44 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1957 



related to them were recorded in Seneca and transcribed and trans- 

 lated. Case histories of individuals cured by use of the masks were 

 also gathered and analyzed. The esthetic attitudes of the Seneca 

 toward the masks are difficult to distinguish from their feelings about 

 their religious associations and ceremonial and curative powers, but 

 through the use of photographs of museum specimens and the exam- 

 ination with informants of specimens in use in the community and a 

 collection in the Buffalo Museum of Science, some data on this topic 

 were obtained. Another subject on which investigations were begun 

 at both Cattaraugus and Allegany is an interesting pattern of ritual 

 friendship, by which two or more individuals go through a ceremony 

 for curative or other reasons, which puts them in a siblinglike rela- 

 tionship and results in the extension of the appropriate kinship terms 

 and some aspects of kinship behavior to other members of their fami- 

 lies. This is a form of fictional kinship which has interesting paral- 

 lels in many other societies; godparenthood and blood-brotherhood 

 are related phenomena, for example. 



Dr. Sturtevant also attended the Fifth International Congress of 

 Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, in Philadelphia, Septem- 

 ber 1-9, and the Tenth Conference on Iroquois Research, Red House, 

 N.Y., October 26-28. 



On May 8, 1957, Carl Miller was temporarily transferred from the 

 River Basin Surveys to the rolls of the Bureau of American Ethnology 

 for the period ending September 1, in order that he might continue 

 the excavations begun last year at Russell Cave, Alabama, where very 

 early Indian remains were found in stratigraphic sequence. He spent 

 May and June at Russell Cave opening a new trench and making 

 preparations for converting the excavation into a permanent exhibit. 



RIVER BASIN SURVEYS 



(Prepared by Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., Director, from data submitted by staff members) 



The River Basin Surveys, a unit of the Bureau of American Eth- 

 nology, continued its program for salvage archeology throughout the 

 fiscal year. The investigations were carried on in cooperation with the 

 National Park Service and the Bureau of Reclamation of the Depart- 

 ment of the Interior, the Corps of Engineers of the Department of the 

 Army, and several State and local institutions. Because of an increase 

 in funds more activities were possible than in the preceding year. Dur- 

 ing fiscal 1956-57 the work of the River Basin Surveys was supported 

 by a transfer of $108,500 from the National Park Service to the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. Of that sum $90,000 was for use in the Missouri 

 Basin and $18,500 for work in other drainage areas. This was the first 

 time in several years that Federal money was available for studies by 

 the River Basin Surveys at projects outside the Missouri Basin. A 



