XXXIV REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY 



lated and incorporated in a memoir on the Menomini Indians 

 appended to this report. Some attention was given also to 

 linguistic matter, including gesture speech, collected among 

 the Absaroka or Crow Indians in Montana and the Leech Lake 

 band of Ojibwa Indians in Minnesota. 



WORK IN ARCHEOLOGY 



An early result of contact between the aborigines and the 

 white discoverers and pioneers was the beginning of a pi-ocess 

 of acculturation, or interchange of culture, in which the intel- 

 lectually weaker race borrowed the more. Thus the Indians 

 gradually acquired portions of the language of the white men, 

 as well as some of the classific concepts expressed by the terms. 

 Through the influence of missionaries they soon acquired more 

 or less definite fiducial concepts by which their own beliefs were 

 sometimes modified or replaced, though more frequently glossed 

 over without material change; and through contact in peace 

 and war, barter and industries, and in other ways, the Indians 

 gradually learned something of the social organization and law 

 of the white men and came haltingly under legal domination. 

 In these directions the acculturation of the Indian was slow, 

 but in the directions of the arts of welfare and pleasure the 

 change was rapid; metallic cutlery was sought with avidity 

 after the first test of its excellence; the horse was taken, bred, 

 and trained by the plains tribes; firearms were quickly appre- 

 ciated and obtained, and in various other ways the arts of 

 peace and war among the aborigines were transformed within 

 a remarkably short period — indeed, a wave of European cul- 

 ture spread over the continent from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts 

 long before the pioneer settlers pushed their way westward, 

 so that many tribes were already riding horses and some were 

 using metal when first seen by the white men. So rapid and 

 complete was this industrial acculturation that it has always 

 been difficult to obtain trustworthy information concerning the 

 strictly aboriginal arts of the Indians. The earliest records of 

 explorers and other observers have been studiously examined 

 only to find in many cases that acculturation was under way 



