Abstract

After launching an ambitious program of mid-continental Canadian archaeology in the late 1870s, members of the Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba suddenly withdrew from field archaeology after 1886. Under political and financial stress, they turned their primary attention to local Euro-Canadian history. The group declined through the turn of the century, but George Bryce and Charles Bell tried to keep interest in Manitoba archaeology alive by appealing to external organizations to take up the work. A number of outsiders did briefly get involved, people and organizations such as T. H. Lewis and Warren Upham from Minnesota, Henry L. Reynolds from the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, Henry Montgomery from the University of Toronto Museum, and organizers for the Archaeological Institute of America. Although the results were mixed, most of these outsiders made improvements to the region’s archaeological record and its interpretation. The Manitoba Society’s final success, on the eve of its own demise, was in helping to create an anthropology division within the National Museum of Canada in 1910. Subsequently, the National Museum commenced archeology in Manitoba in 1912 under W. B. Nickerson. Nickerson might have solidified the groundwork for a regional archaeology, but his work was aborted in 1915 and, together with earlier attempts, was all but forgotten.