12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
were consulted, and a short trip to Worcester and Boston, 
Massachusetts, was made for the purpose of examining the 
libraries of those cities, which are the chief depositories in the 
United States of the early publications of the missionaries in 
' Hawaii. The number of titles so far obtained is about 2,000. 
Doctor Thomas assisted also with the official correspondence 
on subjects with which he is particularly familiar, his attain- 
ments as a student of ancient Mexican writings having proved 
of special value in the examination of certain manuscripts in 
the Cakchikel language submitted by the Librarian of the 
American Philosophical Society, of Philadelphia. 
During the latter part of the previous fiscal year, in pur- 
suance of his linguistic studies, Dr. John R. Swanton, eth- 
nologist, was engaged in preparing an English-Natchez and 
Natchez-English analytical dictionary, embodying all the 
published and unpublished material available—that is, about 
two thousand words and phrases; he also copied on cards 
all the words and phrases collected by the late Doctor Gat- 
schet from the Attacapa, Chitimacha, and Tunica Indians. At 
the beginning of the fiscal year Doctor Swanton was engaged 
in compiling a dictionary of the Tunica language similar to 
that made for the Natchez. In the field of general ethnology 
he excerpted and, when necessary, translated, all the avail- 
able material bearing on the tribes of the lower Mississippi 
Valley, and arranged for publication that portion dealing 
with the Natchez. 
On April 3 he left Washington to make investigations 
among the tribal remnants of Louisiana and Oklahoma, and 
visited the members of the Houma, Chitimacha, Attacapa, 
Alibamu, Biloxi, Tunica, and Natchez tribes, and was able 
definitely to establish the relationship of the Houma to the 
Choctaw and to identify the Ouspie—a small people referred 
to by the early French writers—with the Ofogoula. From 
the Tunica and Chitimacha he collected several stories which 
will be of importance in the endeavor to restore the mythology 
of the tribes of this area, now almost a blank. In the Chero- 
kee Nation (Oklahoma), contrary to expectation, Doctor 
Swanton found several persons who still speak the Natchez 
