REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 51 



this lead, he was able to discover individuals who had in their remote 

 youth actually spoken the extinct Kwalhioqua and Tlatskanai dialects 

 of Washington and Oregon, and to recover vocabularies of these with 

 all their original phonetics. He also recorded the tradition that the 

 Upper Umpqua language of what is now the vicinity of Roseburg, 

 Oreg., had come from tlie Kwalhioqua. The Roseburg language is 

 related to the languages of the Rogue River region of southern Oregon 

 and those of northern California. In confirmation of these findings, 

 he obtained the tradition that the Blue Lake Indians had come from 

 the south bend of the Smith River, far to the north. Dr. Harrington 

 has traced the Chilcotin or Chilco language all the way from Lake 

 Chilcotin, which drains into the Fraser River, to the head of Eel River 

 in northern California. This work has demonstrated that the Eel 

 River language is merely a Chilco dialect which has drifted south. 

 The exact provenience of these southern tongues is Dr. Harrington's 

 present goal. 



At the beginning of the fiscal year Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., 

 was engaged in archeological excavations at a site on the north rim 

 of the Staked Plains, IQi/o miles south of the town of San Jon, 

 N. Mex. These investigations were continued until September 6. 

 The work produced evidence for an interesting sequence of projectile 

 points and other artifact types and new information on some phases 

 of the aboriginal occupation of that portion of the Southwest. The 

 oldest archeological material present was found to be in association 

 with bones from an extinct species of bison and in the same stratum 

 as mammoth remains. Indications are that, although from a dif- 

 ferent complex, this material probably dates from about the end of 

 the Folsom horizon some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Between this 

 level and the next in the series there was a gap of an, as yet, un- 

 determined although appreciable length of time. During this inter- 

 val the large bison were replaced by a smaller species, the modern 

 buffalo. From the start of the second stage down to protohistoric 

 times there was no break in the occupation of the area investigated, 

 and the points and artifacts were found to progress from forms 

 similar to those found in the Texas area to the east to those com- 

 monly associated with late sites in many parts of the country. The 

 specimens from the second level belong to the so-called Yuma cate- 

 gory, and the evidence from San Jon indicates that chronologically 

 they are much later than hitherto supposed. The artifacts from the 

 late horizon show that several different Indian groups used that 

 area as hunting territory. In the light of present knowledge, how- 

 ever, it is not possible to identify the specific groups from the arti- 

 fact types. 



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