52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



Several hundred cards have been added to his catalogue of mate- 

 rial bearing on the economic basis of American Indian life. 



Dr. Swanton completed reading the proofs of Bulletin 68, A 

 Structural and Lexical Comparison of the Tunica, Chitimacha, and 

 Atakapa Languages, and the bulletin was issued in December, 1919. 



The sketch of the Chitimacha language mentioned above, along 

 with a similar sketch of Atakapa previously prepared, is ready for 

 publication. Dr. Swanton has a much longer paper on the social 

 organization and social customs of the southeastern Indians which 

 requires a little work for completion, but is withheld until the bulle- 

 tin, which it naturally follows, is through the press. 



Mr. J. N. B, Hewitt, ethnologist, took up the critical analysis and 

 constructive rearrangement of the three differing versions of the 

 Eulogy of the Founders of the League of the Iroquois, obtained by 

 him, respectively, from the late Seneca federal chief, John Arthur 

 Gibson; the late Mp. Joshua Buck, Onondaga shaman, of Onon- 

 daga-Tutelo extraction; and chief emeritus Abram Charles, of the 

 Cayuga tribe — all of Ontario, Canada. 



This Eulogy of the Founders is a very long chant and one of 

 marked difficulty to render accurately. In his report for last year 

 it was stated that the long-standing disruption of the several tribes 

 composing the league had led to the breaking up of the parts thereof 

 and loss of traditions concerning the principles and structure of 

 the league; hence there are differing versions of most important 

 rituals. In the tribal organization the federal chiefs were organ- 

 ized into several groups with definite political relationships, which 

 differing relationships implied naturally corresponding differences 

 in duties and obligations for the several persons so politically 

 related. 



But since the disruption of the political integrity of the tribes 

 of the league and of the league itself by the events of the war of 

 the American Revolution these relationships have become more or 

 less confused in the minds of the people, and hence the great diffi- 

 culty in determining from the informants of to-day the correct 

 sequence of the names and the exact political relationships subsist- 

 ing among the several chiefships. This accounts for the difficulties 

 encountered in editing the three variant versions of the eulogy. 



In view of works recently published on the genetic relationship 

 of certain linguistic stocks of California and other North American 

 linguistic stocks, and as a result of a conference of the staff of the 

 bureau early in December on late linguistic work in California 

 Mr. Hewitt critically examined the methods and the evidences for 

 relationship relating to the Yuman, the Serian, the Tequistlatecan, 

 Waicuran, the Shahaptian, the Lutuamian, and the Waiilatpuan, 



