REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 71 



Chevlon Creek, where excavation revealed another stage in the same 

 general line of symbolic development, which corroborated the vague and 

 shadowy tradition that Hopi clans once inhabited this site. He later 

 sought a locality noted in the vaguest of all the migration legends still 

 current, and he was gratified by finding near Chavez Pass the archeologic 

 record of this stage in migration inscribed in symbols related to the higher 

 type from the more northerly localities. Beyond this point ruins which 

 mark traditional halting places in migration were not located; beyond it 

 the symbolic development has not yet been traced; but there is good 

 ground for anticipating that when Dr. Fewkes resumes the field he will 

 obtain still earlier records of the prehistoric movements and development 

 of this branch of Pueblo peoples. The work is deemed of much impor- 

 tance as a verification of aboriginal tradition, as a means of verifying other 

 migration legends, and as a most promising introduction to the practical 

 interpretation of history unwittingly recorded in graphic symbols. Inci- 

 dentally, the work corroborates the earlier conclusion reached in the 

 Bureau, that the Pueblo peoples are a resultant product of Southern cul- 

 ture and Northern blood; yet the significant details throw new light on 

 the entire problem. The report is elaborately illustrated by colored pho- 

 tographs of the ware from the several localities examined ; it was practi- 

 cally ready for the press at the close of the fiscal year. 



WORK IN TECHNOLOGY. 



The earlier accounts of exploration in the territory occupied by the 

 Cocopa Indians seemed to indicate that the tribesmen occupied the coast 

 of Gulf of California and were of maritime habits; but in the course of the 

 expedition led by Mr. McGee it was definitely ascertained that the folk 

 are essentially agricultural and confined, at least so far as habitations are 

 concerned, to the interior. The industrial condition of the tribe was found 

 to be of much interest. The tribal habitat comprises the Lower Colorado 

 Valley from the international boundary southward to the head of the gulf, 

 together with a few tributary valleys descending from the Cocopa Moun- 

 tains on the west. The main valley is broad and diversified by distribu- 

 taries, or bayous, of which the most important is Hardy River, or "Hardy's 

 Colorado." There are also several fairly permanent basins, filled by the 

 annual floods and slowly evaporated during succeeding months, and 

 the greater part of the broad bottom is swept by the freshets. Within 

 the region lie a number of "mud volcanoes," apparently analogous to the 

 "mud lumps" of the Lower Mississippi, which have attracted much 

 attention by reason of their novelty, though they are quite subordinate 

 to the general features. The entire district affords the closest American 

 parallel to the valley of the Nile, not only in physical conditions, but in 

 the influence of these on human conditions. Like northern Africa, the 

 general region is one of extreme aridity, the rainfall (averaging less than 

 2 inches yearly during the last qua <-ter century at the typical station of 

 Mammoth Tanks) being negligible; while the habitable district is well 

 watered by annual freshets of remarkable regularity in period and height. 

 These freshets not only flood but fertilize the riparian lowlands; they 

 control directly the local flora and somewhat less directly the local fauna, 



