30 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1934 



During the same period, ]\Ir. Stirling took the opportunity of over- 

 seeing the work conducted under the auspices of the Bureau of 

 Ethnology at Macon, Ga., where a large and important mound group 

 was being excavated with the cooperation of the Macon Historical 

 Society. On May 5, Mr. Stirling returned to Washington where he 

 worked on the preparation of the collections obtained during this field 

 work and on the preparation of reports on the different excavations. 



Upon the death of the late Gen. Hugh L. Scott, his valuable mate- 

 rial on the sign language of the American Indians was added to the 

 Bureau archives. Richard Sanderville, Blackfoot Indian, who had 

 been one of General Scott's principal informants, was brought to 

 Washington in order to go over this material and to supplement it in 

 places which appeared lacking. Opportunity was also taken to make 

 additional motion pictures and a general photographic record of the 

 sign language with Mr. Sanderville as model. 



During the earlier part of the year Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnolo- 

 gist, completed the bulletin on the languages of certain Texas tribes, 

 of which mention was made in his last report. This includes all of 

 the linguistic material known to be in existence, both published and 

 unpublished, from the Coahuiltecan, Karankawan, and Tamaulipecan 

 stocks, i. e., all of the Indian tongues of Texas Avest and south of the 

 Atakapa and Tonkawa, and extending as far into Mexico as the 

 boundaries of the Huastec and Uto-Aztecan tribes. 



The remainder of his office w^ork, aside from correspondence, has 

 been devoted mainly to the handbook of Southeastern Indians, men- 

 tioned in previous reports. The present draft of this work contains 

 about 1,200 typewritten pages. 



At the end of February Dr. Swanton Avent to Macon, Ga., at the 

 invitation of the Society for Georgia Archaeology, to attend its first 

 meeting and take part in its activities as indicated elsewhere. He 

 remained at Macon for about 3 weeks, visiting archeological sites both 

 in the immediate neighborhood and in other parts of Georgia and 

 making some attempts to locate the route pursued by De Soto in 

 crossing the State in 1540. Dr. Swanton thinks there is little doubt 

 that the crossing point on the Oconee has been identified with the old 

 trail crossing at Carr Shoals, a few miles above Dublin. 



Dr. Truman Michelson, ethnologist, devoted the bulk of his 

 time to preparing a paper entitled " The Linguistic Position of 

 Nawa^inanana"." This consisted of going over Kroeber's published 

 material and establishing the phonetic shifts of the language. It 

 also meant codifying in final form a number of Cheyenne shifts which 

 he had partially worked out in previous years. It also involved 

 clarifying some shifts in Arapaho and Atsina. The special novelty 

 consists in shoAving how at least certain Algonquian languages became 

 divergent simply by the operation of complex and far-reaching 



