54 REPOET OF THE SECKETABY. 



has done the best work of the year and has done it in the best possible way. It 

 has arranged to give to light and study a much-needed work, and it has put it in 

 the very hands best fitted to do it. I am, perhaps, eomjietent tf) speak upon this 

 subject, and I am willing to place on record my belief that no living man can do this 

 work intrusted to him so Avell as Mr. Molina. The work that he is doing can not 

 be done by a foreigner. I am, perhaps, as well Informed upon the native Maya, 

 their habits, customs, etc., as any living foreigner, and, it may be, better than any 

 other. I know enough to know that I could not do the work as it should be done. 

 This task should only be undertaken by one who has been brought up on milk from 

 a native breast, whose first words were in Maya, and whose thoughts come easier to 

 him when clothed in the Maya form than when in classic Castillian or downright 

 Anglo-Saxon. Such a man is Molina. To the instincts and the education of a 

 i-cholar he adds the subtile understanding of the native and as jjerfect command of 

 the ancient language, the Maya, as any man can have at this day." 



The final proofs of the Natick Dictionary, compiled by the late James Hammond 

 Trumbull, were revised during the year, and the greater part of the sheets have 

 been printed. 



In addition to his work on the Mexican and Central American linguistic records, 

 in innnediate collaboration with the Director, Dr. Cyrus Thonias coutimied his inves- 

 tigation of aboriginal records in the form of codices, scul2)tures, etc. His work was 

 productive, yielding among other results a memoir entitled Quirigua Calendar Sys- 

 tems, which was sent to press as a part of the Twenty-second Annual Report. 



Progress was made also in preparing for the press the translations made l)y Mr. 

 Charles P. Bowditch of certain scattered yet noteworthy contributions to knowledge 

 concerning the calendric and other records of Mexico and Central America, and it is 

 a pleasure to acknowledge the generositj' of the translator in contributing the mate- 

 rial and furthering the work of its i^reparation in every practicable way. Toward 

 tlie end of the fiscal year Mr. Elbert J. Benton was temporarily employed to edit the 

 material and arrange the illustrations for publication in the Twenty-fourth Annual 

 Report; this work was well advanced at the close of the year. 



WORK IN SOPHIOLOGY. 



About the end of May Miss Alice C. Fletcher completed her monograph on the 

 Pawnee Indians under the title " Hako; A Pawnee Ceremony." In many respects a 

 typical tribe of the plains, the Pawnee Indians were in some points the most remark- 

 ably developed of the prairie tribes. Like other vigorous aboriginal grou])S, they 

 were composite; an important constituent (later known as the Skidi band) was from 

 the wooded hills and broad bottom lands of the Arkansas country, where they or 

 their ancestrv developed a woodland culture, and doubtless performed a sliare in the 

 erection of the imjwsing mounds of the Lower Mississippi region; other tril)al con- 

 stituents represented prairie provinces; and there are strong suggestions in the 

 rich tribal mythology that at least a cultural constituent was absorbed from the 

 highly religious sedentaiy peoples of the Southwestern pueblos. Then the com- 

 I)osite tribe lived long (as attested by their traditions as well as their customs) in the 

 prairie region, which they shared with the buffalo; and, in even greater degree than 

 the Siouan tribes farther northward, they adjusted themselves to tliis natural 

 si)oil — so that the buffalo became the furnisher of their food, the source of their 

 raiment, the giver of material for tlunr habitations, the guide of tlieir migra- 

 tions, the goal of their liandicraft and hunting tactics, and, finally, one of llie fore- 

 most among their deified tutelaries. Accordingly the fiducial ceremonies of tlie 

 tribe combine the intensity of local veneration for a few leading tutelaries with a 

 wealth of imagery and ritual derived from other districts and peoples, and all 

 vivified by the common union and intei'action. During earlier days the rituals were 

 so far esoteric as generally to escape the notice of I'thnologists as well as casual visit- 

 ors; but during i-ec;ent years a few students, notably Miss Fletcher, have been per- 



