LXXXIV REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY 



recoi'ding their myths and traditions in the t'orni of texts. 

 After his return from the field these texts were transhited liter- 

 ally, but the preparation of explanatory notes and free trans- 

 lations was deferred. Some time was sjient in the elal)oration 

 of a list of the charactei's required for recording the various 

 sounds in the Siouan, Athapascan, and other linguistic families; 

 in this work he had for a time the assistance of a skilled ori- 

 ental linguist, Dr J. J. Nouri, from whom he obtained for com- 

 parative purposes many of the peculiar sounds of the Semitic 

 and other Eastern languages. Some time was spent also in 

 the examination of supposed linguistic affinities between the 

 Maya and Malay languages, and during the year he recorded 

 in final form eight Winnebago texts, dictated by Philip Long- 

 tail. Subsequently literal translations of these texts were 

 made, and the preparation of explanatory notes and free 

 English translations was begun and the lexic elements were 

 extracted. 



Mr J. N. B. Hewitt was occupied during the earlier ])art of 

 the year in researches concerning the social relations recorded 

 in the Iroquois language and the literature relating to the 

 people. In the ccnirse of this work it was shown that the 

 independence of the tribe in local affairs Avas little, if at all, 

 curtailed by the confederation of the "Five Nations," certain 

 clans and gentes being privileged from the beginning of the 

 historical leagues (for there Avere undoubtedly several) to 

 uominate lord-chiefs and vice-chiefs to the league councils. 

 Subsequently Mr HcAvitt made examination of the data for the 

 classification of the Waiilatpuan and Shahaptiau groups of 

 languages. Despite the paucity of the linguistic material, he 

 found that the groujis display peculiarities apparently due 

 rather to divergent grf)wth than to original diversity, this being 

 exceptionally true of the position of the attributing or predi- 

 cating word in the word-sentences or compound stems. In 

 the lexicon the Shahaptian dialects show specific superficial 

 differences from the Waiilatpuan group, but nevertheless a 

 large and important number of stems pertaining to the former, 

 which have the same or cognate significance, accord substan- 

 tially in sound or form with terms in the latter; there are, 



