REPOET OF THE SECRETARY. 35 



of a highly useful collection of basketry — the Hudson collection, — which throws 

 much light on the aboriginal handicraft and motives of the California Indians. 



In November Dr. J. Walter Fewkes repaired to Arizona for the purpose of con- 

 tinuing researches concerning the winter ceremonies of the Hopi Indians, but soon 

 after his arrival an epidemic of smallpox manifested itself in such severity as com- 

 pletely to demoralize the Indians and prevent them from carrying out their cere- 

 monial plans, and at the same time to place Dr. Fewkes in grave personal danger. 

 It accordingly became necessary to abandon the work for the season. 



Early in the fiscal year an arrangement was effected with the managers of the 

 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, at Omaha, under which Mr. James 

 Mooney cooperated, for the installation and conduct of an Indian congress. In car- 

 rying out the plan, Mr. Mooney visited Indian Territory and Oklahoma, and suc- 

 cessfully enlisted the sympathy and aid of representatives of various tribes, including 

 the Kiowa, with whom he was intimately acquainted. Portions of the aboriginal 

 material obtained in the field for the use of the congress were subsequently acquired 

 for the National Museum. 



In August Dr. Albert S. Gatschet revisited New Brunswick for the purpose of con- 

 tinuing the collection and analysis of Algonquian linguistic material. He sought new 

 aboriginal informants and was able to make satisfactory additions to the recorded 

 dialects of the measurably distinct portion of the great Algonquian stock occupying 

 the northern Atlantic coast. 



In September Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt proceeded to various localities in New York 

 and Ontario for the purpose of obtaining additional material pertaining to both the 

 languages and the myths of the Iroquoian Indians, and the work, coupled with 

 efforts to obtain certain unique objects for the National Museum, occupied him in 

 the field until January. 



During the autum Mr. J. B. Hatcher, who had previously brought from Patagonia 

 certam valuable ethnologic material for the Museum, returned to the field and 

 resumed collecting and the making of photographs illustrating the habits and hab- 

 itations of the Tehuelche tribe and the natives of Tierra del Fuego. His work was 

 not completed at the end of the year. 



Dr. Willis E. Everett, acting as a special agent of the Bureau, visited various remote 

 districts in Alaska and contiguous British territory during the year, and obtained a 

 quantity of linguistic data of considerable use in classifying the aboriginess of a little- 

 known district. 



Office Research. 



work in esthetology. 



Throughout much of the year the Director continued giving attention to the 

 synthesis of data in the Bureau archives and in i)ublished form, with the view of 

 organizing anthropic science, including ethnology in its several aspects. Among the 

 subjects considered in detail was that of the more spontaneous human activities, 

 normally pleasurable in character, which form the object-matter of esthetology. 

 The researches among the aborigines have thrown much light on this subject, since 

 the symbolic devices, sports, games, and ceremonies of the tribesmen are relatively 

 simple and little differentiated, and hence are readily perceived and synthesized — 

 indeed the synthesis of the esthetic and other activities rests primarily on the obser- 

 vations among the American natives, corroborated by (critical observations on other 

 primitive peoples, and finally attested by the facts manifested among advanced 

 peoples. It is convenient to denote the primary activities comprised in the domain 

 of esthetology as pleasures, since they are largely physiologic in character, though, 

 like other activities, chiefly demotic (or collective) in their manifestations; and the 

 activities may be classed as ambrosial pleasures, decoration, athletic pleasures or 



