REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 71 



Miss Irene Wright, in the employ of the Florida State Historical 

 Society, discovered a letter in the archives of the Indies at Se villa 

 written in the Timiiciia language. Part of the work of preparing 

 this material for publication by the society has been done by Doctor 

 Swanton, and in the same volume an earlier letter, discovered and 

 published by Buckingham Smith is to be included. Although this 

 publication is being done outside, it will furnish in more convenient 

 and reliable form all of the known material which we have not yet 

 drawn upon for the dictionary, some scattered words alone excepted. 

 Doctor Swanton has been called upon for an unusual amount of 

 advisory and other special work during the past year. 



From July 1 to 22 Dr. Truman Michelson, ethnologist, continued 

 ethnological and linguistic work among the Sauk and Fox of Iowa. 

 From the latter part of July to the end of August he was engaged 

 in work on the Northern Arapaho, devoting his time mainly to 

 linguistics, and was able to unravel a number of complex phonetic 

 shifts whereby a larger proportion of Algonquian elements in the 

 language were made more certain than hitherto suspected. He also 

 took physical measurements of a number of Arapaho and Shoshoni 

 Indians. As far as the latter is concerned, the cephalic index of 

 his series agrees closely with that obtained under the direction of 

 Doctor Boas more than 20 years ago. After his return to Washington, 

 September 1, he corrected the proofs of his notes on the buffalo- 

 head dance of the thunder gens of the Fox Indians, which will appear 

 as Bulletin 87 of the bureau. 



Doctor Michelson submitted for publication a work entitled " Ob- 

 servations on the Thunder Dance of the Bear Gens of the Fox 

 Indians," which is to be issued as Bulletin 89 of the bureau. He has 

 also submitted a manuscript designated "Sketch of the Buffalo 

 Dance of the Bear Gens of the Fox Indians." He worked out a 

 complete translation of a syllabic text supplementary to his paper in 

 the fortieth annual report. A number of technical papers have 

 been prepared by Doctor Michelson and published in various scien- 

 tific journals. Doctor Michelson from time to time has furnished 

 data to answer official correspondence. 



Mr. J. P. Harrington, ethnologist, spent the year in a study of the 

 Mission Indians of the Santa Barbara region of California and of 

 the Taos Tribe of north-central New Mexico. 



Leaving for the field in the fall of 1927, Mr. Harrington resumed 

 his field studies at Santa Barbara Avith great success, securing a 

 mass of important linguistic information from the last few aged 

 survivors of the proud and highly cultured people which only a few 

 decades ago thickly populated the islands and mainland coasts of the 

 Santa Barbara region. The material covered the entire range of 

 knowledge of the informants and included difficult translations into 



