62 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



to prepare the matter for publication, especially in view of the fact 

 that the objective activities treated in these records no longer form 

 a part of the life of the Muskhogean peoples, and so can not be ob- 

 tained at first hand. 



In additiion to this material, it is designed to add as supplemen- 

 tary matter some Creek tales and mythic legends collected by Mr. 

 Jeremiah Curtin. 



The following brief list of topics treated may give some idea of 

 the nature of these field notes: "Towns and clan lists," "Crime 

 and murder," " The government of the clan," " The town government 

 or organization of a town," " The council square," " The chief," " The 

 system of councils," " The clan," " The ranks and the titles of persons," 

 " The busk or puskita," " Medicine practices," " Names and naming," 

 " Festivals," " Marriage customs," " Insanity," " Prophets," " Souls 

 or spirits," "Mythic notes," and the short list of tales collected by 

 Mr. Curtin. Much of the material here recorded is not available 

 either in any other manuscript or in print. 



Mr. Francis La Flesche, ethnologist, devoted nearly all of his time 

 to putting into book form his notes for the second volume of his 

 work on the Osage tribe. This task was twice interrupted by the 

 reading of the galley and the page proofs of the first volume. 



The second volume is nearing completion and embraces two ver- 

 sions of an ancient rite entitled " No n '-zhi n -zho n Wa-tho n , Songs of 

 the Rite of Vigil." Up to this date the completed part of this manu- 

 script, exclusive of the illustrations, contains 582 typewritten pages. 



Sho n '-ge-mo"-i n , who gave the No n '-zhi n -zho n ritual of his gens, 

 the Tsi'-zhu Wa-shta-ge, died in the autumn of 1919. He was the 

 fourth to die of the old men who aided in the recording of the 

 ancient tribal rites of the Osage. Two old men died before the time 

 set by them to give the ceremonials of their gentes arrived. Sho n '-ge- 

 mo n -i n remarked, as he was recording the child-naming ritual, to be 

 published in a later volume, " The Osage people are fast dying out 

 since they abandoned the supplicatory rites formulated by their an- 

 cesters." 



The beginning of the fiscal year found Mr. J. P. Harrington, eth- 

 nologist, engaged in the preparation of his material on the language 

 of the Kiowa Indians. The entire material was copied, collated, and 

 analyzed, and constitutes a manuscript of more than 1,000 pages. 



Kiowa is a typical Tano-Kiowan dialect, closely related in pho- 

 netics, vocabulary, and structure with the Tanoan languages of New 

 Mexico. This proves again, as in the case of the Hopi, that culture 

 areas cut across linguistic ones. The Tano-Kiowan is furthermore 

 genetically related to the Keresan and Zuiiian groups of New Mexico, 

 also to the Shoshonean, and certain languages of California. Mr. 



