22 



BIBHOGRAPHY OF THE 



Curtin (.f . ) — i 'outiiiucd. 



(Munplctily filled, iios. 10, 11!, 14, 10, 17, IK, lit, .Id, 

 21, anil 'S.i are partly tilled, and nos. 9, 11, and 15 

 are lilank. 



The alphabet adopted by the Bureau of Eth- 

 nology is used. 



Jeremiah Curtin was born in Milwaukee, 

 Wis., about 1835. He had little education in 

 childhood, but at the age of twenty or twenty- 

 oue prepared himself to enter Phillips Exeter 

 A<!ademy, made extraordinary progre.ss, and 

 .soou entered Harvard College, where ho was 

 graduated in 1863. By this time he bad become 

 noted among his classmates and acquaintances 

 for his Wonderful facility as a linguist. On 

 leaving college he had acquired a good knowl- 

 edge of French, Spanish. Portuguese, Italian, 

 Rumanian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, 

 Gothic, German, and Finnish, besides Greek 

 and Latin. He had also made considerable 

 progress in Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit, ajid 

 was beginuing to si)eal{ Russian. When Ad- 

 miral Lissofsky's fleet visited this country, in 

 1861, Curtin became acquainted with tlieotiicers 

 and accompanied the expediticm on its return 

 to Russia. In St. Petersburg he obtained 

 employment as a translator of polyglot 

 telegraphic dispatches, but he was presently 

 appointed by ]\Ir. Seward to the office of secre- 

 tary of the United States legation, and ho 

 held this place till 1868. During this period 

 he became familiar with the Poli.sh, Bohe- 

 mian, Lithuanian, Lettish, and Hungarian 

 languages, and ma«le a beginning in Turlc- 

 ish. From 186S till 1877 ho tr.iveled in east- 

 ern Europe and in Asia, app.irently in tlie 

 service of the Russian government. In 1873, at 

 the celebration at Prague of the 500th anni- 

 versary of tlie birth of John Huss, he delivered 

 the oi-ation, spealiing with great eloqiu-nce in 

 the Bohemian language. During his travels in 

 the Danube coinitry ho learned to speak 

 Slovenian, Croatian, Servian, and Bulgarian. 

 He lived for .some time in the Caucasus, where 

 he l(;arned Mingrelian, Abkasian, and Anuo- 

 niau. At the beginning of the Russo-Turkish 

 war in 1877, lie left the Russian dominions, and, 

 after a year in London, retiu-ned to his native 

 country. Since then he lias Ijeen studying the 

 languages of the American Indians and has 

 made valuable researches under the auspices 

 of Maj. John AV. Powell and the Bureau of 

 Ethnology. He is said to 1)0 acquainted with 

 more than fifty languages. — Appleton's Ci/clop. 

 of Am. Biog. 



Cushiug (Frank Hiunilton). Vocabu- 

 lary orthe Navajo language. 



Manu.script in possession of Mr. A.S. Gat- 

 schet, Washington, D. C. 



Recorded in a folio blanii book, on p. 46 of 

 which are tweiity-foursenteuces, and, on p. 73, 

 twenty-live words and phrases. This is a copy, 

 made by Mr. Gatschet from the original, which 

 is in the ijoaaeasiou of its compiler. 



Cushiug (F. II.) —Continued.. 

 See Gatschet (A. 8.) 



Frank Hamilton dishing was born iii Nortli- 

 east, Erie County, Pa., July 22, 1857. He mani- 

 fested iii early childhood a love for archeolog- 

 ical pursuits, and at the age of eiglit years 

 began to collect fossils and minerals, made a 

 complete Indian costume, and lived in a bark 

 hut in the woods. He learned that wherever 

 Indian encampinents had been long established 

 the soil and vegetal irm had nndergoue a change, 

 which assisted him in his seardi for relics. At 

 the age of fifteen lie had discovered the process 

 of making arrow-heads from flint by pressure 

 with bone. lu 1870 his father moved to Medina, 

 N. T., where the son's researches found new 

 ground. In the town of Shelby were ancient 

 remains of fortifications, rich in relics, and they, 

 with ancient burial grounds and caiui) sites in 

 Madison and Onondaga counties, were carefully 

 searched. In the spring of 1875 he became 

 a student in Cornell University, but later 

 spent most of his time as assistant to Dr. 

 Charles Ran in the preparation of the Indian 

 collections of the N.ational Museum for the Cen- 

 tennial expositicm at Philadelphia, and was 

 curator of the entil-e collection until the close 

 of the exhibition, when ho was appointed 

 curator of the ethnological department of the 

 National Museum. During the summer of 1876 

 he gained his first knowledge of the Pueblo 

 Indians, and in 1879 he joined Maj. J. W. 

 Powell in his expedition to New Mexico. The 

 expedition spent two months among the Zuui 

 Indian.^, and Mr. Cushiug, at his own request, 

 was left there. During the second year of his 

 sojourn he had so far made himself one of the 

 trilje and gained tlie esteem of the chiefs tliat 

 lie was formally adopted and initiated into the 

 sacred esoteric society, the •'Priesthood of the 

 Bow." In 1882 he visited the east with a party 

 of six Zunis, wlio came for the imrpose of 

 taking water from the "Ocean of Sunri.se," as 

 a religious ceremony, and carrj-ing it to their 

 temple in the Pueblos. Four of the Zunis 

 returned, while Mr. Cushing remained with the 

 other two during the summer in Washington, 

 for the purpose of writing, with their aid, a 

 paper on Zuui fetiches. In September of the 

 same year he returned to Zuni ; but in the spring 

 of 1884 failing health obliged his return for two 

 years to the cast. Again he had with him for 

 some time three of the Zunis, to aid him in the 

 preparation of a dictionary and grammar of 

 their language and in translations of myth and 

 beast stories, songs, and rituals. In 1886 Mr. 

 Cushing organized the Hemenway Arch.Tolog- 

 ical Expedition, and as its director discovered 

 and excavated extensive buried cities in Ari- 

 zona and New Mexico ; but in 1888 he was again 

 Iji'ostrated by illness. He is now writing con- 

 tiibutions for the Bureau of Ethnology on the 

 relation of primitive drama to creation loi'e and 

 other Zuiii works. 



