8 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
candidate for a federal chiefship. Mr. Hewitt also com- 
menced the translation of the extended “father-side”’ tradi- 
tion of the founding of the League by the Deganawida and 
his associates, read the available proofs of Seneca Fiction, 
Legends, and Myths for the Thirty-second Annual Report, 
and supplied numerous technical data for use in responses 
to inquiries by correspondents. 
Mr. Francis La Flesche, ethnologist, when not engaged in 
field work, was occupied in assembling his notes on the Osage 
Indians, the greater portion of which consists of phono- 
graphic records taken from men versed in the tribal rituals, 
which evidently were composed for the preservation and 
transmission of the religious concepts of the tribe. Three 
forms are used in their construction, namely, recitation, 
song, and dramatic action. The spoken parts, called “ wigie,” 
are intoned by the masters of ceremony and by male mem- 
bers of the various gentes of the tribe who have memorized 
them. These wigie tell of the genesis of the tribe; they 
recount the stories of the adoption of life symbols and 
explain their significance, and narrate the finding and selec- 
tion of the materials used in making the ceremonial para- 
phernalia. The songs used by the master of ceremonies, 
with the aid of a few chosen assistants, make the emotional 
appeal to the various symbols employed in the ritual. Cere- 
monial acts, processions, and dances accompany some of the 
songs and wigie. 
The theme of these composite rites is the desire of the 
people for a long, peaceful life and a never-ending line of 
descendants, and the wigie, songs, and dramatic acts con- 
stitute a supplication to the unseen power for aid toward the 
realization of this desire. The never-ending life so devoutly 
sought for the tribe seemed to the people to be exemplified 
in the unfailing recurrence of night and day, in the constancy 
of the movements of the heavenly bodies, in the manifesta- - 
tion of a like desire among the living forms upon the earth, 
and this to point to an ever-present unseen animating power 
to which the people must appeal for the granting of their 
prayers. In this appeal for never-ending life the Osage 
