ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT LXXXVII 
to be recognized by statesmen; and when the new bureau was 
instituted, it was specifically provided in the organic law that 
the researches continued within it should extend to the North 
American Indians. 
Special conditions, which have been set forth in previous 
reports, led to the concentration of early work in the United 
States and among those tribes which were about to be eath- 
ered on reservations; but while the plan for general work was 
thus temporarily modified, it was never abandoned. As the 
researches progressed, it was found that the aborigines of South 
America, like those of the North American continent, are partly 
in the higher stages of savagery and the lower stages of bar- 
barism—it was found, indeed, that the aborigines of the two 
Americas constitute a single people, and that the demotic char- 
acteristics of either part can not be fully ascertained without 
reference to those of the other part. Accord’... y, attention 
was given to the aboriginal activities of South America, and, 
although field operations were not extended into that continent, 
several memoirs pertaining to South America were published 
in the reports. As the work progressed, the similarity of the 
American natives was still more clearly recognized by states- 
men, and in 1885 the law providing for the maintenance of 
the Bureau was made to provide for “continuing ethnological 
researches among the American Indians.” About the same time 
some increase was made in the appropriation to facilitate exten- 
sion of the work, and thereupon the researches relating to the 
antiquities of Mexico, already begun in a small way, were 
pushed forward with renewed vigor. Recently field work has 
been extended into Mexico, and arrangements have been made 
for obtaining collections and photographs from different parts 
of South America. Some of the results of this extension of 
the field of operations by the Bureau are incorporated in the 
present report. 
In geographic distribution, the subjects of the accompany- 
ing memoirs range from the pueblo region of the United 
States through Mexico to Peru. The first paper deals with 
primitive surgery in the land of the Incas, apparently antedat- 
ing that higher aboriginal culture which astonished all Europe 
