80 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



industries, or technical activities, and thence to the institutions expressing 

 social activities. During the past year the characterization was extended 

 to languages, or the activities designed for expression, as already set forth, 

 and toward the end of the year the last and most complex of the activital 

 groups, i. e., the sophic activities involved in opinion, together with myth, 

 faith, and the more refined and ennobling products of mentation, was 

 taken up. Fair progress was. made in the analytical work, and it is antici- 

 pated that definite results will be reported at an early day. 



During his Southwestern expedition Mr. McGee found opportunity to 

 witness certain ceremonies of the Yaki Indians, which were of interest 

 partly because the tribe has been little studied, partly by reason of the 

 prominence of zoic motives in the vocalization and instrumentation, as 

 well as in the gestures and movements of the ceremonial dance. In por- 

 tions of the ceremony each actor impersonated an animal. He wore a head- 

 dress (not extended into a mask, as among more northerly tribes) consisting 

 of a scalp, with ears, horns, and other appendages of the animal kind, and 

 leggings abundantly decorated with claws or hoofs of the same animal. He 

 carried a rattle or flute, used to imitate the voice of the tutelary or the 

 sound of its movements, while he imitated its notes of alarm, fright, pain, 

 and pleasure with his own voice, and mimicked its corresponding move- 

 ments; yet in other parts of the ceremony the same actors passed by care- 

 fully graded stages into the strictly conventional movements of a dance 

 involving collective action of considerable complexity. Briefly, the cere- 

 mony seemed to be characterized by a remarkable combination of symbolic 

 and conventional features, indicating an exceptional range from the primi- 

 tive impersonation to the formal figures and movements attending moder- 

 ately advanced culture. 



Mr. James Mooney continued his researches relating to the mythology 

 of the Cherokee Indians, making good progress in the collection of 

 additional material in the field, as well as in the extension of compari- 

 sons between the myths of the Cherokee and those of other tribes and 

 peoples. The application of comparative study to primitive mythlogy 

 is proving highly instructive and useful. In the infancy of ethnologic 

 research students were frequently struck by the discovery of activital 

 parallels, or similarities, among more or less remote peoples, and were 

 led thereby to infer previous contact, or even closer relationship, between 

 the peoples; but as study progressed and new" parallels were discovered, 

 even among the remotest peoples of the earth, the verity of the inference 

 came to be questioned, and finally the law of activital coincidences was 

 formulated as a convenient generahzation of the facts connected with 

 independent development of devices produced in the constant adjust- 

 ment of the intelligent organism to its environment. At first the law of 

 activital coincidences rested chiefly on industrial artifacts; then it was 

 found to have equal support in the esthetic products of various peoples; 

 next it was found to have still stronger and more direct support in institu- 

 tions, i. e., in the devices and features of social organization; while certain 

 features of language were found also to indicate the extent and efficiency of 

 comcidental interaction between mind and nature in shaping the activital 



