REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 17 



period of the area. The cooperation of scientists and the governments 

 of the Bahama Islands, Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic was 

 readily obtained in the carrying out of the details of the project. From 

 January 16 to May 5, 1947, Mr. Krieger visited and made test excava- 

 tions at Indian village sites referred to by Christopher Columbus in 

 the journal of his first voyage of discovery. Mr. Krieger also exam- 

 ined the probable site of the first Spanish settlement, that of the sailors 

 of the wrecked Santa Maria at La Navidad near the town of Cap 

 Haitien on the north coast of Haiti. He later revisited La Isabela, 

 the first planned Spanish colony in the Western Hemisphere. The 

 ruins of the stone buildings of the town are still visible although 

 most of the stone walls of the large warehouse, church, fort, and other 

 buildings have been removed to the city of Puerto Plata, where they 

 have been used in the construction of modern buildings. 



During the first 2 weeks of August 1946 Mr. Kj:ieger attended, as a 

 delegate of the Smithsonian Institution, the First International Con- 

 ference of Archeologists of the Caribbean, which was convened under 

 the auspices of the Government of the Republic of Honduras. The 

 plenary sessions of the conference were held at the capital city of 

 Tegucigalpa, but as the work progressed meetings were held most 

 pleasantly under towering trees at the ruins of the eighth-century 

 Maya city of Copan, on the stone seats of the south section of the 

 Court of the Hieroglyphic Stairway. Ample facilities were provided 

 by the Honduras Government for the attending delegates, 60 in num- 

 ber, representing 14 American Republics and 36 educational and scien- 

 tific institutions. Visits were made by airplane to widely separated 

 sites where the prolific remains of Maya and other aboriginal cultures 

 are still visible in the form of pyramids, mounds, and ruins of aban- 

 doned Indian villages in the upland valleys of western Honduras. 



The late Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, formerly curator of physical anthro- 

 pology, had planned to visit Guatemala in December of 1943 to take 

 measurements and observations on the Highland Maya, but he died 

 in September of that year. Dr. T. Dale Stewart finally undertook 

 this work during the first 3 months of 1947 under a grant from the 

 Department of State and in cooperation with scientists from Guate- 

 mala and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. In addition to 

 studying the living, Dr. Stewart examined also the available prehis- 

 toric skeletal remains, especially those recovered from the archeo- 

 logical sites known as San Agustin Acasaguastlan, Kaminaljuyu, and 

 Zaculeu. 



The main objective of Dr. Stewart's trip was to obtain information 

 about the living Highland Maya which would enable him to make 

 comparisons with the Lowland Maya of Yucatan. These two groups, 

 although rather widely separated geographically and exhibiting dif- 



