SECRETARY'S REPORT 59 



Dr. Harrington returned to Washington, D. C, and spent the time 

 until March 9 writing reports on his field work. On tliis date he left 

 for Mexico in order to resume his studies on the Maya language. At 

 the end of the fiscal year he was in Mexico City continuing this w^ork. 



Commencing July 1, Dr. William N. Fenton, having completed an 

 assignment for the Indian Service at Taos Pueblo, conducted a survey 

 of manuscripts relating to the ethnohistory of eastern Indians in the 

 Henry E. Huntington Library at San Marino, Calif. The latter re- 

 search, carried out with the aid of grants from the research funds 

 of the American Philosophical Society, was published in the Proceed- 

 ings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 95, No. 3. 



Factions are a peculiar feature of American Indian political organi- 

 zation that has yet to be worked out for the country as a whole. Some 

 ideas about political structure and methods of field work, which Dr. 

 Fenton developed over a long period of field and library study among 

 the Six Nations, were this past year transferred to the study of Indian 

 self-government, which is riddled with factional disputes, in three 

 divergent tribal cultures — Taos, Klamath, and Blackfeet. Each field 

 situation was unique and required adjusting techniques, but the main 

 principles hold. Field work was completed at Klamath Indian Agency 

 in August, and the situation at Blackfeet Agency in Montana was 

 explored during September. On returning to Washington late in 

 September, at the request of the Indian Bureau Dr. Fenton drafted 

 a comprehensive plan for the study of the Blackfeet problem by a 

 team of social-science specialists who would be drawn from several 

 disciplines including anthropology. 



RIVER BASIN SURVEYS 



(Report prepared by Frank H. H. Robeuts, Jr.) 



Instituted in the fall of 1945 as a unit of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, the River Basin Surveys were organized to carry into 

 effect a memorandum of understanding between the National Park 

 Service and the Smithsonian Institution. The memorandum per- 

 tains to the salvage of archeological and paleontological remains that 

 would otherwise be lost as a result of numerous projects for flood 

 control and irrigation, hydroelectric installations, and navigation 

 improvements in the river basins of the United States. The field 

 work was started in July 1946 and has continued since that date. 

 During the entire period of operations the investigations have been 

 conducted as an interagency program with full cooperation on the 

 part of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Park Service, and 

 the Bureau of Reclamation of the Interior Department, and the Corps 

 of Engineers of the Department of the Army. In addition, numerous 

 non-Federal institutions scattered throughout the various States have 



