XXXVIII BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



Progress was made also in preparing- for the press the trans- 

 lations made by Mr Charles P. Bowditch of certain scattered 

 yet noteworthy contributions to knowledge concerning the 

 calendric and other records of Mexico and Central Amer- 

 ica, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge the generosity of 

 the translator in contributing the material and in furthering the 

 work of its preparation in every practical way. Toward the 

 end of the fiscal year Mr Elbert J. Benton was ten^iporarily 

 eno-ai>:ed to edit the material and arrang-e the illustrations for 

 publication; this work was well advanced at the close of the 

 year. 



Work in Sophiology 



About the end of May Miss Alice C. Fletcher completed her 

 monograph on the Pawnee Indians under the title Hako: A 

 Pawnee Ceremony. In many respects a typical tribe of the 

 Plains, the Pawnee Indians were in some points the most 

 remarkably developed of the prairie tribes. Like other vigor- 

 ous aboriginal groups, they were composite; an important 

 constituent, later known as the Skidi band, came from the 

 wooded hills and broad bottom lands of the Arkansas country, 

 Avhere they or their ancestry had developed a woodland cul- 

 ture and doubtless performed a share in the erection of the 

 imposing mounds of the lower Mississippi region. Other tribal 

 constituents represented prairie provinces; and there are strong 

 suggestions in the rich tribal mythology that at least a cultural 

 constituent was absorbed from the highly religious sedentary 

 peoples of the Southwestern pueblos. The composite tribe 

 lived long, as is attested by their traditions as well as their 

 customs, in the prairie region, which they shared with the 

 buffalo; and in even greater degree than the Siouan tribes 

 dwelHiig farther northward, they adjusted themselves to this 

 natural spoil, so that the buffalo became the source of their 

 food, their raiment, and the material for their habitations, the 

 guide of their migrations, the object of their handicraft and 

 hunting tactics, and finally, one of the foremost among their 

 deified tutelaries. Accordingly, the fiducial ceremonies of the 

 tribe combine intensity of local veneration for a few leading 



