52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
A study of the much discussed Norse expeditions to America was 
undertaken and a manuscript completed embodying the results. 
During the course of the year Dr. Swanton furnished to the Navy 
Department more than 1,000 Indian tribal names and names of prom- 
inent Indians, to be used for naming war vessels. Approximately 200 
of these have been used. 
On June 30, 1944, Dr. Swanton retired from the Bureau after 
almost 44 years of service. 
Dr. John P. Harrington, ethnologist, continuing his American In- 
dian linguistic studies, discovered evidence suggesting that Quechua 
and Aymara, the languages of the two most highly civilized groups 
of aboriginal South America, are related to the Hokan stock of western 
North America. This is the first time that a linguistic relationship 
has been indicated between North and South America. In addition 
to this Dr. Harrington has reduced the number of linguistic stocks in 
South America by establishing the relationship of many groups previ- 
ously considered to be separate. 
Because of his unique knowledge of languages, Dr. Harrington has 
been called upon daily by the Office of Censorship to translate letters 
written in little-known languages from all over the world. . 
During the year several short papers on linguistic subjects have been 
published in scientific journals. 
On July 5, 1943, Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., senior archeologist, 
went to Abilene, Tex., where he spent 5 days investigating a prehistoric 
Indian burial which had been exposed 21 feet below the surface in a 
bank of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River by floodwaters and which 
was in danger of being washed away by a new rise. Studies of the 
deposits at the site showed that the burial had been made during the 
closing days of the Pleistocene or the beginning of the Early Recent 
geologic period about 10,000 years ago. The skeleton was turned over 
to the division of physical anthropology of the United States National 
Museum, where it has received careful study and has added to the 
knowledge of the physical type of the early Texas Indians. 
Returning to Washington, Dr. Roberts spent the remainder of the 
summer and the months of early autumn preparing contributions 
to, obtaining pictures for, editing the manuscript, and reading proof 
of a manual, “Survival on Land and Sea,” which was prepared for 
the Publications Branch of the Office of Naval Intelligence, United 
States Navy, by the Ethnogeographic Board and the staff of the 
Smithsonian Institution. He later worked on a revision of this man- 
ual for a second edition and also served as a consultant for a similar 
manual being prepared for the Army Air Forces. During this period 
he also furnished information to several other branches of the armed 
services and some of the war agencies. 
