WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 35 



that he made in northeastern Iowa during the years 1877 to 1881. 

 In 1878 he published his first paper on an anthropological subject. 

 It was entitled "On the artificial mounds of northeastern Iowa and 

 the evidence of the employment of a unit of measurement in their 

 erection." In the same year at the meeting of the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advance of Science at St. Louis he presented a paper 

 "On an anatomical peculiarity by which crania of the mound build- 

 ers may be distinguished from those of the modern Indians." 



July 1, 1893, he became connected with the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, Major J. W. Powell being the Director. In 1894 Doctor 

 McGee was made Ethnologist-in-charge, and at once instituted re- 

 searches concerning the relation of primitive arts and institutions to 

 environment. He continued in charge of the Bureau until 1903, a 

 period of ten years and ten months, and during this time he did a 

 great part of the administrative work. During the several trying 

 years of Director Powell's illness, Doctor McGee did practically the 

 whole of the administrative work, and at the time of Powell's death, 

 McGee was Acting Director. It may be said that in preparing the 

 characterizations of the papers that appeared in the reports of the 

 Bureau, he applied the principles of psychology to the current re- 

 searches of the office. He was a past master in apprehending the 

 trend and significance of human activity. 



Besides the administrative work of the Bureau, he made extensive 

 field researches in northwestern Mexico, in Tiburon Island, in Ari- 

 zona, in New Mexico, in California, in Iowa, and elsewhere, col- 

 lecting ethnological and archaeological data. During the years 1894 

 and 1895 he made a study of the Indians of Tiburon Island in the 

 Gulf of California, and the adjacent coast of Sonora; recording a 

 large body of linguistic material of the Seri, Papago and Cocopa In- 

 dians. He made the only scientific expedition to Tiburon Island that 

 has ever been attempted, and prepared a topographical map of the 

 island. Some of the results of these researches have been published; 

 others have not. Based chiefly on the material gathered by the late 

 J. Owen Dorsey, McGee prepared a memoir on the Siouan Indians to 

 serve as an introduction to Dorsey's "Siouan Sociology;" and based 

 on a series of Peruvian trephined skulls collected by Dr. M. A. Muniz 

 of Peru, McGee, in conjunction with Muniz, published a descriptive 

 paper. McGee also published a paper on "Primitive Numbers," the 



