42 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. 



Ethnologic researches among the North American Indians were con- 

 tinued by the Smithsonian lustitution, in compliance with acts of Con- 

 gress, during the year 1889-90, under the direction of Maj. J. W. Pow- 

 ell, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



The work of the Bureau of Ethnology during the year has proceeded 

 along accustomed lines. Investigations in relation to the Sign Lan- 

 guage and Pictography of the American Indian, preliminary reports of 

 which subjects have appeared in annual reports of the Bureau, 

 have been discontinued and the final results of this study will soon 

 appear. Investigations of the Mounds of the eastern United States 

 have also been practically brought to an end and the final discussion 

 of the subject will speedily be published. 



The archaeologic researches which have been inaugurated in the vicin- 

 ity of Washington have already been fruitful of results of more than 

 local interest. Excavations into the quarry sites and workshops of 

 the district have shown that the class of archseologic objects from this 

 vicinity, which have hitherto been assumed to be palteolithic and to 

 represent the rude iu)plement8 of primitive man, are in fact nothing 

 but the "rejects" of much more recent times; and that however far 

 back in point of time some of them may date, they are not separable 

 from the rejects of the historic Indian. 



As usual, considerable attention has been i)aid to the collection of 

 lioguistic material, both because it is thought that languages form the 

 only safe basis for classifying peoples, and because no material relating 

 to our Indians is vanishing with such rapidity. The latter reason has 

 also impelled the collection of Indian mythology. Myths are hardly 

 more enduring than the languages in which they are preserved. Though 

 they may persist to some extent after a language decays and falls into 

 partial disuse, it is only in a degraded and emasculated form that de- 

 prives them of their chief value, as embodying the religious ideas and 

 the philosophy of primitive peoples. 



The medicine practices of the Indian have also received much atten- 

 tion and a large number of the plants used in the Indian Materia 

 Medica have been collected, preserved, and their Indian and botanical 

 names obtained. In addition, the formulas and secret practices attend- 

 ing their use have been carefully recorded. As was to be expected, it 

 has been found that so intimately interwoven are the Indian systems 

 of religiqn and medicine that it is practically impossible to say where 

 the one ends and the other begins. It has also been demonstrated that 

 contrary to popular belief, the chief and almost sole effacacy possessed 

 by so-called Indian medicine lies, not in the inherent virtue of the 



