110 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
Smithsonian Institution, Mr. Hewitt has attended all regular 
and special meetings of the board, with a single exception. 
As custodian of manuscripts of the Bureau of American Eth- 
nology, Mr. Hewitt reports that more than 250 items were 
withdrawn and consulted by the various collaborators of the 
bureau and by other students. 
In past years, in studying the social and political institu- 
tions of the Iroquoian peoples, especially of the Five (latterly 
Six) Nations or Tribes, Mr. Hewitt has spent a number of 
field seasons in carefully collecting and recording in native 
texts from the best available leaders, chieftains, chieftain- 
esses, ritualists, and ceremonialists, chiefly in the Mohawk, 
Onondaga, and Cayuga dialects, extensive material and data 
concerning the principles, the laws, decrees, and ordinances 
of the instituting councils, the set rituals, the prescribed 
chants, and the ceremonial addresses, which together defined 
the functioning apparatus of the great commonwealth, com- 
monly called the League or Confederation of the Iroquois. 
Mr. Hewitt has undertaken to subject, so far as possible, this 
text material to a careful literary and historical analysis and 
also to a thorough grammatic and lexical criticism, in order to 
restore, as far as the evidence thus secured will warrant, these 
rituals and chants and set addresses to the earlier forms 
which were probably used when the League of the Iroquois 
was instituted in the closing decades of the sixteenth century. 
This work is necessarily tedious and slow but is of supreme 
necessity. The results thus far are highly gratifying 
In June, 1924, Mr. Hewitt visitea the Six Nations of 
Iroquois dwelling near Brantford, Ontario, Canada; the 
Onondaga dwelling near Syracuse, N. Y.; the Tonawanda 
dwelling near Akron, N. Y.; the Tuscarora dwelling near 
Sanborn, N. Y. His object on this trip was to obtain a 
better knowledge of the music of the ritual chants of the 
Condolence and Installation Council. He also secured a 
quantity of purple wampum which is used in these league 
rituals and which has now become so scarce that its cost is 
well-nigh prohibitive. 
Mr. Hewitt was also able to secure from the very few 
persons who still retain some definite knowledge of the prin- 
