26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
explorations have been prosecuted in Texas, Missouri, 
Tennessee, Kentucky, Colorado, New Mexico, and the 
Hawaiian Islands. This line of study is destined to be- 
come the most popular in anthropology, and publications on 
the subject are always eagerly sought by the correspondents 
of the bureau. 
To the development in recent years of the movement 
known as ‘“‘see America first’? we owe in part the creation 
of a bureau of the Department of the Interior called the 
National Park Service. Incidentally the movement has 
stimulated a desire for research in both ethnology and 
archeology. Several monuments and one national park 
have been set aside by presidential proclamation to pre- 
serve Indian relics which they contain. The main attrac- 
tions of most of these reserves are ancient buildings more 
or less dilapidated and buried underground, and to increase 
their educational value it is necessary that they be excavated 
under the supervision of men trained in the scientific methods 
of the archeologist. They should also be repaired by equally 
competent hands. This work is now being shared with other 
institutions, but it is desirable that the Bureau of American 
Ethnology should continue to occupy a very prominent 
place in this work, in which it was the pioneer, as its appro- 
priation was made in part for this service. 
While the majority of these monuments are prehistoric 
cliff dwellings or pueblos situated in our Southwest, there are 
others of equal interest in other parts of the country. For 
instance, among the most instructive of these monuments is 
the Kasaan Monument, an abandoned Haida village situated 
in Alaska. This village has many of the old totem poles, 
several “grave houses,” and other buildings still standing, 
but rapidly going to ruin, liable to be destroyed by fire or by 
vandals. It is very desirable that steps should be taken to 
preserve this deserted town and that ethnological studies be 
made before these relics are lost to science. The bureau is 
also contributing its part, in an unobtrusive manner, in the 
efforts to preserve Cahokia, the largest aboriginal mound in 
North America. 
