ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT. . 9 
The office of hereditary chief has been abandoned and since 
1881 has been elective. 
Upon the completion of The Rite of the Chiefs, the work 
of arranging for publication the ritual entitled Ni/-ki 
Wa-tho", Song of the Sayings of the Ancient Men, was taken 
up. This ritual tells of the origin of the people of the 
Ho"’-ga subdivision of the Ho"’-ga great tribal dual division. 
The story of their descent from the sky to the earth and of 
their subsequent movements is put into wi’-gi-e form and 
recited at the initiatory ceremonies. Each gens has its own 
version of the story and has in it a proprietary right, a right 
that in olden times was not infringed upon by the others. 
Mr. La Flesche was fortunate in becoming acquainted with 
an Osage by the name of Xu-tha’-wa-to*-i" and of winning 
his friendship. This man belonged to the Tsi’-zhu Wa-no" 
gens of the Tsi’-zhu great tribal dual division. Without the 
slightest hesitation he recited for Mr. La Flesche the Ni’-ki 
Wi’-gi-e of his own gens, and he also gave with it some of 
the shorter wi’-gi-es that accompany certain ceremonial acts 
of the ritual. 
These origin rituals when completed will cover more than 
220 typewritten pages, to which two short wi’-gi-es of a like 
character, nearly ready, will be added. These pages added 
to those of The Rite of the Chiefs will bring the number of 
typewritten pages, without the illustrations, close to 430. 
The Fasting Ritual, which was completed some time ago, 
and covers 492 pages, exclusive of the illustrations, and the 
two rituals above referred to, will make the first volume of 
a projected work on the Osage tribe. 
On July 1 Dr. Truman Michelson, ethnologist, visited 
Tama, Iowa, and completed his field work on the gram- 
matical analysis of the text of ‘““The Owl Sacred Pack of the 
Fox Indians.’’ On his return to Washington he worked out 
a practically exhaustive list of verbal stems and submitted 
a manuscript for publication. He also observed mortuary 
customs under peculiarly fortunate conditions and obtained 
a number of texts written in the current syllabary on mor- 
tuary customs, eschatology, ete. He restored phonetically 
3599°—257 2 
