SECRETARY'S REPORT 55 
in Alaska and northern Canada were financed in large part by the 
office of Naval Research and the Canadian Government. 
Dr. Collins continued to serve as chairman of the Directing Com- 
mittee for the Arctic Institute’s Bibliography and Roster projects. 
This committee selected personnel and put into operation these two 
projects—the preparation of a comprehensive annotated and indexed 
bibliography on the Arctic, and a roster of Arctic specialists. The 
projects are supported by funds from the Office of Naval Research, 
the Army, and the Defense Research Board of Canada. The bibliog- 
raphy project, with four expert bibliographers and three assistants, 
is under way at the Library of Congress; the roster project, with a 
director and assistant, has been given office space in the building of 
the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 
At the invitation of the Canadian Government, Dr. Collins left 
Washington late in June to conduct archeological work for the Smith- 
sonian Institution and the National Museum of Canada in the northern 
part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. 
At the beginning of the year Dr. William N. Fenton was on leave 
while teaching in the summer session of Northwestern University 
(June 23 to August 23), where he was invited to occupy the post of 
professor in the department of anthropology during that quarter. 
While in the Chicago area, he was able to spend considerable time 
examining rare books and manuscripts in the Ayer Collection of the 
Newberry Library and to study ethnological collections from the 
Troquois Indians in the Milwaukee Public Museum and in the Chicago 
Natural History Museum. Returning, Dr. Fenton spent the first 2 
weeks of September at field work among the Seneca Indians of Alle- 
gany Reservation in western New York. 
Teaching a course in primitive political institutions suggested a 
plan for undertaking a comprehensive political history of the League 
of the Iroquois which would attempt to test the findings of ethnology 
in the historian’s traditional materials. The documentary materials 
on the Six Nations comprising the Iroquois League for the Federal 
Period alone and for the succeeding first decade of the nineteenth 
century exist in several large collections of papers which have not 
been used extensively by historians of Federal and Indian political 
relations. First, the papers of Samuel Kirkland (1741-1808) contain 
interesting sidelights on the political activities of the Six Nations, 
covering missionary activities among the Oneida, Tuscarora, and 
Seneca tribes; the correspondence of an agent of the American Revo- 
Jution; and the gradual civilization of the native Indians. Exami- 
nation of the Kirkland papers at Hamilton College was begun in 
September with the help of M. H. Deardorff of Warren, Pa., and 
Charles E. Congdon, an alumnus. The project is indebted to Dr. 
Arthur C. Parker of Naples, N. Y., for the loan of a Seneca Census of 
817369—49—_5 
