INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



The importance of conducting ethnological research among the 

 North American Indians was recognized by the United States Govern- 

 ment as early as 1795, when Leonard S. Shaw was appointed deputy 

 agent among the Cherokee, and was instructed by the then Secretary 

 of War to study their language and home hfe and to collect materials 

 for an Indian history. The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 

 was planned by President Jefferson, who expressly instructed the 

 members of the expedition to collect ethnological data on the Indians. 

 During much of his life Jefferson manifested a deep interest in the 

 ethnology of the American tribes and contributed many papers on 

 them which are of scientific value even to-day. In 1820 Rev. Jedidiah 

 Morse was commissioned to ascertain for the use of the Government 

 "the actual state of the Indian tribes" of America. Schoolcraft's 

 works on the Indian tribes were aided by the Government; the War 

 Department had made many expeditions and surveys in the West, 

 and had pubHshed papers relating to the western districts; the cliff 

 dwellings, pueblos, and tribes of the Mississippi Valley had been 

 described by the Hayden survey; Maj. J. W. Powell, as chief of the 

 United States Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky 

 Mountain region, had studied and published his results on the tribes 

 of the Rio Colorado region; but as jet no systematic research had 

 commenced. 



In 1877 began the publication of a series of ethnologic reports in 

 quarto form under the title "Contributions to North American 

 Ethnology." After the United States Geographical and Geological 

 Survey of the Rocky Mountain region was merged in the United States 

 Geological Survey, provisions were made by Congress to continue the 

 ethnologic researches and publications, and in 1879 the Bureau of 

 Ethnology was organized and placed under the supervision of the 

 Smithsonian Institution. Prof. Spencer F. Baird, Secretar}" of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, selected Maj. J. W. Powell as the person 

 most suitable to be the director of the new bureau. 



Since its inception in 1879, the bureau, by the publication of its 

 annual reports, bulletins, and contributions, and by answering ques- 

 tions of correspondents relative to Indian tribes, has continually 

 helped to diffuse knowledge, and to make itself known in every 

 civilized country in the world. 



The strictly scientific results accompHshed by the Bureau of Ameri- 

 can Ethnology relate to every department of anthropologic science — 

 somatological, psychological, linguistic, sociologic, religious, technic, 

 and esthetic — and are embodied principally in the annual reports, 



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