ZUÑI BREADSTUFF

10
VIII

“At nine years of age, Cushing’s attention was caught by Indian arrowheads found in his neighborhood. He began a collection that grew into a museum and laboratory, which he housed in a wigwam he built in a secluded part of the family homestead. His interest and knowledge grew until, at eighteen, he went to Cornell University already an expert capable of instructing the teachers. Perhaps because of his close connection with nature, he early on fell into a habit of thought not unlike that of the primitive arrow maker; even before he knew living Indians, he grew to sympathize with Indian art, Indian methods, and Indian motives. So, in his wigwam laboratory and later at Cornell and elsewhere, he began to reproduce chipped stone arrowheads and other aboriginal artifacts using processes similar to those of native artisans. In this art, he attained a unique degree of skill, and through it, he gained a unique understanding of the methods of primitive people. In 1874, at the age of seventeen, he sent to Secretary Baird Spencer Fullerton Baird, the second Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. an account of the Antiquities of Orleans County, New York,