52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
building period in the Mississippi Valley, and that, although a number of the 
crania are of low type, this was a characterist'c frequently appearing among 
comparatively recent mound-building tribes. 
At the beginning of the fiscal year the Bureau was fortunate enough to enter 
into arrangements with Prof. Herbert H. Bolton, of the University of Texas, 
for recording the history of the Texan tribes. During the early historical 
period the French controlled and came into intimate relations with the northern 
Caddo, hence the early history of this group is to be found chiefly in French 
records; but with this exception it is mainly in Spanish records, scattered and 
almost wholly unprinted. These facts make the task in every sense a pioneer 
one. 
The Spanish manuscript sources available to Professor Bolton and upon 
which, aside from the printed French sources, he has thus far mainly drawn, 
consist of (1) the Béxar archives, a rich collection of perhaps 300,000 pages 
of original manuscripts that accumulated at San Antonio during the Spanish 
eccupancy, and now in the University of Texas; (2) the Nacogdoches archives, 
a similar but much smaller collection that accumulated at Nacogdoches and 
which are now in the State Historical Library; (38) the Lamar papers, a small 
collection of Spanish manuscripts, now in private hands; (4) mission records 
preserved at the residence of the Bishop of San Antonio; (5) copies of docu- 
ments from the Archivo General of Mexico, belonging to the University of 
Texas and to Professor Bolton; and (6) the various Mexican archives. From 
these have been extracted a great many notes, but much material yet remains 
to be examined. 
During the year Professor Bolton’s efforts have taken three principal direc- 
tions: (1) He has systematically and fully indexed, on about 10,000 cards, a 
large amount of the early material, including tribal, institutional, linguistic, 
historical, and other data on the whole Texas field. (2) From this material as 
a basis he has written many brief articles on tribes and missions for the Hand- 
book of American Indians, aggregating about 20,000 words. (38) While in 
the analysis of the materials and the making of the index cards he has covered 
the whole field, in the final work of construction he has begun the Caddoan 
tribes of eastern Texas, with the design of treating them separately. In this 
work Professor Bolton has made commendable progress. He has already 
written a detailed description, consisting of about 40,000 words, of the location, 
social and political organization, economic life, religion, and ceremonial of the 
Hasinai, commonly designated ‘‘ Texas,” as known and described by the earliest 
European chronicles, accompanied with a map. 
The task of writing a history of the Texas tribes is a great one, and can be 
performed only by long and painstaking effort, but its successful accomplish- 
ment promises an important addition to our knowledge of the native Americans. 
PRESERVATION OF ANTIQUITIES. 
With the object of assisting the departments of the Government haying cus- 
tody of the public domain in the initiation of measures for the preservation of 
the antiquities of the country, the compilation of a descriptive catalogue of 
antiquities has been continued, and the preparation of bulletins having the same 
end in view has also received every possible attention. Bulletin 32, Antiquities 
of the Jemez Plateau, by Edgar L. Hewett, was published and distributed dur- 
ing the year, and Bulletin 35, Antiquities of the Upper Gila and Salt River 
Valleys in Arizona and New Mexico, by Dr. Walter Hough, was in page form at 
the close of the year, while bulletins by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, on the Antiqui- 
ties of the Little Colorado Valley, and Edgar L. Hewett, on the Antiquities of the 
Mesa Verde, Colorado, were in course of preparation. 
