CHARACTERIZATION OF ACCOMPANYING PAPERS 
SUBJECTS TREATED 
The Bureau of American Ethnology is an outgrowth of 
the United States Geographical and Geological Survey of the 
Rocky Mountain Region. Previous to 1879 there were four 
governmental surveys at work in the western territories. 
Primarily they were geographic and geologic, but three of 
them gave attention to the native races in their respective 
districts, and in the Rocky Mountain Survey research con- 
cerning the Indians was regarded as an important line of 
work. In 1879 the organizations were consolidated. The 
geographic and geologic work was entrusted to the present 
United States Geological Survey, while the ethnologie work 
was transferred to a new bureau instituted under the Smith- 
sonian Institution, and this office has since been maintained as 
the Bureau of American Ethnology. The earlier researches 
indicated that all the American aborigines are measurably 
similar in arts, industries, laws, languages, and opinions, or in 
their various demotic features, so that the tribes of any district 
‘an. not be successfully studied without observation among the ~ 
tribes of other districts—i. e., the early observations showed 
that, while the aborigines were organized in distinct tribes 
and other groups, they were not widely distinct in cultural 
development. During the operations of the antecedent sur- 
vey this fundamental fact was recognized, and when a series 
of reports on the aborigines was commenced, they were 
entitled “Contributions to North American Ethnology,” and 
the subjects treated in the series represented various portions 
of the North American continent from the Isthmus of Panama 
on the south to the shores of the Aretie on the north. 
Partly by reason of the information published in these reports, 
the similarity of the American natives in culture grade came 
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