ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT LXXI 
who was engaged in the work before the institution of the 
Bureau 

and essentially the same plan was pursued by Mr 
James Mooney during his earlier researches before he became 
connected with the Bureau. 
Under this method of assembling the data, it frequently 
happened that the records were brief and incomplete and that 
the terms under which the entries were made were variable, 
so that much care and thought were necessarily devoted to the 
ascertainment of synonymy. As the work progressed with the 
Bureau the studies continued, and the Director and collabora- 
tors engaged in the compilation came to speak of the work as 
a “Synonymy” of the Indian tribes. As the material con- 
tinued to accumulate, and particularly as the more extended 
and more accurate information gained by actual researches 
among the Indians was incorporated, it was found that the 
synonymy proper diminished relatively, while the body of 
general information became greatly expanded. Now that the 
records have so increased as to fill many thousands of cards, 
it is found that the work forms a great cyclopedia relat- 
ing to the Indian tribes, which even in manuscript form is of 
large and constantly increasing utility. With the develop- 
ment of a plan for publication, as set forth in the last report, 
the imadequacy of the original name for the work came to be 
appreciated, and during the present year it has been decided 
to begin the issue of the work in a series of bulletins corre- 
sponding with the aboriginal linguistic stocks, under the desig- 
nation ‘Cyclopedia of the American Indians.” 
Throughout the fiscal year Mr F. W. Hodge has had charge 
of the work on the cyclopedia, and during most of the time he 
has been engaged in preparing for publication the records per- 
taining to several southwestern stocks. Early in the year Mr 
J. Owen Dorsey also contributed to the work, and during July, 
August, and September Mr James Mooney was occupied partly 
in extending the portion of the cyclopedia relating to the east- 
ern tribes of the Siouan family. Several bulletins are practi- 
cally ready for the press, and, save for the conditions growing 
out of the modification of the law governing the public print- 
ing, some of these would have been sent to the press before the 
close of the year. 
