ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT XXIX 



found that, in general, language alone served as a satisfactory 

 basis for a practical classification of the Indians for use in 

 grouping them on reservations, since clans of remote habitats 

 speaking the same tongue soon find themselves dominated by 

 a common or at least related law and religion constituting a 

 self-evident bond of sympathy and ultimate union. Accord- 

 ingly it was proposed to classify the American Indians for 

 practical purposes on a linguistic basis, and on this basis they 

 were grouped and from time to time assembled on reserva- 

 tions. 



So the initial work of the Bureau was the development of 

 a practical system of classifying primitive peoples, and the 

 conditions were such as to permit an actual test of the classi- 

 fication and to compel the rejection of unnatural, illogical, or 

 incongruous systems. Thus it was found absolutely necessary 

 to abandon current systems of ethnic classification, and to 

 devise and adopt a system based on purely human charac- 

 teristics springing from intellectual activities. 



Manifold results flowed from the adoption of the linguistic 

 classification. In the first place, the enforced recognition of the 

 importance of human characters tended to raise ethnic research 

 to a higher plane, a plane on which intellectual attributes 

 prevail, and on which motives and sentiments become nor- 

 mal and legitimate subjects of research — i. e., the tendency 

 was to demark mankind from lower animals and define an 

 essentially distinct science, the Science of Man. Again, the 

 linguistic classification stimulated the study of language, and 

 both directly and indirectly conduced to a better acquaintance 

 with the tribesmen and thus to pacific relations between the 

 red men and white. Moreover, the observed association of 

 social organization and law with language promoted inquiry 

 concerning the institutions of the Indians, and, as inquiry 

 showed that most of the tribes are bound by highly elaborate 

 systems of organization, research went on apace, both within 

 and without the Bureau. Furthermore, the observed associa- 

 tion between lano-uaye and law on the one hand and belief on 

 the other gave a new significance to the curious ceremonials 

 of the Indians and gradually led' to the discovery of highly 



