REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 23 



that the builders of the mounds were a distinct people ante-dating the 

 native races found in possession of the land on the advent of the Euro- 

 peans. Within the last five years extended surveys of the mound 

 territory have been made by collaborators of the Bureau under imme- 

 diate instructions from the Director and by Dr. Cyrus Thomas. An 

 elaborate report on this subject has been prepared during the year 

 and is now in press. It is the united opinion of the officers of the 

 Bureau that this document contains the solution to the mystery of the 

 mounds: very greatly to the surprise of the investigators who began 

 the work, they have been led to believe that the mounds and the art 

 products contained therein are in no wise distinct from the works of 

 the modern Indians, and that the distribution of tribes can now be 

 studied from the mounds themselves as well as from other aboriginal 

 records. 



The work of the Bureau on Archeology or prehistoric arts has been 

 conducted with energy and exceptional success. Until recently many 

 of the leading students of American antiquities were Europeans; and 

 thus it happened that the classification of American art products was 

 to a large extent an imported one, corresponding to foreign generali- 

 zations and ideals rather than to any indigenous standard. Thus a 

 history of succession of peoples, representing increasing grades of cul- 

 ture, has been wrought out. As will be seen from the reports of the 

 Director and collaborators of the Bureau, however, an indigenous clas- 

 sification has been also developed by it, and it has been shown to be 

 probable that the objects supposed to represent the series of culture 

 stages are in most cases at least the handiwork of single tribes during 

 the same epoch. These researches were conducted chiefly by Prof. 

 W. H. Holmes, with the assistance of Messrs. Fowke and Dinwiddie. 

 If these important results obtain general acceptance, the effect will be 

 to shorten the earlier estimates of the antiquity of man on this conti- 

 nent, and in this respect it will be observed that they are coincident 

 with those flowing from the mound researches. 



Important investigations concerning the beliefs of the Indians of 

 different [arts of the country have been conducted during the year, 

 notably >y Mrs. M. 0. Stevenson and Mr. F. H. Gushing among the 

 Zunis, and Dr. Hoffman among the remnants of the Lake Superior- 

 tribes. An elaborate memoir by the first-named collaborator was sent 

 to press during the year. 



The principal work relating to the sociology or institutions of the 

 aborigines was that of continuing the preparation of a tribal synonymy 

 or dictionary of tribal names, including not only those names applied 

 by white men, but the names current among the Indians themselves. 

 Connected with this work is a detailed study of the literature relating 

 to the Indian languages by Mr. James Constantine Pilling. The results 

 of this study form a bibliography which has already come to be recog- 

 nized as a standard by the bibliographic students of the world. 



