OBITUARY OF DR. JONES 123 



DR. WILLIAM JONES. 



IT is our sad duty to record the death of Dr. WilHani Jones, a distin- 

 guished ethnologist who for several years was connected with this 

 Museum, but who for some months had been on a collecting ex- 

 pedition for the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, among the 

 less civilized tribes of the Philippine Islands. While near ^Monbato, 

 Luzon, he was attacked by a party of savages on ]\Iarch 28, his thirty- 

 sixth birthday, receiving wounds from which lie died on the same day. 

 This is truly a great loss to ethnology, since Dr. Jones was well equipped 

 for work among the Algonkin Indian tribes of North America and had 

 at the time of his death a wealth of unfinished work, most of which is now 

 beyond recovery. 



His college career began as a student at Harvard where he received 

 the A. B. degree in 1900. Then he took up the study of anthropology 

 at Columbia University, where he received the degree of Doctor of Phil- 

 osophy in 1904. He was University Fellow 1900-1902 and Assistant 

 in Anthropology 1902-1903. From 1904-1906 he was a Research 

 Assistant for the Carnegie Institution. While at Columbia University, 

 Dr. Jones made several expeditions for this Museum, returning with 

 collections and data from the Ojibway, Sauk and Fox Indians. 

 These collections are quite complete, those from the various divisions 

 of the Ojibway containing a large series of birch bark charts and song 

 records used in religious societies peculiar to these and related tribes. 

 His chief work, however, was a study of the various Algonkin dialects 

 spoken by the Ojibway, Fox and Kickapoo. Born of a mixed blood 

 Sauk mother and reared by his maternal grandmother, he acquired one 

 Algonkin dialect and gained an insight into Indian life not otherwise 

 easily obtained. His published works include a volume of myths under 

 the title, "Fox Texts," issued by the American Ethnological Society; 

 a general discussion of Ojibway culture, puV)lished by the Department 

 of Education, Toronto, Ont.; and "The Algonkin Manitou," in the 

 Journal of Anvrican Folk-Lorc. As these represented but a small part 

 of the data collected by him, now buried in his notes, it is no adequate 

 measure of his work. He had a knowledge and grasp of the ethnological 

 problems centering around the central Algonkin tribes, all his own, and 

 it was his intention after a short journey to the Philippines, again to 

 take up the Algonkin problem as his life work. 



