OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. XV 
linguistic families instead of one, as had been formerly sup- 
posed, in the country above referred to. A still more impor- 
tant discovery was made by Mr. Henshaw at Monterey, where 
an old woman was found who succeeded in calling to mind 
more than one hundred words and short phrases of the Esselen 
language, formerly spoken near Monterey, but less than forty 
words of which had been previously known. Near the town 
of Cayucas, to the south, an aged and blind Indian was visited 
who was able to add somewhat to the stock of Esselen words 
obtained at Monterey, and to give valuable information con- 
cerning the original home of that tribe. As a result of the 
study of this material Mr. Henshaw determines the Esselen to 
be a distinct linguistic family, a conclusion first drawn by Mr. 
Jurtin from a study of the vocabularies collected by Galiano 
and Lamanon in the eighteenth century. The territory occu- 
pied by the tribe and linguistic family lies coastwise, south of 
Monterey bay, as far as the Santa Lucia mountains. 
WORK OF MR. JAMES MOONEY. 
On July 5 Mr. James Mooney started on a second trip to the 
territory of the Cherokee in North Carolina, returning after an 
absence of about fourmonths. During this time he made con- 
siderable additions to the linguistic material already obtained 
by him, and was able to demonstrate the former existence of 
a fourth, and perhaps even of a fifth, well-marked Cherokee dia- 
lect in addition to the upper, lower, and middle dialects already 
known. The invention of a Cherokee syllabary which was 
adapted to the sounds of the upper dialect has tended to make 
that dialect universal. A number of myths were collected, 
together with a large amount of miscellaneous material relat- 
ing to the Cherokee tribe, and the great tribal game of ball 
play, with its attendant ceremonies of dancing, conjuring, 
scratching the bodies of the players, and going to water, was 
witnessed. A camera was utilized to secure characteristic 
pictures of the players. Special attention was given to the 
subject of Indian medicine, theoretic, ceremonial, and thera- 
peutic. The most noted doctors of the tribe were employed 
as informants, and nearly five hundred specimens of medicinal 
