Peter French donated 51 Ndyuka artifacts to the MPM in 1945, constituting the vast majority of Suriname artifacts in the collection. These items included wooden food stirrers, combs, hammocks, calabash utensils, a baton, a laundry beater, and a white clay (pemba) sample. Unfortunately, not much is known about the life or work of this particular source.
Bernard Brown was a Milwaukee art dealer and appraised much of MPM's anthropology collection. Brown donated a Ndyuka folding stool and peanut grinding board to MPM in 1970. In 1984, MPM purchased a Ndyuka canoe paddle from Brown, which had been collected from Suriname by Morton Kahn.
Morton C. Kahn was a professor at Cornell University Medical College, and visited the South American tropics in 1922, 1923, and 1925, studying public health and tropical disease. He was so intrigued by the native Maroon tribes he encountered that he initiated three official expeditions in 1927, 1928, and 1930 to study the Ndyuka Maroons. He was accompanied by Dr. Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural History and was financially sponsored by Mr. Myron Granger. After completing his travels in the Surinamese jungle, Kahn published Djuka: The Bush Negroes of Surinam. (Although he called them Djukas, Kahn’s trips were among the Saramaka Maroons.) This book is a personal narrative, which summarizes his experiences and observations from those three expeditions. Although Kahn did not directly contribute to the MPM’s Ndyuka collection, he collected the canoe paddle, which was donated by Bernard Brown in 1984.
William Brill was the president of the Mutual Real Estate Investment Trust in New York and lived in a townhouse in Greenwich Village when he started collecting African art in 1960. Most of his collection of African art was amassed between 1965 and 1969 and is notable for its ornate combs and staffs. Brill donated a Ndyuka wooden comb to MPM in 1967, along with several other items from the West African countries of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Congo.