REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 31 



various projects. Additional money that ma}' be used for researches 

 in the field is one of the principal needs of our organization. 



A brief account of field work for the present year follows : During 

 the months of July, August, and September, the assistant curator 

 of ethnology, Henry B. Collins, jr., assisted by J. A. Ford, was 

 engaged in field work on St. Lawrence Island in Bering Sea, 

 in continuation of work begun earlier in the season. In 1928 and 

 1929 Mr. Collins's excavations on Punuk and St. Lawrence Islands 

 revealed the existence of a prehistoric phase of Eskimo culture ances- 

 tral to the modern type of that region and derived apparently from 

 a still earlier phase, known to students as the old Bering Sea culture. 

 Stratigraphic excavations were made this year at Gambell and a long 

 succession of cultural changes was revealed in detail as one village 

 midden after another was trenched. Through this an excellent 

 chronology was established on the basis of stratigraphy, the evidence 

 of the old beach lines, and the demonstrable succession of art styles 

 on implements, principally harpoon heads of walrus ivory. Inci- 

 dental to this work Mr. Collins took occasion to secure an excellent 

 collection of birds from this island, the bird life of which has been 

 comparatively little known. The active interest of the Revenue Cut- 

 ter Service in this work continued and was of invaluable assistance, 

 particularly the transportation furnished on the cutter Northland to 

 areas otherwise inaccessible. Cooperation from this source has been 

 highly appreciated. 



The curator of ethnology, Herbert W. Krieger, engaged in a recon- 

 naissance of an archeological nature in the Republic of Haiti, this 

 work being carried on from January to May, 1931, when the approach 

 of the rainy season brought it to a close. The present population 

 of Haiti has no history or tradition regarding the early Indian occu- 

 pants of the island, and is therefore of no assistance in locating 

 former Arawak or Ciboney village sites and kitchen middens, so that 

 one has to rely on Spanish and French narratives for the ethnologi- 

 cal and historical introduction useful in this work. The reconnais- 

 sance was highly successful in determining the distribution of former 

 Arawak and Ciboney village sites, and it was found that scattered 

 groups of each type occupied at different times much of the habitable 

 portions of the island. A check was made also on data from Spanish 

 writers who gave differing accounts with regard to the former pres- 

 ence of a troglodytic population in the isolated mountains of the 

 southwestern peninsula. 



As a further important result, this season's investigations estab- 

 lished the identity of the Samana cave culture, investigated by a 

 Smithsonian expedition in 1928, with the large shell middens on lie 

 a Vache, on the Caribbean coast of Haiti. The same primitive, non- 

 agricultural, non-Arawak Ciboney apparently are also responsible 



