NO 3 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, IQI5 103 
quite complex, and it will be some time before the matter can be 
cleared up. The work on the Sauk system of consanguinity shows 
that Morgan’s Sauk and Fox schedules need revising. Dr. Michel- 
son returned to Washington about November 1. 
STUDIES AMONG THE CAYUGA INDIANS 
Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, ethnologist, with the efficient aid of Mrs. 
Mary Gibson, widow of the late Chief John Arthur Gibson, completed 
the long text in Cayuga of the O'ki’we, being the history and the 
ritual of the Feast of the Dead which is in charge of the women of 
the tribe. With the same assistance Mr. Hewitt also finished work on 
a selected list of Mohawk verbs by supplying each with a Cayuga 
synonym. Then with the aid of Mr. Richard Hill he was able to 
correct and elucidate certain moot points in the Mohawk and other 
texts of the Ritual of the Mourning and Installation Council, and 
especially to confirm a conjecture as to the reconstruction of a 
portion of a ritual which had been quite lost and forgotten, namely, 
the dramatization of the so-called Six Songs, in which these songs 
are sung by a chief impersonating the dead chief. 
STUDY OF INDIAN MUSIC 
The study of Indian music was continued by Miss Frances Dens- 
more during the season of 1915. The first reservation visited was 
that of Fort Berthold, North Dakota, where she resumed, under 
the auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology, a study of music 
of the Mandan and Hidatsa, commenced in 1912 under the auspices 
of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. A competent 
interpreter for each language was secured, and the work was con- 
ducted along more intensive lines than during the previous visit. 
One of the principal subjects investigated was the custom of eagle- 
catching, which is common to both tribes and which, though scarcely 
to be called ceremonial, is closely associated with their beliefs in 
the power of the supernatural. The Mandan tradition of the origin 
of this custom, together with the songs connected with its fetish (the 
wolverene), was obtained from the only man living who inherited 
them. It is understood that no other person has the right to 
sing these songs, and the ownership of songs is held inviolate on this 
reservation. Miss Densmore visited an eagle trap which 1s said to 
have been in disuse for about 70 years. Upright in the ground beside 
it was a bone that had been used to hold bait for the eagles. This 
bone was identified as one of the upright vertebree of a buffalo, and 
on it could be discerned traces of red paint. 
