ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT XXXIII 



Algonquian tribes. The work resulted in substantial additions 

 to knowledge of the picture writing and gesture speech among 

 these people. During the greater part of the year Colonel 

 Mallery was occupied in the office first in preparing and after- 

 ward in revising* and correcting the proof sheets of his extended 

 report entitled "Picture writing of the American Indians," 

 which forms the greater part of the tenth annual rep< >rt of the 

 Bureau. This elaborate treatise is a practically exhaustive 

 monograph on the subject to which it relates. The plates 

 and text illustrations, which together comprise nearly fourteen 

 hundred figures, were collected with care and represent with 

 fidelity the aboriginal picture writing of all portions of the 

 country, while the significance and relations of the glyphs are 

 discussed in detail in the text. 



During the later portion of the year, in intervals of the 

 work of proof revising, Colonel Mallery continued the collec- 

 tion and arrangement of material relating' to the sign language 

 of the American aborigines. A preliminary treatise on this 

 subject was published in one of the early reports of the Bureau; 

 but since that time, partly through the stimulus to study of the 

 habits and customs of our native tribes afforded by that publi- 

 cation, a large amount of additional material has been obtained. 

 It is the purpose to collate and discuss this material in a final 

 monograph, which will be, it is believed, even more compre- 

 hensive than that on pictography, and Colonel Mallery has 

 made satisfactory progress in this Avork. 



Dr W. J. Hoffman, who has for some years been associated 

 with the work on pictography and sign language, was occu- 

 pied during the greater part of the year in collateral researches 

 relating to the ceremonies of a secret society (the "Grand 

 Medicine Society") of the Menomini Indians of Wisconsin. 

 Beginning with the study of the pictographs and gestures of 

 these Indians he gradually extended his investigations to other 

 characteristics of the tribe, and for three years in succession 

 attended the initiation of candidates into their most important 

 secret society, and was thus enabled to obtain the archaic 

 linguistic forms used only in the language employed in the 

 esoteric ritual. The data collected were subsecpiently col- 

 14 eth III 



