THE Museum of Anthropology grew out of the general museum development at the University of Michigan. One of the earliest specimens to become a part of the Cabinet of Natural History was a Chippewa birch-bark canoe, which was sent from Lake Superior to Ann Arbor about 1840 by Douglass Houghton, Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, who was in charge of the University's natural history collections.
During the 1800's a division of anthropology was not recognized as such in the natural history collections, although stray pieces and small groups of specimens were added from time to time. The first significant systematic collection was made by Joseph Beal Steere in the course of his famous trip of 1870 to 1875 up the Amazon, across the Andes and the Pacific, and through southeastern Asia. Steere collected archaeological and ethnological, as well as botanical and zoological, specimens in the regions he visited, thereby greatly increasing the anthropological materials of the University. Other expeditions by Steere and his associates added to the holdings. Steere was in charge of all the natural history collections from 1876 until 1894, when he resigned. One of Steere's students, Assistant Professor Dean C. Worcester, was appointed Curator of the zoological and anthropological collections in 1895. He was given a leave of absence in 1898 to go to the Philippines, where he had visited previously as a member of one of Steere's field parties, and resigned in 1900.
An accession of interest and importance was the Chinese government exhibit at the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition at New Orleans in 1884-85. This collection of Chinese craftsmanship was given to the University through President James B. Angell's contacts with the Chinese government. For many years a part of this gift was on exhibit in the old Museum Building. It now forms one of the valuable collections in the Museum's Division of the Orient.
In the spring semester of 1892 the University of Michigan offered its first instruction in anthropology. This was, significantly, a museum laboratory course in American archaeology. Two students were registered, and they prepared exhibits in the Museum, assembled