
United States archaeology through local affiliates support of the parent
organization by way of dues and programs. Within two years of its founding the
Southwest Society had more members then the other 21 branches of the AIA.
Once Lummis agreed to establish the Southwest
Society, he began to pursue his idea of a museum. Within the year he began to
solicit collections and to raise money in order to purchase collections. One of
the first was the Palmer-Campbell Collections of Southern California
Archaeology and Baskets. He also hired Frank M. Palmer as curator to maintain
his collections. In keeping "archaeology alive" Lummis began to
record California Spanish folk songs. Early in 1906 Lummis and the Executive
Committee of the Southwest Society began to look for land in order to his idea
of a “great museum” come to fruition. The group secured 38 acres of land in
Highland Park in its current location in the spring of 1907. The Southwest
Museum became a reality on December 31, 1907 when it received its letters of
incorporation from the State of California.
Lummis was of the opinion the Eastern museums and the
national museums of Germany, England and Spain were carrying out expeditions to
amass archaeological materials from the southwestern United States, that he
felt belonged in the Southwest. At the time Lummis wrote it was time “to save something
for Our children.” Once the Southwest Society began collecting artifacts (1905),
a museum exhibition space was established in the Pacific Electric building in
downtown Los Angeles. It was moved in 1908 to the Hamburger Building where it
was housed until the Southwest Museum building opened in 1914.
Lummis’ interests also lay in conducting systematic
archaeological surveys in the Southwest as an important means of developing
museum collections in order to save them for research. The first project sponsored
by the Society was conducted by Frank M. Palmer in 1905 in Redondo Beach,
California. During this time Lummis battled with the Department of Interior to
be able to carry on archaeological field work in Arizona on Indian
Reservations. He finally succeeded and was granted a permit to work on federal
land with the provision that the Society report findings to the Bureau of
American Ethnology. While Lummis was working on this, he and Edgar L. Hewett
were instrumental in getting the 1906 Antiquities Act passed, with the hopes of
stalling the excavations of sites in the Southwest. Lummis and the Southwest
Society funded the early excavations of the pueblo of Puye in New Mexico by
Edgar L. Hewett with the idea that Lummis would get exhibit quality objects that
were eventually be featured in the museum’s Hamburger Building space.
He also wanted to establish other museums or research
centers throughout the Southwest to promote learning and scientific
advancements. Lummis was in contact with the corporate headquarters of the
Archaeological Institute of America about this idea, while they were in the
process of establishing the School of American Research. He tried to get them
to bring it to Los Angeles, but they thought it was better in Santa Fe because
the staff would be in the region where they were conducting research.
Unlike many of his contemporaries who founded
museums, such as George Gustav Heye, Lummis was not wealthy. He did not have a
personal systematic collection and was not necessarily careful about recording
provenance of objects. Rather, he acquired mementos and souvenirs that had
meaning for him because of their age, or their associations with people and
events. Other contemporaries of Lummis' such as Heye, Sheldon Jackson, Rudolf
F. Haffenreffer, Phoebe Apperson Hearst and Mary Cabbot Wheelwright were
amassing Native American material for their personal interests. They too began
to take interests in establishing museums.
George Heye was able to use his personal wealth and
compulsive behavior to collect any type of material culture he wanted. Heye
also was more interested in the "stuff" than in the provenance. He
funded expeditions to gather material which he split with the American Museum
of Natural History and then later with the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
Always having the first pick of the materials discovered, Heye amassed a large
enough collection that he decided to establish his own museum in New York City,
the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation in 1916. Heye continued to
purchase collections, especially immediately following the Stock Market crash.
This collection is now the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian
Institution.
The Southwest Museum according to Lummis' early
vision as written in 1895 was at first a general museum that represented
material culture, the flora and fauna of Southern California. Although his 1907
article indicates that the museum is to focus on the cultures of the Southwest
which includes, California, Arizona and New Mexico. When J. A. B. Scherer took
over as director in 1926 the Museum's collection began to be more focused on
Native Americans. Scherer argued that there were other museums in the Los
Angeles area collection the natural history specimens, so he wanted the Museum
to refocus back to Lummis’ original vision. “The Modern American museum is
first of all an educational institution. It supplements our general educational
system at two points: sharing honors with the university in increasing
knowledge through scientific research, and assisting ‘the grades’ by bringing
large numbers of pupils into direct contact with typical and inspiring examples
of nature or art, scientifically exhibited and sympathetically interpreted.”
The staff looked at the Museum's collection and began to exchange the flora and
fauna with other local institutions such as The Los Angeles Museum of Art,
History and Science (now the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County)
Beginning in 1932, during the tenure of well known anthropologist Frederick
Webb Hodge as the Museum’s director, the focus on Native American culture was
established. A sizable percentage of the present Southwest Museum collections
were amassed under Hodge's leadership.
The Southwest Museum collections relate to Native Americans
from Alaska to Terra del Fuego. The Museum garnered its reputation through its
publication series and the systematic archaeological surveys and excavations
its staff conducted from the mid-1920s through to the early 1960s. The staff
worked in Arizona, Mexico, Nevada and California. The Museum research library
includes manuscript, photographs and sound recordings collections. Many of the
items in the manuscript collections relate to the development of archaeology
and anthropology in the United States. Today collections of the Museum are
utilized by national and international researchers.
With the founding the Southwest Society and later to the
Southwest Museum, Lummis intended to bring a cultural institution to Los
Angeles, to make Los Angeles the center of art and culture in California , and
to establish ties with fledging national museums, primarily located in the
East. In his writings he makes reference to New York, Boston and Chicago as eastern
art and cultural centers that Los Angeles should strive to emulate.
Beginning in 1926 with a now more focused institutional
vision on anthropology and Native American cultures, the Southwest Museum’s new
director James A. B. Scherer was responsible for hiring professional staff,
such as Charles Amsden, Monroe Amsden, Harold Gladwin, and Mark Raymond
Harrington. The research efforts and the publication of the findings of these
distinguished archaeologists, anthropologists and other professionals were
pivotal in the establishment of the Southwest Museum’s reputation as an
important repository of Native American material. Scherer also started the Masterkey, the Southwest Museum
membership magazine.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hinsley, Curtis, 1981 Savages and Scientists: The
Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology,
1846-1910. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Hinsley, Curtis, 1994 The Smithsonian and the American
Indian: Making a Moral Anthropology in Victorian America. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Jacknis, Ira, 2006 “A New Thing? The NMAI in Historical and
Institutional Perspective.” In American Indian Quarterly, vol. 30 no.
3&4. pp. 511-542.
Wilson, Thomas H. and Cheri Faulkenstien-Doyle, 1999 “Charles
Fletcher Lummis and the Origins of the Southwest Museum.” In Shepard Krech, and
Barbara A. Hail, eds. Collecting Native America: 1870-1960. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Pp.74-104.
Lummis, Charles F. 1895. “The California Liar.” Land of Sunshine February vol. II
no. 3 (February 1895): 53. -- museum
Lummis, Charles F., 1895 “The Palmer Collection.” Land of
Sunshine March vol. II no. 4 pp. 68-69.
Lummis, Charles F., 1895 “The Campbell Collection of
Baskets.” Land of Sunshine April vol. II no. 5 pp. 85.
Lummis, Charles F. 1906 “the Southwest Society ,
Archaeological Institute of America”, March vol. xxiv, no. 3 p. 238.
Lummis, Charles F., 1907 “Southwest Museum” Out West Magazine, May vol. xxvi. no. 5
pp. 389-412.
Moneta, Daniela A.,1985
Chas. F. Lummis- the Centennial Exhibition: Commemorating his Tramp
Across the Continent. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum.
Morley, Sylvanus G., 1910. “Southhouse, Puye” Sixth Bulletin, The Southwest Society.
Los Angeles.
Palmer, F. M. 1905, “First Field Season”. Out West Magazine or The Southwest
Society Bulletin. Los Angeles.
Snead, James E, 2001 Ruins and Rivals: The Making of
Southwest Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Thompson, Mark, 1998 An
American Character: the Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis and the
Rediscovery of the Southwest. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Yoeman, Sharyn, 2003 Messages from the promised land Bohemian Los Angeles,
1880-1920. Denver: University of Colorado, Ph.D.
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