760 The Smithsonian Institution 



Thomas J. Bowen, a missionary of the Southern Baptist 

 Board, Hved with these people for six years, and collected 

 much information concerning the physical characters of the 

 country, the manners, customs, and language of the inhabi- 

 tants. With the aid of Professor Turner he revised and 

 rewrote his notes, which, when published, became a memoir 

 of great value to students of the languages of the African 

 race. To show the value of this work to specialists, I need 

 only refer to a commendation of it by the profound German 

 Egyptologist, Lepsius. 



The influence of Gibbs and Shea on the study of the lin- 

 guistics of the aboriginal races of North America was most 

 important. They found in the Smithsonian Institution a 

 channel by which their ideas were impressed on the growing 

 study of ethnology. Morgan's suggestion of an ethnological 

 map, in a circular issued by the Institution, was adopted with 

 zeal and broadened in its scope to embrace all fields of an- 

 thropology. He proposed to enlist the help of several insti- 

 tutions, as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Surveyor- General 

 of the Land Office, the Hudson Bay Company, in the distri- 

 bution of circulars calling for ethnographic information, and 

 proposed the association of several well known scholars in 

 perfecting his plan of an ethnological map of North America. 

 He found in Professor Henry, then Secretary of the Smith- 

 sonian, an appreciative helper, and in Professor Whitney an 

 adviser of great value. John G. Shea, of New York, had 

 devoted much attention to linguistics, and at his own expense 

 began the publication of a series of grammars, or dictionaries, 

 which he styled a " Library of American Linguistics." This 

 praiseworthy undertaking not only enlisted the sympathy of 

 the Smithsonian, but also active aid and association in the 

 work. A number of manuscripts presented to the Institution 

 for publication were transmitted to Shea to be published 



