48 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
Dr. William C. Sturtevant, ethnologist, spent the week of July 29- 
August 4, 1957, in South Carolina working with the last living speaker 
of any of the Siouan languages of the east—a Catawba man 85 years 
old. The informant proved somewhat less than satisfactory, owing 
to his age and rather poor recall of a language he has not spoken for 
some years. However, a vocabulary file of a few hundred entries was 
built up, and several short texts and songs were collected. In addition 
to transcription in a phonetic orthography, all materials were re- 
corded with a tape recorder, to form a permanent record of a different 
nature than the Catawba linguistic materials collected by others be- 
fore the advent of convenient mechanical recording devices with good 
fidelity. The language has not yet been adequately analyzed, nor 
has its precise relationship to other Siouan languages been established ; 
the tape recording will be invaluable when these tasks are eventually 
undertaken. 
Dr. Sturtevant spent 7 weeks continuing his field research among 
the New York State Seneca, during four separate trips. In September 
he devoted 10 days to close observation of the work of a skilled 
Seneca mask carver on the Allegany Reservation, making detailed 
notes on his construction techniques and taking numerous photographs 
to document the various steps in the process. For a few days of this 
period Dr. Sturtevant received valuable assistance from Dr. William 
H. Davenport of Yale University, a specialist on primitive art. It 
became evident during this fieldwork that observation of construction 
is an essential preliminary to the structural analysis of the forms of 
these Seneca masks and will be of considerable assistance in the ethno- 
esthetic study initiated during the previous fiscal year. During Jan- 
uary and February, Dr. Sturtevant spent about 2 weeks on the 
Cattaraugus Reservation attending the annual midwinter ceremony 
of this Seneca group and discussing it with participants. The data 
obtained form part of a continuing study of the religion of this com- 
munity, which has previously received little attention from ethnolo- 
gists, in contrast to most other Iroquois non-Christian communities. 
In April 1958, Dr. Sturtevant visited Gainesville, Fla., for consul- 
tations on Florida anthropology with Dr. John M. Goggin. From 
there he traveled to Oklahoma via Montgomery, Ala. (where he ex- 
amined the collections of the Alabama Department of Archives and 
History), and the region around Philadelphia, Miss. (where he spent 
three days surveying the possibilities for research among the Missis- 
sippi Choctaw). In Oklahoma he examined the photograph and 
specimen collections of the Oklahoma Historical Society, attended 
the joint annual meetings of the Society for American Archeology 
and the Central States Anthropological Society, and had brief con- 
tacts with members of several Oklahoma tribes. Dr. Sturtevant also 
