Harlan Ingersoll Smith

Extract

Harlan Ingersoll Smith, former Chief Archaeologist of the National Museum of Canada, died on January 28, 1940. He was born in East Saginaw, Michigan, February 17, 1872. As a boy he became interested in the many evidences of the former Indian inhabitants scattered over the fields near his home and he formed a small collection of archaeological material. The first opportunity to do actual field work came in 1891, when the late Professor Putnam, Chief of the Anthropological Department of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, employed him to assist Dr. Charles Metz in the exploration of the well-known Madisonville Village Site in Ohio. This was followed in 1892 by field trips to other sites in Ohio; in 1893 to mounds near Madison Wisconsin, and in 1894, as explorer for the Archaeological Institute of America, to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to investigate the so-called “gardenbeds” near that place.