#smithsonian archives

Book Feature: Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans

It’s Feathursday! This illustration from Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans is of an eagle’s head carved in shell by Native Americans, and it is half of a shell gorget, which is a shell carving meant to be worn as a necklace. William Henry Holmes notes that the artistry of this carving was unparalleled and expertly and accurately done and that it was found in Alabama.

Holmes also included this painting of a Thunderbird attributed to the Haida. According to Wisdom of the Elders, the “Haida, a North American native culture, settled in the Canadian Queen Charlotte Islands and Alaska area over 8,000 years ago.” Holmes noted that the shell carvings that he was cataloging resembled other Native American tribes’ art and culture in the use of composite figures, particularly those composed of human and bird features, like this Thunderbird.

In 1972, President Nixon made a historic trip to the People’s Republic of China, one of the first steps forward in diplomatic relations with the county since it became communist. China presented giant pandas Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling to Nixon as a friendly gesture. In return, the U.S. gifted china with a pair of musk oxen. The act was dubbed “Panda Diplomacy,” which has a much nicer ring than “Musk Oxen Diplomacy.” The pandas came to live at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.

Dear Mary,

I hope this will interest you.

Affectionately,

Your Uncle Samuel

The best coffee in Carlsbad is at the Posthof, and is as good as I know of anywhere. I have been looking into the kitchen this morning and seeing it prepared. The statement that figs or anything of the kind are employed is legendary. There is absolutely nothing but coffee, and it owes its superior excellence to the freshness and the pains taken in its making.

1. The coffee in the berry.

There are four kinds of coffee bean employed: the Menado, Ceylon, Java and Preanger. I do not know the English equivalents for the first and last. They are of very different sizes indeed, and this difference in size of the berry must make it difficult to burn them equally.

2. Roasting.

The roasting is done in a rotary wire mesh over a slow fire. The coffee is renewed three times daily. Each time 10 to 20 pounds of coffee is roasted, a girl turning the handle, and the process occupying in each case nearly an hour. In spite of this care, when the beans come out some of them are very dark and these are picked out.

3. Grinding.

The coffee is then ground to a very uniform fineness, something between the head of a small pin and a coarse sand. It is in no ways ground into a snuff-like powder, but is always clearly perceptible as particles between the fingers. The color of the ground coffee is a light chestnut.

4. Mixing with water.

Somewhat over one-quarter of a pound of the ground coffee is measured in a tin and this is emptied into a tin pail holding, I suppose, four to six gallons. Into this is poured, actually boiling soft water, enough to make 10 portions of the coffee. This softness is considered so important, that if the water be at all hard, a little soda is first added to soften it. The coffee and water are then well stirred with a spoon, and the lid put on and allowed to remain two minutes, when it is poured onto a thick straining cloth placed in a tin vessel with large holes at the bottom through which it drains into a white stone pitcher, which is itself set in boiling water. From this pitcher it is poured into the little ones in which it is served on the table.

5. Serving.

The amount of coffee and water just described will, as I have said, make 10 portions, each of which will be, with the addition of the milk, two of the little cups here, or hardly one good breakfast cup as we have it at home. It is served ordinarily with milk which has been boiled, and which has a little whipped cream on top.

6. Comment.