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About the
U.S. Exploring Expedition Artifact Database
The
catalogue of the U.S. Exploring Expedition's collection of ethnographic
and archaeological artifacts amassed during the four-year voyage was compiled
in the 1840s by two members of the scientific corps, Titian Ramsay Peale
and Charles Pickering. The original catalogue "Collections of the
United States South Sea Surveying and Exploring Expedition," which
can be found in the National Anthropological Archives, lists 2,487 artifacts
with 29 duplicate numbers, for a total of 2,516 ethnological specimens.
The collection documents most of the world they explored, including North
and South America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga
and Fiji and numerous other Pacific island groups.
The collection
was exhibited in the Great Hall of the Patent Office until 1857 when it
was transferred by order of the United States Congress to the Smithsonian
Institution. One result of this transfer was the establishment of the
United States National Museum. Today, the specimens, which were often
called "curiosities" when they were first collected, are part
of the collections of the Department of Anthropology, and are the earliest
and, in some cases, rarest and most important objects the Institution
possesses.
This database,
which can now be accessed for the first time by the public, is a somewhat
improved version of the original Peale catalogue. It lists each object
with its Smithsonian catalogue number, its original, or Peale catalogue
number, its collector, whether a member of the scientific corps, an officer
or regular crew member, a physical description of the object, and information
about its exhibition, research and publication history. The last category
is meant to give details about what has happened to the object since its
transfer to the Smithsonian.
Despite the
fact that these artifacts are indeed some of the earliest and most important
in the Smithsonian's collection, more than 500 of the original 2,500 artifacts
were given away. Spencer Baird, following James Smithson's original mandate
to increase and diffuse knowledge, diffused the collections by giving
away sets of U.S. Exploring Expedition objects, which he viewed as "duplicates,"
starting in 1859. Continuing this trend, In 1867, he had 25 U.S. Exploring
Expedition museum starter kits made up and sent them to state collections
of natural history, colleges and universities in the United States, Canada
and Europe. Eventually, these artifacts found their way to more than forty
museums in North America and Europe. Unfortunately, some exchanged objects
met with disaster during the 19th century. For example, a set sent to
Amherst College and one to the University of Toronto disappeared when
the buildings in which they were housed burnt down. One of the largest
collections of U.S. Exploring Expedition material, more than fifty artifacts,
went to the Chicago Academy of Science in 1867, and was consumed in the
great Chicago fire in 1872. Happily, most of the objects held in the Smithsonian
Institution have survived.
Jane
Walsh
Museum Specialist
Anthropology Outreach Office
Department of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History
January
2004
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