VI PREFACE 



to }ie his life work, namely, the pictography and sign language 

 of the American Indians. Meanwhile Mr James Mooney was engaged 

 in compiling a similar list of tribes, with their synon}^!}^, classified 

 chiefly on a geographic basis and cov^ering the entire Western Hemi- 

 sphere — a work begun in 1S73 and continued for twelve years before 

 . either he or the members of the Bureau of American Ethnology knew 

 of the labors of each other in this field. 



Soon after the organization of the Bureau in ISTO, the work of record- 

 ing a tribal synonymy was formal 1}^ assigned to Mr Henry W. Henshaw. 

 Up to this time a complete linguistic classification of the tribes north 

 of Mexico, particularly in the West and Northwest, was not possible, 

 since sufficient data had not been gathered for determining^ their lin- 

 guistic afiinities. Mr Henshaw soon perceived that a linguistic classi- 

 fication of the Indian tribes, a work long contemplated by Major 

 Powell, must precede and form the basis for a tribal synonymy, and to 

 him, therefore, as a necessar}' preliminary, was intrusted the supervision 

 of such a linguistic classification. By 1885 the Bureau's researches in 

 this direction had reached a stage that warranted the grouping of prac- 

 tically all the known tribes by linguistic stocks. This classification 

 is published in the Seventh Annual lieport of the Bureau, and on it is 

 based, with few exceptions, the present Handbook. 



Immediately on the completion of the linguistic classification, the 

 entire force of the Bureau, under Mr Henshaw's immediate direction, 

 was assigned to the work that had now grown into a Dictionary and 

 Synonymy of the Indian Tribes North of Mexico. As his special field 

 Mr Henshaw devoted attention to several of the Californian stocks, 

 and to those of the North Pacific coast, north of Oregon, including 

 the Eskimo. To Mr Mooney were given the great and historically 

 important Algonquian and Iroquoian families, and through his wide 

 general knowledge of Indian history and customs he rendered aid in 

 many other directions. A list of Linguistic Families of the Indian 

 Tribes North of Mexico, with Provisional List of the Principal Tribal 

 Names and Synonyms (55 pp., octavo), was at once printed for use by 

 the collaborators of the Bureau m connection with the complete com- 

 pilation, and although the list does not include the Californian tribes, 

 it proved of great service in the earlier stages of the work. The 

 2,500 tribal names and S3'nonyms appearing in this list were taken 

 chiefly from Mr Mooney's manuscript; the linguistic classification was 

 the result of the work that the Bureau had been conducting under 

 Mr Henshaw's supervision. 



Kev. J. Owen Dorsey assumed charge of the work on the Siouan, 

 Caddoan, and Athapascan stocks; Dr W. J. Hoflfman, under the per- 

 sonal direction of Major Powell, devoted his energies to the Shoshonean 

 family, and Mr Jeremiah Curtin, by reason of his familiarity with a 

 number of the Californian tribes, rendered direct aid to Mr Henshaw 



