# Journal of American Folk-Lore/Volume 13/Issue 49/In Memoriam: Frank Hamilton Cushing

​In Memoriam : Frank Hamilton Ciishing. 129
IN MEMORIAM : FRANK HAMILTON CUSHING.
The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his great- est happiness in using it. — Goethe.
Frank Hamilton Cushing (born July 22, 1857, at Northeast, Pa. ; died April 10, 1900) was an anthropologist "born and made," if there ever was one. His boyhood was spent on a farm at Barre, Orleans County, N. Y., a district rich in Indian remains and relics. Before he was ten years old, a flint arrow-head, which his father's hired man picked up one day while ploughing, and tossed to him over the furrows, with the remark, "The Indians made that ; it is one of their arrow-heads," aroused his interest as nothing else had ever done before. As he himself tells us, in the autobiographical para- graphs contained in his paper on " The Arrow," this was the turn- ing-point of his genius : "That little arrow-point decided the purpose and calling of my whole life. It predestined me, ladies and gentle- men, to the honor I have in addressing you here [before the Anthro- pological Section of the American Association at Springfield, August 29, 1895] to-day on Arrows ; for I have studied archaeology far more, alas, than anything else — ever since I treasured that small arrow blade on the lid of an old blue chest in my little bedroom, until the cover of that chest was overfilled with others like it and with relics of many another kind." Not long after he discovered with delight a place where flint arrow-heads had been made, and, before many years were over, he had gathered " a collection of some hundreds of relics from all over central and western New York," and soon "be- gan a series of experiments to learn how these arrows had been made " — all this before he had ever looked into a book on anthro- pology. Through the gift of aneighboring farmer, who, in his youth, had been a " Forty-Niner," young Cushing became acquainted with obsidian-tipped arrow-heads, which he sought to imitate by hammer- ing pieces of bottle and window glass. When about fourteen years of age, he discovered in the woods south of the town of Medina (whither his father removed in 1870) an old Indian fort, and then his enthusiasm knew no limit. He built a hut there, and "used to go there and remain days at a time, digging for relics while the sun shone, and on rainy days or at night, in the light of the camp-fire, studying by experiment how the more curious of them had been made and used." How with a toothbrush flaking-tool (he had sac- rificed the article in the effort to reproduce a harpoon blade he had dug up) he discovered how flint arrow-heads were made, and how in the joy of invention he " made arrow after arrow, until his hands were blistered and lacerated, — in one place so deeply that the scar
vol. xiii. — xo. 49. 9
�� � ​1 30 Journal of American Folk- Lore.
remains to this day," he has himself described. And from this sim- ple beginning — in reality a magnificent discovery — he " elaborated some seven or eight totally distinct methods of working flint-like substances with Stone Age apparatus," finding subsequently that " all save two of those processes were absolutely similar to processes now known to have been some time in vogue with one people or another of the ancient world." All this the intuitive anthropologist accomplished before science called him authoritatively to his life-task. In the spring of 1875 he entered as a student at Cornell University, but in the same year he was called to the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- ington, D. C, where he became assistant to Dr. Charles Rau in arranging the Indian collections of the U. S. National Museum, and preparing them for exhibition at the Centennial, in Philadelphia, the next year. At Philadelphia he acted as curator of the collection, and at the close of the Exposition was appointed curator of the Ethno- logical Department of the National Museum. During the summer of 1876 he began his investigation of the Pueblo Indians, which after- wards assumed such magnitude and thoroughness. Three years later he was with Major J. W. Powell's New Mexico expedition, which spent two months at Zuni, and, at his own request, was left there, where he remained until 1882. During his second year among the Zuni Indians, " he had so far made himself one of the tribe, and gained the esteem of the chiefs, that he was formally adopted and initiated into the sacred esoteric society, the ' Priesthood of the Bow.' " His zeal and what he went through for the sake of science, to the detriment of his health, may be judged from the popular account of his " Adventures," which he published shortly afterwards in the "Century." It was the boy Cushing over again with his delightful recklessness in the search after knowledge. But science reaped the benefit of his insight into the speech, habits, folk-lore, and religion of the Zufiis, a people as interesting to the student of man as any in the wide world. In 1882 he was with the six Zuni Indians who, under his auspices, travelled to the far East to take water from the " Ocean of Sunrise " (Atlantic) and religiously, as they had taken it up, carried it with them to their sacred house at Zuni, — one of the most remarkable pilgrimages on record. With two of these Indians, who did not return at once to their homes, he spent the summer in Washington, and from them obtained much material for his paper on " Zufii Fetiches." Back at Zuni by September of 1882, he remained there until ill health made his return to the East necessary in the spring of 1884. With him came three Zufiis, "to aid him in the preparation of a dictionary and grammar of their language and in translations of myth and beast stories, songs, and rituals." Two years later he organized, through the liberality of Mrs.
�� � ​Mary Hemenway, of Boston, the "Hemenway Archæological Expedition," and as its director the next year "discovered and excavated extensive buried cities in Arizona and New Mexico." During the progress of these researches Mr. Cushing was taken sick, which interfered with his personal labors in the investigation. An account of the aims, objects, etc., of this expedition was communicated by him to the Congrès International des Américanistes in 1888. From this time until his death, except when ill health prevented it, he was engaged in the arrangement and publication of portions of the vast amount of information accumulated by him during his stay among the Zuñis, and the corroboration of it by further studies and investigations, the years 1891–1897 being fertile in more or less extended essays on all sides of Indian life and beliefs. In the midst of his devotion to ethnology, mythology, and folk-lore Cushing never forgot his early love for archæology, as his studies of "Primitive Copper-Working" (1893), "Shoreland Pottery" (1894), the "Arrow" (1895), "Implement Making" (1897), etc., prove. In 1895 he was at the head of the Pepper-Hurst expedition in Florida, and discovered on the Gulf Coast of that State extensive remains of a sea-dwelling people. Mr. Cushing was one of the original members of the American Folk-Lore Society, and served as one of its first assistant secretaries in 1888. In 1894 he was elected vice-president of Section H (Anthropology), and at the Springfield meeting the following year delivered his noteworthy address on the "Arrow." He was an active member of the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C, and in 1895 was vice-president (Section D, Technology). Mr. Cushing married, July 10, 1882, Miss Emily Tennison McGill, of Washington, D. C.
In Mr. Cushing anthropological science in America loses one of its most remarkable figures. A tireless investigator, a "brother" of the Indian, an eloquent talker, and a charming writer, he had a personality entirely sui generis. Add to his make-up absolute health, and we have an ideal student of uncivilized man! The present writer, whose acquaintance with Mr. Cushing was not intimate but, in the brief periods of meeting, most helpful and inspiring, will long treasure the remembrance of an hour's talk now and then with him on the "deep things" of the life of the barbarian and the savage. Both in private and in public he was one who impressed his audience as a man having "authority" to speak whereof he might. As his essays, from time to time, revealed, he had much of the poet in him and the deep eloquence of faith. It is difficult to compare him with his peers and fellow-laborers in anthropological science. In a sense, he stands apart and alone. He must be judged by his works and his life.
​Following is a list of the chief works of Mr. Cushing which have more or less to do with folk-lore:—
As the above list shows, the passion for experimentation so marked in Cushing's boyhood remained with him to the last. The essays on "Primitive Copper-Working" (No. 12), "Shoreland Pottery" (No. 13), and the "Arrow" (No. 14), present brilliant examples of this faculty for the discovery of unknown methods by actual experimenting. How great this was in him the diverse labors of "flint-flaking," "copper-working," and "pit-made pottery" indicated. Cushing was himself the proof of one of the theories he held to most strongly; viz., that many human arts have been discovered and forgotten, rediscovered in diverse ages and different peoples, found and lost and refound time and again, invented and reinvented not once, but many times.
His studies of primitive life (Nos. 1, 2, 6, 7, 19) reveal to us how far he penetrated into the arcana of primitive society and aboriginal thought. His essay on "Zuñi Fetiches" (No. 1), in which he had the help of the Zuñis themselves, exhibits a breadth of philosophy, a sympathetic interpretation of the ideas of another race, and a grasp of the things beneath the surface, which so many observers miss, appearing again and again in his masterpiece, the "Zuñi Creation Myths" (No. 6). This last is an undying monument to his zeal, his genial insight, his poetic fervor, and power to shape our language to portray the Iliad of a race as wonderful as the Greeks of old. His address on "Primitive Motherhood" is the most glowing and yet never untruthful tribute paid by any white man, poet or prosaist, to the "better halves" of primitive man, whose essential humanity, affection, and true womanliness lift the races below ours into the unmistakable kinship of all mankind. Interpretative studies like those on "Pottery" (No. 3), and "Manual Concepts" (No. 9), exhibit Cushing's remarkable talent in coordinating the various elements of primitive life, the rise of some of which, or of all of which, marks progress in culture. The article on "Manual Concepts" evidences also his wonderful grasp of the psychology of Zuñi speech, examples of which also appear in his mythological studies. As an explorer where the living are absent, he appears to advantage in his Floridian Archaeological Studies (No. 16).
To sum up: In Cushing, archæologist, linguist, folk-lorist, science has lost an anthropologist of the highest order. His death, at the ​comparatively youthful age of forty-three, removes from the world one of the most brilliant of that group of students of man whose researches have been one of the crowning glories of the century now about to close.
Alex. F. Chamberlain.
Clark University, Worcester, Mass.