52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



first volume was a thorough revision of the Algonquian sketch by Dr. William 

 Jones, who had planned to make certain additions to the manuscript, but whose 

 unfortunate death in the Philippine Islands left his researches on the Algonquian 

 languages incomplete. The revision was assigned to Dr. Truman Michelson, 

 who made a careful comparison between Doctor Jones's description of the lan- 

 guage and his published collection of texts. 



Considerable progress was made on the preparation of the second volume 

 of the Handbook of American Indian Languages. Owing to the increase in size 

 of a number of the original sketches, which was due to the lapse of time since 

 they were first recorded, the first volume had increased so much in size that it 

 became necessary to relegate the Takelma to the second volume. 



At the beginning of the fiscal year Dr. Leo J. Frachtenberg carried on investi- 

 gations under the direction of Doctor Boas among the Coos Indians of Oregon. 

 He succeeded in collecting a considerable body of texts from the survivors, and 

 at the same time revised the material collected several years ago by Mr. H. H. 

 St. Clair, 2d. Doctor Frachtenberg completed his studies of the grammar of the 

 language, and the manuscript of this sketch for the second volume was deliv- 

 ered and is partly in type. Toward the end of the year Doctor Frachten- 

 berg made preparatory studies on the Alsea language of Oregon, based on man- 

 uscript texts collected a number of years ago by Prof. Livingston Farraud on 

 an expedition due to the generosity of the late Mr. Henry Villard. The comple- 

 tion of the ethnological research work among the Alsea has been provided for 

 by a contribution of funds by Mrs. Villard, which will make it possible to com- 

 plete also the linguistic investigation of the tribe during the field season of 1910. 

 In June Doctor Frachtenberg visited two survivors of the Willopah tribe who 

 were said to remember the language, but unfortunately only about 300 words 

 could be obtained, and practically no grammatical forms. 



Further preparatory work on the second volume of the Handbook of American 

 Indian Languages was carried on by Mr. James Teit, who elucidated the, 

 details of the distribution of the Salish dialects of the State of Washington. 

 Part of this work was supported by the generosity of Mr. Homer E. Sargent, 

 of Chicago. 



The special researches in Indian music were continued in behalf of the 

 Bureau by Miss Frances Densmore, who has done so much toward preserving 

 the vanishing songs of the Indians. The principal new phase that has arisen 

 in Miss Densmore's work is the importance of the rhythmic unit in Chippewa 

 songs. Her observations indicate that the rhythmic phrase is the essential ele- 

 ment of the song ; indeed Miss Densmore is inclined to think that the first idea 

 of the song may be a mental rhythm assuming the form of a short unit, and that 

 its expression follows the overtones of a fundamental which exists somewhere 

 in the subconsciousness of the singer. The tabulated analyses show that 99 

 out of 180 songs to appear in Bulletin 45 (in press) begin on the twelfth or 

 fifth, and 34 begin on the octave — a total of 133 out of 180 beginning on the 

 principal overtones. Of 180 songs, 120 end on the tonic, and yet the tonic 

 does not usually appear until near the close of the song. 



Melodic phrases are seldom recurrent. In the oldest songs the words are 

 sung between repetitions of the rhythmic unit, and have a slight rhythm and 

 small melody progressions. Rhythm varies less often than earlier words or 

 melody in repetition, especially when the rhythm is comprised in a definite unit. 

 All these facts emphasize the importance of the rhythm, and also have a bearing 

 on the problem of the development of primitive music, which it is designed to 

 treat in a practical rather than in a theoretical way. 



