SECRETARY'S REPORT 9 
pairing and restoring the Whistler “Peacock Room” was begun dur- 
ing the year. Visitors to the Gallery totaled 77,012 for the year, and 
1,650 persons visited the main office for special information. Sixteen 
groups were given special instruction in the exhibition galleries by 
staff members. 
Bureau of American Ethnology.—Dr. M. W. Stirling, Director of 
the Bureau, conducted archeological excavations in western Panama 
for 314 winter months in cooperation with the National Geographic 
Society, discovering a new, very early culture unrelated to anything 
heretofore known in the Republic. Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., 
Associate Director, was occupied mainly in directing the River Basin 
Surveys, a unit of the Bureau set up to recover archeological ma- 
terial that would be lost through construction of dams and the crea- 
tion of river valley reservoirs. Surveys, with limited testing of sites, 
were made in 18 States and 88 reservoir areas. A total of 1,576 sites 
have been found, of which 250 were recommended for excavation. 
Dr. John P. Harrington prepared a number of manuscripts in the 
field of Indian linguistics, among them a 750-page grammar of the 
Maya language. Dr. Henry B. Collins, Jr., as chairman of the Board 
of Governors of the Arctic Institute of North America, devoted con- 
siderable time to the affairs of that organization. Late in the year, 
he left Washington to conduct archeological work for the Smithsonian 
and the National Museum of Canada on islands in the Canadian Arctic 
Archipelago. Dr. William N. Fenton carried on field work among 
the Seneca in western New York and started an extensive program 
of historical research connected with the League of the Iroquois. Dr. 
Philip Drucker spent nearly half the year on detail to the River Basin 
Surveys, taking charge of the work in the Columbia Basin. During 
the rest of the year he completed two monographs, one on the Nootkan 
tribes of British Columbia, the other on the Mexican La Venta culture. 
Dr. Gordon R. Willey wrote additional sections of a report on “Ancon 
and Supe: Formative Period Sites of the Central Peruvian Coast,” 
and nearly completed a monograph on the archeology of the Florida 
Gulf Coast. Dr. Willey accompanied Dr. Stirling on the archeological 
expedition to western Panama, and also worked in Tennessee for 114 
months on detail to the River Basin Surveys. 
The Institute of Social Anthropology, an autonomous unit of the 
Bureau, is financed by State Department funds to carry out coopera- 
tive training in social anthropological teaching and research with the 
other American republics. Under the directorship of Dr. George M. 
Foster, members of the staff gave courses in various phases of anthro- 
pological study and conducted cooperative field work in Brazil, Co- 
lombia, México, and Peri. The Bureau issued volumes 3 and 4 of the 
Handbook of South American Indians and four publications of the 
Institute of Social Anthropology. 
