ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT 



of Spanish domination in New Mexico the Taos had to 

 play the double and difficult role, because of their frontier 

 position, of persuading the Spanish that they were really 

 on their side, and the Plains Indians that they were really 

 on theirs. The relations with the Plains Indians existed 

 far back in Taos history and amounted at times to the 

 incorporation of large bodies of these Indians in the blood 

 which went to make up the present-day Taos. And there 

 is still more remote and fundamental connection with one 

 group of Plains Indians, namely the Kiowa. The Taos 

 language, which was the language of one of the ancient 

 groups which contributed to the composition of Taos, has 

 been determined to be a dialect of Kiowa, which seems 

 to indicate that this contingent of the Taos population at 

 least, like the Kiowas themselves, once lived in the north- 

 ern region of the Rocky Mountains, probably in what is 

 now Canada. 



Grasping still another opportunity to check the old and 

 new information on this region, studies on the related 

 Karuk Indians of the central Klamath River region of 

 California were resumed during field work on the coast 

 and were continued throughout the year, resulting in an 

 accumulation of carefully analyzed material, a large part 

 of which is now ready for publication. The work consists 

 of many divisions of information, including the grammar 

 of the language, its sounds, its peculiar musical intona- 

 tions, and the system of long and short consonants and 

 vowels ; the history of the tribe, which remained intact and 

 unspoiled up to 1850; the census, with the peculiar old 

 personal names ; the villages, which were strung out along 

 the river and its tributary creeks; the construction of the 

 living houses and sweat houses, and the description of all 

 the manufactures, and the process of making the objccls, 

 all in Indian; the social life, an organization without 

 chiefs; the great festivals and the various dances; feuds, 

 wars, and peace making ; sucking and herb doctors, and the 

 sources of their power ; medicine formulas and myths, all 

 in the language, for any other record of them would be 



