REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 55 



Medicines, in Explorations and Field-Work of the Smithsonian 

 Institution in 1939, and An Herbarium from the Allegany Senecas, 

 in The Historic Annals of Southwestern New York. Several lectures 

 on various aspects of Iroquois culture were delivered to Washington 

 audiences, and in June, Dr. Fenton addressed a regional meeting of 

 botanists at the Allegany School of Natural History on Iroquois 

 Ethnobotany. 



On May 2, 1940, Dr. Fenton again left for Salamanca to resume 

 field work among the Seneca. Working primarily at Allegany Res- 

 ervation, he also visited Tonawanda, collecting early spring medic- 

 inal plants. This season, work with informants was combined with 

 a project to study Iroquois masks and ceremonial equipment in 

 museums located near the Iroquois. At the close of the fiscal year, 

 the extensive Converse collections in the New York State Museum 

 (Albany) and Montgomery County Historical Society (Fort John- 

 son), and the Boyle and Chief swood collections in the Royal Ontario 

 Museum of Archaeology (Toronto) were measured and photo- 

 graphed. The pictures have proved to be useful in eliciting new 

 material from informants and promise future usefulness in estab- 

 lishing local types of carving, A complete record of the mask- 

 making technique has been made together with photogTaphs of 

 crucial stages in the process, and the rituals of several shamanistic 

 societies have been taken with a flash cam.era for the first time. Dr. 

 Fenton was engaged in field work at the close of the fiscal year. 



SPECIAL RESEARCHES 



Miss Frances Densmore, a collaborator of the Bureau, continued 

 her study of Indian music chiefly by completing manuscripts for 

 publication. A trip was made to Wisconsin Dells, Wis., to confer 

 with Evergreen Tree, a Cochiti Indian, and to obtain further in- 

 formation concerning songs he recorded several years previously. 

 Additional information concerning the peyote cult was also received 

 from Wimiebago infonnants in Wisconsin and Mimiesota. 



Nine manuscripts on pueblo music were recast and combined in 

 a manuscript entitled "Music of Acoma, Isleta, and Cochiti Pueblos, 

 New Mexico." Four manuscripts on "Choctaw Music," previously 

 submitted, were similarly combined. The manuscript on "Winne- 

 bago Music" was completed, and a portion of the section on the 

 peyote cult v/as restudied, extended, and retyped. These three 

 manuscripts are now ready for publication. 



Eleven manuscripts on the music of the Seminole in Florida were 

 combined in a tentative manuscript of more than 300 pages. The 

 number of transcribed Seminole songs now in possession of the 



