Native American Ethnography
The Ethnographic collection at the New York State Museum includes about 3,500 objects of Native American art and material culture from tribes across North America with an emphasis on the Eastern Woodlands. It is most notable for Iroquoian and Algonquian material culture, including seminal mid-19th century Iroquois collections acquired by Lewis Henry Morgan and the early 20th century research and collections of Seneca anthropologist, Arthur C. Parker. The collection also includes a large number of baskets from southeastern and western tribes, beaded materials from the Apache and Plains Indians, and items from the Northwest Coast and Alaska. The art and culture of New York’s Native People today are represented in the Collection of Contemporary Native American Art.