Other Museums
The American Museum of Natural History: James Walker mentions in the first footnote of his 1905 publication Sioux Games Part 1: "The author made a collection of the objects described in this paper for the American Museum of Natural History, New York City." The Museum's Digital Imaging Project has recently digitized large portions of its collections and made them available through their collections database. Thanks to the generosity of the Museum staff you can view the gaming devices collected by James Walker, Clark Wissler and others that are now preserved in the collection. The Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum extends a special thanks to the American Museum of Natural History for permission to link to these items and for the work they did to make them available for this virtual exhibit.
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology This museum also holds examples of Lakota games collected by Louis L. Meeker in 1900 and then donated to this institution in the same year. The accession numbers are 22109 thru 22135. Five of those items were exchanged with Emil Lenders in 1908 (nos. 22115, 22118, 22119, 22120, and 22128). Lenders was a local collector/dealer and the museum is unsure of the final disposition of his collection. Meeker also wrote the about the collection in an article published in the Bulletin of the Free Museum of Science and Art (as this museum was known whe it first opened) titled, "Ogalala Games" (vol.III, no. 1, January, 190). Interestingly, in the catalogue of the collection attached to the end of the article, Meeker lists only the objects up to accession number 22132. There are three more objects in this collection that appear on the museum's registrar's cards: 22133 (stick), 22134 (gaming top), and 22135 (dart, thrown with a whip). Why they were not included in the article is anyone's guess. Stewart Culin also included much of the material Meeker collected (with line drawings) in his Games of the North American Indians, 24th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1902-1903). (information and text courtesy of William Wierzbowski, Assistant Keeper, American Section, The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.