XL REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY 



because they are commonly fragmentary, partly because it 

 is found that the arrangement of the material is improved and 

 its significance made clearer with each new addition; it is the 

 policy to publish extended and well arranged linguistic collec- 

 tions from time to time, and one such monograph, on the Dakota 

 language, was sent to press during the year as volume ix of 

 the Contributions to North American Ethnology. With the 

 increase in linguistic data new relations are found among 1 dia- 

 lects, and the definition of the linguistic stocks is found to grow 

 more trenchant; at the same time it becomes possible to trace 

 more clearly the history and laws of the development of the 

 dialects and stocks and the comparisons and the principles 

 discovered thereby throw much light on the general subject 

 of linguistic development. Thus the linguistic researches have 

 been found remarkably fruitful. 



During the year linguistic researches were continued by the 

 Director, with the collaboration of Messrs J. Owen Dorsey, 

 Albert S. Gatschet, and J. N. B. Hewitt. 



Mr Dorsey was occupied in part with the preparation of the 

 work on Indian synonymy, in connection with which lie made 

 a thorough study of the Catawba tribes and their habitats. 

 He also resumed work on the Biloxi language, at first using the 

 material collected during the previous year, arranging the 

 Biloxi verbs in fourteen conjugations, making a list of Biloxi 

 onomatopes, and compiling a Biloxi-English vocabulary of 

 about two thousand entries together with a catalog of Biloxi 

 roots. For the purpose of carrying this investigation to com- 

 pletion, he visited Lecompte, Louisiana, during the winter and 

 spent two months with the survivors of this interesting' tribe. 

 In addition, he practically finished the work of editing the 

 manuscript of Riggs' "Dakota Grammar, Texts ami Ethnog- 

 raphy," which constitutes volume ix of the series of Contribu- 

 tions to North American Ethnology. Proofs of this work 

 were revised during the later portion of the year. 



The earlier part of the year was spent by Dr Gatschet in 

 the study of the Wichita language at the Educational Home for 

 Indian Boys in Philadelphia. Special attention was given to 

 the Wichita verb, which, like the verb of all the Caddoan 



