PREFATORY NOTE 



The materials presented in the following volume are based on 

 collections made by Dr. Leo J. Frachtenberg and Prof. Livingston 

 Farrand, now president of the University of Colorado. 



The inception of the work dates back to an enterprise in which the 

 late Mr. Henry Villard took a lively interest. From 1898 an attempt 

 was made to study in detail the vanishing tribes of the Pacific coast. 

 While the late Mr. Collis P. Huntington and afterwards Mr. Archer M. 

 Huntington contributed funds for this work in California, which sub- 

 sequently was continued by the University of California in the able 

 hands of Prof. Alfred L. Kroeber and Dr. Pliny Earle Goddard, Mr. 

 Villard undertook to provide funds for work in Oregon. The field 

 work at first was midertaken by Professor Farrand, who worked among 

 the Alsea and later among the Sahaptin tribes, and by Mr. Harry 

 Hull St. Clair, 2d, who collected material among the Coos. After Mr. 

 Villard's death the work was discontinued, but Mrs. Villard very 

 generously placed at our disposal funds for completing the field work 

 among the Alsea. The completion of this work was directed jointly 

 by the Bureau of American Ethnology and Columbia University 

 in the City of New York, and its execution was intrusted to Dr. Leo J^ 

 Frachtenberg, who collected new material, revised the collections 

 made by Professor Farrand, and digested the accumulated data. 



Our thanks are due to Mr. and Mrs. Villard, whose generosity has 

 enabled us to record the language and traditions of a people that are 

 on the verge of extinction. 



Franz Boas. 



New York, September, 1916. 



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