REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 45 
spondence. As a result of this work the number of titles in the catalogue 
(which is now about finished) reaches some 6,200—more than eight times the 
number in the largest catalogue in the same field hitherto published. Hon. 
George R. Carter, former governor of the Territory of Hawaii, has given much 
encouragement to this work; in fact, with Professor Ballou, he formed the 
leading spirit in its inception, though the beginning of the work for the bureau 
was undertaken quite independently. Doctor Thomas has appended a subject 
or cross-reference catalogue of about 38,200 titles, which is so nearly complete 
that it is hoped the entire work will be submitted for publication before the 
end of August, 1909. In addition to this work Doctor Thomas assisted to some 
extent in the preparation of Part 2 of the Handbook of American Indians, and 
attended to such official correspondence as was referred to him. 
Mr. James Mooney, ethnologist, during the entire year was occupied chiefly 
in an investigation of the subject of the Indian population north of Mexico at 
the period of first disturbance and occupancy of the country by the whites. 
A preliminary study was condensed for introduction into Part 2 of the Hand- 
book of the Indians. The final work is expected to appear as a bulletin of 
the bureau. The investigation is being carried out in detail for each well- 
defined geographic section, and for each tribe or tribal group separately, from 
the earliest period to the present, with careful sifting of authorities and con- 
sideration of Indian habits of living. No such detailed and extended study 
of the subject has ever before been attempted, and the result must prove of 
interest and importance. The usual share of attention was given also through- 
out the year to the preparation and proof reading of various articles for the 
Handbook of the Indians and to routine correspondence. On request of the 
Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Mr. Mooney, together with Doctor 
Swanton, attended the meeting of that body at St. Louis, June 17-19, as repre- 
sentatives of the bureau, and presented papers on the ethnology of the central 
region. 
During the year Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnologist, was engaged as follows: 
The months of October, November, and December, 1908, were spent in Okla- 
homa, Texas, and Louisiana. In Oklahoma the Natchez linguistic material 
collected by Gallatin, Pike, Brinton, and Gatschet was gone over with one of 
the four surviving speakers of the Natchez language, and about fifty pages of 
text were recorded. In Texas the Alibamu Indians were visited in an en- 
deavor, partially successful, to determine the relationship of the Pascagoula 
tribe, formerly resident near them. In Louisiana the linguistic material col- 
lected by Gatschet and Duralde was gone over with some of the surviving 
Attacapa, Chitimacha, and Tunica. On the way to Washington Doctor Swan- 
ton visited Columbia, S. C., to examine the early archives of that State. The 
most important result of the expedition, however, was the discovery at Marks- 
ville, La., of a woman who remembers a large amount of the Ofo language 
formerly spoken on Yazoo River. As large a vocabulary of this language as 
possible was recorded. 
In the office Doctor Swanton completed the proof reading of his work “ Tlin- 
git myths and texts,’ which was ready for the press at the close of the year. 
He completed also a bulletin on ‘The Indian tribes of the lower Mississippi 
Valley and northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico,” and read proofs of the same. 
Additional work was accomplished as follows: The editing of the late J. O. 
Dorsey’s material on the Biloxi language (in press), and the proof reading of 
the same; the copying of texts collected during the field expedition above 
referred to, and incorporating the linguistic material then obtained with the 
material previously collected in the Natchez, Attacapa, Chitimacha, and Tunica 
languages, and the copying on cards of the Ofo vocabulary; the reading of 
