XVIII BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
Algonquian family, and later took up the Siouan, Musk- 
hogean, Timuquanan, and Natchesan stocks. Brief 
articles intended for the handbook on various subjects, 
such as agriculture, mounds, mound-builders, govern- 
ment, and numerous biographical sketches of prominent 
Indians have been prepared by Doctor Thomas. He has 
thus contributed greatly to the interests of the Bureau in 
a practical way, putting in final and concise form much 
of the knowledge accumulated during his thirty years 
of service in his chosen field. 
‘Doctor Thomas has been employed largely during pre- 
ceding years, in direct association with Major Powell, 
in the important work of compiling a list of linguistic 
families, languages, and dialects of the tribes of Mexico 
and Central America, and the manuscript of this work, 
comprising some 200 typewritten pages, was submitted 
by him at the close of the present year. 
At the beginning of the fiscal year Mr J. N. B. Hewitt 
was engaged in the work of making an interlinear trans- 
lation of a version of the Onondaga (Iroquoian) cosmo- 
logic myth, obtained in the field in 1900 from Mr John 
Arthur Gibson, an intelligent and gifted Seneca priest. 
This text is by far the longest and fullest of the five 
versions of this myth recorded by Mr Hewitt during 
several field seasons. Two of these texts are Seneca, two 
are Onondaga, and one is Mohawk. The Mohawk text, 
related by Mr Seth Newhouse, the shorter Onondaga 
text, told by John Buck, and the longer Seneca text, told 
by John Armstrong, were sent to press in the previous 
fiscal year. The longer Onondaga text contains more 
than 44,000 words in the Onondaga dialect, to about one- 
third of which an interlinear translation has been added. 
The first draft of a free translation of it was completed 
in October of the previous fiscal year. This manuscript 
will be ready for the press as soon as the interlinear 
translation is completed and the free translation revised. 
With it will be submitted the shorter Seneca version, 
which is practically ready for the press. 
