G4 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



clitl'. LiittT, the not infrequent winds which sweej) over the cave 

 with unbelievable force, blew out the dust and rock pebbles until the 

 southwest corner of the tower was undermined nioie than :i feet and 

 the wall eastward weakened almost to the opposite corner. 



The cracks in the west wall were wider in Xovendjer, 19-24, than 

 they were a year previous. A removal of half a dozen shovelfuls 

 from the unconsolidated mass of earth beneath the front would have 

 loosened the lar<re block just beyond its western end, which pre- 

 vented the entire collapse of the mascmry. In addition to the periodic 

 action of the wind, each visitor who passed from the eastern to the 

 western part of the cave trod his portion of the loose mass below 

 the wall farther down the slope, and sent clods and pebbles rattling 

 over the cliff. Before many years this block would have been 

 loosened and the tower would have fallen. 



During the repair work, buttresses were built beneath and in- 

 closing the large blocks under the west end of the tower and under 

 the undermined portion of the tower, continuing back to the limit 

 of undermining, and extending well forward of the masonry. At 

 the junction of the two, wedges were driven to knit the new v/ork 

 firndy to the old. From the east end of the buttress a retaining wall 

 was built to connect with the remnant of the old one on the brink 

 of the ledge, and the space behind it was filled, thus providing a 

 platform instead of the former steep slope at the southeast coiner 

 of the tower. This repair work will temporarily preserve one of the 

 finest gems of aboriginal architecture in the entire Southwest, but 

 it should be supplemented by the addition of " turnbuckles "' an- 

 chored to the cliff and bj^ the rebuilding of the southeast corner, 

 which should be bonded to the east and front wall to preserve it for 

 centuries to come. 



During the fiscal 3'ear Dr. John E.. Swanton, ethnologist, dis- 

 covered further material bearing on the social and religious life 

 of the Creek Indians, and this was extracted and incorporated into 

 his papers on those subjects which are now being prepared for pub- 

 lication by the editor. A study also was made of the various smoller 

 culture centers within the region covered by our present Gulf 

 States, and a paper on the '' Culture of the Southeast " was pre- 

 pared as a result of this work. A short paper on the '' Ethnology 

 of the Chickasaw "" was begun and carried nearly to completion, 

 i;nd the work of carding references to all words from the publica- 

 tions of early Florida missionaries in the now extinct Timucua 

 language has been continued, and all of the words from tliree of 

 the five texts and from more than half of the fourth had been ex- 

 tracted by the end of tiie year. An abbreviated handbook of the 

 Indian tribes in the United States and Alaska was prepared to ac- 

 company' a map of the same section. 



