BEPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 81 



products. Hitherto most investigators of mythology have l)een content 

 with discrete studies and explorations, or, at most, with exoteric parallels. 

 Accordingly many of them have stopped with the inference of former 

 contact or kinship on which the students of industrial artifacts rested a 

 (juarter century ago, i. e., their studies were such as to bring out resem- 

 blances among the mythic systems examined, but not such as to detect 

 and properly emphasize the essential differences. Now, Mr. Mooney's 

 comparisons, although not exhaustive, are sufficiently general to permit 

 discrimination of the exoteric coincidences from esoteric motives in the 

 myths. Accordingly they clear the way for the application of the law of 

 activital coincidences to primitive mythology, if not to sophiology in gen- 

 eral. The greater part of the material completed for publication has been 

 incorporated in the memoir on "Myths of the Cherokee," mentioned in 

 the last report. 



Another comparative study of myths has been carried forward by Mr. 

 J. N. B. Hewitt; and this investigation is noteworthy in that the compari- 

 sons are confined to a limited group of confederated tribes (of the Iro- 

 quoian stock) and in that the features compared are in exceptional degree 

 esoteric. The myths were obtained at first hand and carefully recorded 

 and verified in the aboriginal terminology, after which literal and free 

 translations were made, so that each chapter of the work is at once a 

 linguistic record and the best obtainable version of the ancient traditions. 

 Now, it is noteworthy that most of the similarities found thus among the 

 several Iroquoian myths are rather external than internal, rather superfi- 

 cial than essential, and, concordantly, that the more important differences 

 are primarily internal, i. e., more directly connected with concept and 

 motive than with ritual and emblem. The voluminous material was prac- 

 tically ready for the press at the close of the fiscal year and has been 

 assigned to the Twentieth Annual Report. 



During the closing months of the year Dr. Fewkes was employed in 

 summarizing his own observations and those of others in the Pueblo 

 region, with the object of presenting an outline of Pueblo mythology. As 

 noted in earlier reports, the Pueblo region is arid, and hence infertile and 

 harsh as an environment for human inha])itants, and the harshness of 

 environment is curiously reflected in highly differentiated beliefs and cere- 

 monies, so that the Pueblo region as a whole may, perhaps, be regarded 

 as a sophic province, i. e., a province defined by a distinctively typical 

 series of myths and faiths. Good progress was made in the work, which 

 was not, however, completed at the close of the fiscal year. 



In addition to the inquiries connected with the classification of the 

 languages of Mexico and Central America, Dr. Cyrus Thomas gave con- 

 tinued attention to the hieroglyphic records of the inscriptions and sculp- 

 tures of Yucatan and interior ^Mexico, materially supj)lementing and 

 extending his paper on calendric systems, now in type as a ]iart of the 

 Nineteenth Annual Report. He made some progress also in the prepara- 

 tion of a final memoir on the codices. 



Although seriously handicapped by ill health, .Airs. Matilda Coxe Ste- 

 venson continued the preparation of her memoir on the ceremonies and 



SM lUOl tj 



