ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT 85 
to the book of Genesis of the Bible obtained from the Mission 
Indians of California. 
Mr. Cipriano Alvarado, a Quiché Indian of the highlands 
of Guatemala, was brought to this country for the purpose 
of linguistic study by Mr. William Gates, who kindly allowed 
Mr. Harrington to obtain from him a large amount of text 
material in this language. The Quiché is the direct descend- 
ant of the tongue of the ancient temple builders of the 
Central American jungles. In working with Mr. Alvarado 
with the kymograph, Mr. Harrington discovered that the 
Quiché and other Mayan dialects possess tones exactly like 
those of Chinese, and that these tones, as in the latter lan- 
guage, are often the sole means of distinguishing words that 
are otherwise phonetically identical. Work was also done 
with Mr. Alvarado and Mr. Gates on the pallophotophone, 
a machine recently invented by Professor Hoxie, of the 
General Electric Co. The pallophotophone proved of the 
greatest value for the study of tones in Indian and other 
languages, and its reproduction of the voice is true for all 
the sounds, even including s, h, and those of lke timbre 
which are imperfectly rendered on the phonograph. 
On May 3 Mr. Harrington proceeded to Santa Barbara, 
Calif., for the purpose of continuing his researches on the 
Indians of that State. He succeeded in finding good inform- 
ants for Indian songs as well as stories and place names and 
obtained a large quantity of manuscript material. This 
material consists of myths, place names, historical notes, 
accounts of early life and customs, genealogies, and Indian 
songs. 
The Bureau of American Ethnology is dog cooperative 
work with the Museum of the American Indian, Heye 
Foundation, of New York City, which obtained permission 
from the Hotel Ambassador Corporation to excavate the 
famous Burton Mound on the beach at Santa Barbara. 
This mound has always been known as the site of the princi- 
pal rancheria of the Santa Barbara Indians, but former 
owners of the property refused permission to excavate it, 
and when the Potter Hotel was erected in 1901 hope of 
archeological investigation seemed forever lost. The site 
