The collection offers an overview of the native cultures of Central and North America from the colonial period to the present.

The most well known object from the collection is the famed Mexican feather headdress, which virtually serves as an icon for the Museum of Ethnology.  Among the other concentrations are large archaeological collections from Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama, a textile collection, also from Panama, Eskimo objects from the collection of James Cook, objects from Greenland, and remarkable early objects from the natives of North America.

The archaeological collections from the eastern United States, Mesoamerica and Central America form the majority of the holdings.  The Arctic and Caribbean collections, rather, comprise largely ethnographic objects.  The holdings from North America north of the Rio Grande include both archaeological and ethnographic objects.