•_> I REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



An important Line of investigation related to the means of interchang- 

 ing ideas among onr native races, including gesture, speech, and pic- 

 ture writing, as well as spoken language. The primitive modes of 

 expression by means of gestures or pantomime and by means of glyphs 

 or pict ures are held by students as of special interest, in that they repre- 

 sent the beginnings oi language. These modes of conveying ideas have 

 received much attention by collaborators of the Bureau, notably Col. 

 Grarrick Mallery. An elaborate memoir on the " Picture writing of the 

 American Indians" is incorporated in the tenth annual report of the 

 Bureau. This memoir is a practically exhaustive monogroph on the 

 subject to which it relates; the illustrations, which number nearly 

 fourteen hundred, represent the aboriginal picture writing of all por- 

 tions of the country with fidelity, while the meanings of the glyphs are 

 interpreted and discussed in detail in the text. A large body of 

 material relating to the sign language of the aborigines has been col- 

 lected, and during the year progress was made in arranging this 

 material tor publication. En no other part of the world have frhe oppor- 

 tunities tor collecting detailed information concerning primitive modes 

 of expression been so favorable as in North America; and it is thought 

 that these reports prepared by collaborators of theBureau, will serve 

 at once as a record of past and passing races and a basis for philological 

 researches in other countries. 



The spoken languages of various tribes of Indians were studied and 

 recorded. Oue of the most extensive aboriginal linguistic families was 

 the Siouan, including the Indians of the northern plains from the Rocky 

 Mountains to the Mississippi, and from the Saskatchewan nearly to the 

 Red River of the South. One of the publications of the year was a 

 "Dakota-English Dictionary," in which the language of the best known 

 division of the Siouan family is made accessible to students, this work, 

 begun by the late Dr. Riggs, being completed by Mr. J. Owen Dorsey, 

 a linguist especially familiar with the languages of this stock. The 

 dictionary forms a quarto Volume of nearly seven hundred pages. The 

 language of the Biloxi Indians of Louisiana was also investigated during 

 the year by Mr. Dorsey; Dr. Gatschet made a detailed study of the 

 Peoria, Shawnee, Arapaho, and Cheyenne languages in Indian Terri- 

 tory, the work on the Peoria being complete with respect to both 

 vocabulary and grammar. 



The Iroquoian languages also were the subject of study by Mr. J. 1ST. 

 B. Hewitt. Unwritten language is one of t lie most evanescent of human 

 characters; already the languages of many of our native tribes have 

 entirely disappeared, save for a tew greatly modified terms preserved 

 as geographic names: and it seems especially important to record the 

 rapidly changing native languages thus far remaining. Some of the 

 vocabularies and grammars collected by the Bureau were derived from 

 half a dozen or fewer individuals who alone represent their tribe; in 

 one case (the Chinooken) the language was preserved through infor- 



