Lil ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 
orders and charged with special duties on the condition that 
they shall remain unmarried. 
In the details of the ceremonies described, as well as in their 
dominant conception, there is an obvious similarity to some cur- 
rent practices among Christian peoples. 
The Zuni believe that in order to secure success and happi- 
ness each male child, before reaching the age of four years, 
must receive the sacred breath of supernatural beings. ‘This 
is done by dramatic personation in an elaborate ceremony re- 
curring every four years, and the most noticeable point is that 
the vows of the child are taken for him by sponsors, these vows 
to be renewed by the boy after attaining the age of discretion, 
opportunity for which is afforded by an annual ceremony. 
The frequent appearance of the number four throughout 
these ceremonies is now well understood to originate among 
these Indians, as among others, in their personification of the 
winds blowing from the four cardinal points. The less fre- 
quent but still marked recurrence of the number nine, which 
is also specially noticeable in the Navajo myth in the present 
volume, has not hitherto been satisfactorily explained. From 
portions of Mrs. Stevenson’s paper and from her yet unpub- 
lished notes it would seem to have some reference to the nor- 
mal period of human gestation. 
The primitive tribal state seems to have been organized for 
the regulation of the conduct of its members toward one an- 
other; that is, it is a civil organization proper, the purpose of 
which is to secure internal peace and co-operation. But the 
organization of the tribal state and the form of its government 
are always modified to a greater or less degree by two other 
considerations, which are potent agencies in forming the insti- 
tutions of primitive societies. One concerns intertribal rela- 
tions, and leads to the organization of society for the conduct 
of war; the other concerns the relations which exist, or are 
supposed to exist, between the people and invisible beings, and 
leads to the organization of society for religious purposes. On 
the civil organization there are always imposed a military and a 
religious organization, and the magistrate, the warrior, and the 
