Vol. iii.: Cyrus Thomas. Notes on certain Maya and Mexican manuscripts.—W. (C.) H. Dall On masks, labrets, and certain aboriginal customs, with an inquiry into the bearing of their geographical distribution.—J. O. Dorsey. Omaha sociology.—Washington Matthews. Navajo weavers.—W. H. Holmes. Prehistoric textile fabrics of the United States, derived from impressions on pottery;—Illustrated catalogue of a portion of the collections made by the Bureau of Ethnology during the field season of 1881.—James Stevenson. Illustrated catalogue of the collections obtained from the Pueblos of Zuñi, New Mexico, and Wolpi, Arizona, in 1881.
Vol. iv.: Garrick Mallery. Pictographs of the North American Indians.—W. H. Holmes. Pottery of the ancient Pueblos;—Ancient pottery of the Mississippi Valley;—Origin and development of form and ornament in ceramic art.—F. H. Cushing.. A study of Pueblo pottery as illustrative of Zuñi culture growth.
Vol. v.: Cyrus Thomas. Burial mounds of the northern sections of the United States.—C. C. Royce. The Cherokee nation of Indians.—Washington Matthews. The Mountain Chant: a Navajo ceremony.—Clay MacCauley. The Seminole Indians of Florida.—Mrs. Tilly E. Stevenson. The religious life of the Zuñi child.
What is known as the United States National Museum is also in charge of the Smithsonian Institution,[1927] and here are deposited the objects of archæological and historical interest secured by the government explorations and by other means. The linguistic material is kept in the Bureau of Ethnology. The skulls and physiological material, illustrative of prehistoric times, are deposited in the Army Medical Museum, under the Surgeon-General’s charge.
Major Powell, while in charge of the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, had earlier prepared five volumes of Contributions to Ethnology, all but the second of which have been published. The first volume (1877) contained W. H. Dall’s “Tribes of the Extreme Northwest” and George Gibbs’ “Tribes of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon.” The third (1877): Stephen Powers’ “Tribes of California.” The fourth (1881): Lewis H. Morgan’s “Houses and house life of the American Aborigines.” The fifth (1882): Charles Rau’s “Lapidarian sculpture of the Old World and in America,” Robert Fletcher’s “Prehistoric trephining and cranial Amulets,” and Cyrus Thomas on the Troano Manuscript, with an introduction by D. G. Brinton.
Among the Reports of the geographical and geological explorations and surveys west of the 100th meridian conducted by Capt. Geo. M. Wheeler, the seventh volume, Report on Archæological and Ethnological Collections from the vicinity of Santa Barbara, California, and from ruined pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico and certain Interior Tribes (Washington, 1879), was edited by F. W. Putnam, and contains papers on the ethnology of Southern California, wood and stone implements, sculptures, musical instruments, beads, etc.; the Pueblos of New Mexico, their inhabitants, architecture, customs, cliff houses and other ruins, skeletons, etc.; with an Appendix on Linguistics, containing forty Vocabularies of Pueblo and other Western Indian Languages and their classification into seven families.
The Reports of the Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, under the charge of F. V. Hayden, brought to us in those of 1874-76 the knowledge of the cliff-dwellers, and they contain among the miscellaneous publications such papers as W. Matthews’ Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians and W. H. Jackson’s Descriptive Catalogue of photographs of No. Amer. Indians.
There are other governmental documents to be noted: The Exploration of the Red River of Louisiana in 1852, by R. B. Marcy and G. B. McClellan (Washington, 1854), contains a vocabulary of the Comanches and Witchitas, with some general remarks by W. W. Turner. There is help to be derived from the geographical details, and from something on ethnology, in the Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean (Washington, 1856-60, in 12 vols.); in W. H. Emory’s Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey (Washington, 1857-58, in 2 vols.); J. H. Simpson’s Report of Explorations across the great basin of the territory of Utah in 1859 (Washington, 1876); J. N. Macomb’s Report of the Exploring Expedition from Santa Fé to the Junction of the Grand and Green Rivers of the Great Colorado of the West in 1859 (Washington, 1876).
There were also published, under the auspices of the government, the conglomerate and very unequal work of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information respecting the history, conditions, and prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, collected and prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Philad., 1851-57, in 6 vols., with a trade edition of the same date). An act of Congress (March 3, 1847) authorized its publication. As reissued it is called Archives of aboriginal knowledge, containing original papers laid before Congress, respecting the Indian tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1860, ’68, 6 vols.). It has the following divisions: General history.—Manners and customs.—Antiquities.—Geography.—Tribal organization, etc.—Intellectual capacity.—Topical history.—Physical type.—Language.—Art.—Religion and mythology.—Demonology, magic, etc.—Medical knowledge.—Condition and prospects.—Statistics and population.—Biography.—Literature.—Post-Columbian history.—Economy and statistics. An edition of vols. 1-5 (1856) is called Ethnological researches respecting the Red Men of America, Information respecting the history, etc. The sixth volume is in effect a summary of the preceding five.[1928]
At a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a committee was charged with preparing a memorial to Congress, urging action to insure the preservation of certain national monuments. There is a summary of their report in Science, xii. p. 101.