The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-11-16
VERY EARLY AMERICANS.

H
 A Valuable Collection of Moki Relics.
 One of the most interesting and valu- able collections that has reached the National Museum in a long time has just been unpacked, and the work of preparing and cataloguing it for exhi- bition has already been begun.
 The collection represents some four months work by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes. the eminent ethnologist of this city, who, together with MT Walter Hough, also of the museum, spent the summer in the elimination and study of the ruins of 8 Moki village in Arizona. The value of their study can hardly be overestimated, in view of the addition al light that it casts upon the history and life of those most interesting Pue- bio people. In addition to what they saw and learned they brought back to Washington 8 most remarkable collec- ton of pottery and household utensils, as well as articles of personal adorn- ment, that belonged to those people in prehistoric times With reference to the Pueblos of the southwest the word prehistoric is used to denote the time previous to the year 1540, so that the collection represents the handiwork of the Mokis at least three hundred and fifty years ago, and possibly a great deal more than that.
 In all something like three thousand different articles were secured and for warded to this city. It is believed that no expedition among the Pueblos or cliff dWellers was ever so fruitful in results. Certainly, as one sees the great collection for the first time he is struck not only by it's magnitude, but by it's diversity as we'll Careful scien- tific study, it is believed, will tend to broaden our present knowledge of the origin as we'll as the manners of the Mokis, who are regarded by ethnolo- gists as a division of the same family to, which the Zunis belong.
 Dr. Fewkes made the little railroad town of Winslow, Ariz., the base of op- erations for his summers field work. To the north lie a group of Pueblos, which is known as the Tusayan vil- lages, occupied by the MolSis of to-day. Much has been written of them, but it was Dr. Fewkes' aim to learn more of the ancient history of the people in an effort to solve the vexed problem of the direction from which they originally came By some it is claimed that the Mokis came from the south and are really Aztecs, while others believe they migrated from the north, and to some the fact that shells were very common among them, along with other objects from near the sea, answers for proof that they originally dwelt near the Pa cific.
 The Mokis, according to Dr. Fewkes, differ but little from their ancestors, and are the same quiet, peaceable, ag- ricultural people, who would rather run than fight, and who were probably driven into these desert regions by the more warlike plains Indians The cliff dwellings, it is generally admitted, were strongholds from which the peo- pie could make their way to the valleys below to till the soil, and in which they took refuge when threatened by the incursions of their foes. The Mokis are still a good-natured, agricultural people, who have never given the gov ernment the slightest trouble, and have never been compelled to call on Uncle Sam for rations They are jovial, happy set, who enjoy a joke or bit of fun. and are entirely different from the ordinary conception of an Indian as a preternatural1y solemn and taciturn chap.
 ''In fact" said Dr Fewkes, in con- versatfon yesterday, "it would be hard to find a people who appreciate a joke more than the Mokis do. I have seen them laugh until they fairly rolled upon the ground. I had a number of them at work for me during the sum mer, and it seemed as though they all