119 Museo Raimondi) in Lima, where his fossil collection is on display. Telephone calls to Lima revealed that the museum has no correspondence from Gabb and that Raimondi’s collection of antiquities long ago had been given to the national museum. We know that the two naturalists were in touch by 1868 because Gabb sent Raimondi a photograph inscribed on the back, “To Sr. Dr. Antonio Raimondi, compliments of W. M. Gabb, 7/25/1868.” Raimondi had apparently sent Gabb his fossil collection by then10 because Gabb published a preliminary article on the subject in 186911 but was unable to do any further research until 1877. As noted above, this was to be Gabb’s final monograph, composed in Santo Domingo and published after his death.12 His last letter to Secretary Baird at the Smithsonian, dated February 18, 1878, confirms that he received payment for the two idols he acquired for the institution. Gabb returned to Philadelphia in April and died there from tuberculosis on May 30, 1878. I found his obituary in a Philadelphia newspaper. He never married and his sole heir, a nephew, could not be found when his biography was being written by Dall three decades later. My research reveals that Raimondi was Gabb’s sole point of contact with Peru. Although there is no absolute proof, circumstances strongly indicate that the Moche Iguana staff was once part of Raimondi’s collection, perhaps sent to Gabb as a gift for cataloging his fossils. It was clearly misattributed in the accession process at the Smithsonian, a situation Gabb would have had no knowledge of or ability to correct given the close proximity of his donation and death. His only corrections to Smithsonian records are based on his $100 invoice, which his efforts to correct were in vain. Indeed the staff remains misattributed in Smithsonian records to this day. A final strange coincidence relates to the Iguana staff and its Taíno misattribution. The word iguana used today in English and Spanish derives from the ancient Taíno term iwana.13 NOTES 1. Jesse Walter Fewkes, “The Aborigenes of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands.” Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1903–1904. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907. 1–220. 2. Ibid., 195. 3. Christopher Donnan and Donna McClelland, 1999. Moche Fineline Painting: Its Evolution and Its Artists. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1999: 84, 276–277. 4. Christopher Donnan concurs that the staff represents Iguana Deity (personal communication, 2006–2007). 5. William Healey Dall, Biographical Memoir of William An Ancient Moche Staff FIG. 12: Idol with two figures, zemi. Taíno, Caribbean Islands. Wood. H: 73.7 cm. Ex. Mr. Firth, Turks Island; William M. Gabb, Philadelphia. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, inv. #005890/A42662-0. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. More Gabb 1839–1878. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, VI: 346–361. City of Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1909. 6. William M. Gabb letter to Secretary Baird, March 25, 1877. 7. William M. Gabb, “Description of a Collection of Fossils Made by Doctor Antonio Raimondi in Peru.” Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1878, 2nd Series, 8: 263–336. 8. California was admitted to the Union in 1850 and Oregon in 1859. During the Civil War (1861–1865) as well as after, US soldiers were sent to “pacify” Indians out West. Gabb’s time there was contemporaneous. 9. J. Walter Fewkes, “A Carved Wooden Object from Santo Domingo,” Man, 78–79, October 1919. 10. Gabb states in his introduction to the Raimondi report (written in 1877) that he received the fossils “several years ago” and then published his preliminary report in 1869, which means he had to have received Raimondi’s collection prior to 1869. 11. William M. Gabb, “Descriptions of New Species of South American Fossils,” American Journal of Conchology, 1869, 5: 25–32. 12. William M. Gabb, “Description of a Collection of Fossils, Made by Doctor Antonio Raimondi in Peru.” Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1878, 2nd Series, 8: 263–336. 13. Julian Granberry and Gary S. Vescelius, Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004: Table 12.
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