No. 8 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I913 61 
hall of the Temple of Amen Ra, by M. Le Grain, is the most im- 
portant ever attempted on an ancient building. 
Part of his time in Egypt was devoted to comparative problems, 
and he was also able to give some attention, all too limited, to evi- 
dences of convergence and parallelism in the neolithic or predynastic 
culture of the Nile Valley with that of the Gila. He investigated 
more especially remarkable lines of similarity in artificial methods 
of water supply, in both regions, and the influence of cooperation 
of predynastic villages in building great irrigation canals, on the de- 
velopment of a higher social organization. He had always in mind 
the collection of material bearing on interrelationship of climatic 
conditions and early culture in the Nile Valley. 
AMONG THE EAST CHEROKEE INDIANS OF NORTH CAROLINA 
Mr. James Mooney, ethnologist in the Bureau of American 
Ethnology, spent the summer of 1913, June 18 to October 4, inclusive, 
with the East Cherokee Indians in the mountains of western North 
Carolina, among whom he had made his first field studies in 1887. 
These Indians, numbering some 1,900, live upon a small reservation 
in Swain and Jackson Counties with several outlying settlements 
farther to the west. They area part of the historic Cherokee Nation 
formerly holding the whole mountain region of the southern Alleghe- 
mies until removed by military force in 1838 to the Indian Territory, 
where they now number about 30,000 of pure or mixed blood. Those 
in North Carolina are the descendants of some hundreds who made 
their escape from the troops and were finally, through the good 
offices of their friend, Col. Wm. H. Thomas, allowed to remain and 
settle upon lands purchased for them with their share of the fund 
originally appropriated for their removal to the west. There are still 
living among them several who remember the removal. 
Constituting from the beginning the most conservative and pure- 
blooded element of the tribe, protected by their mountain barriers 
from outside influences and never having been subjected to the shock 
of forced removal to a distant and strange environment, these East 
Cherokees remain to-day the conservators of the ancient traditions, 
and exemplars of the aboriginal life once common in varying degree 
to all the tribes of the Gulf States. Until 1881, when the first school 
was established, they continued virtually unchanged. Since then, 
schools, railroads, and lumber industries have made rapid advance, 
which, with the passing of the older generation, must before many 
years bring to a close the [Indian period. 
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