50 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
During the latter part of the previous fiscal year, in pursuance of his lin- 
guistic studies, Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnologist, was engaged in preparing an 
English-Natchez and Natchez-English analytical dictionary, embodying all the 
published and unpublished material available—that is, about two thousand words 
and phrases; he also copied on cards all the words and phrases collected by the 
late Doctor Gatschet from the Attacapa, Chitimacha, and Tunica Indians. At 
the beginning of the fiscal year Doctor Swanton was engaged in compiling a 
dictionary of the Tunica language similar to that made for the Natchez. In the 
field of general ethnology he excerpted and, when necessary, translated, all the 
available material bearing on the tribes of the lower Mississippi Valley, and 
arranged for publication that portion dealing with the Natchez. 
On April 3 he left Washington to make investigations among the tribal rem- 
nants of Louisiana and Oklahoma, and visited the members of the Houma, 
Chitimacha, Attacapa, Alibamu, Biloxi, Tunica, and Natchez tribes, and was 
able definitely to establish the relationship of the Houma to the Choctaw and to 
identify the Ouspie—a small people referred to by the early French writers— 
with the Offagoula. From the Tunica and Chitimacha he collected several 
stories which will be of importance in the endeavor to restore the mythology 
of the tribes of this area, now almost a blank. In the Cherokee Nation (Okla- 
homa), contrary to expectation, Doctor Swanton found several persons who 
still speak the Natchez language. This discovery will necessarily delay the 
publication of the Natchez material already referred to, but if prompt measures 
are taken, will insure the preservation of that language in its completeness. 
At Eufaula (Creek Nation) he made a slight investigation into the social organi- 
zation of the Creeks—enough to determine that much work still remains to be 
done in that tribe entirely apart from language. Doctor Swanton returned to 
the office June 7, and during the remainder of the year was engaged in arrang- 
ing and collating the material collected by him. 
Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, ethnologist, was employed in the office during the 
first month of the year reading proofs of his articles on The Aborigines of 
Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands and on Antiquities of Eastern Mexico, for 
the Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Bureau. Part of August and all of 
September were devoted to the preparation of a bulletin on the Antiquities of 
the Little Colorado. He spent seven months in Arizona, leaving Washington on 
October 15 and returning the middle of May. During four months he super- 
intended the work of eXcavation, repair, and preservation of the Casa Grande 
Ruin, in Pinal County, Arizona, and in March and April visited a number of 
little-known and undescribed ruins along Canyon Diablo and Grapevine Can- 
yon, gathering material for his bulletin on The Antiquities of the Little Colo- 
rado Valley. During May and June he was employed in the office, devoting 
his time to the preparation of an account of the excavations at Casa Grande. 
The explorations at Casa Grande were conducted under a special appropriation 
disbursed directly by the Smithsonian Institution, and Doctor Fewkes’s pre- 
liminary report has been submitted to the Secretary. It is anticipated that a 
final report on the work when completed will be published by the Bureau of 
American Hthnology. 
Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt was occupied during the earlier months of the year in 
preparing and correcting matter for the Handbook of American Indians, devyot- 
ing special attention to the articles on the Iroquoian family, Iroquois, Mohawk, 
Montour, Mythology, Nanabozho, Neutrals, Oneida, Onondaga, and Ottawa, and 
to the lists of towns formerly belonging to the Iroquois tribes. 
From the 20th of January to the 23d of March, 1907, he was engaged in 
field work among the Iroquois tribes in New York and in Ontario, Canada. 
The entire period was devoted to collecting texts in the Onondaga and Mohawk 
