thongb uufortuuately uot always to others wlio niiglit wish to compare them with their 



ilhistratious. 



The ascertainment of the conceptions or origin of the several signs, embodying 

 as they do, many sociologic, mythologie, and other ethnographic ideas, is of special im- 

 portance. When those obtained through collaborators are printed in the Vocabulary 

 before the anthority, they are to be understood to have been gathered irom an Indian 

 as being his own conception. When printed after the anthority and within quotation 

 marks, they are in the words of the collaborator as offered by himself. When printed 

 after the authority and without quotation marks, they are suggested at this Bureau. 

 All should be equally criticised and supplemented, and any error in printing the 

 authority for the conceptions corrected. It has sometimes been impossible to decide 

 whether the correspondent intended to give them as his own or as from an Indian. 

 The importancee of an Indian's conception is so much greater than any other that the 

 fact should be made cleai'. 



The margins will also allow of additions to all contributions, whether from inter- 

 vening independent research or as suggested by any part of the material collected. 

 This work being on the co-operative principle, it is not sujiposed that jealousies or 

 questions of precedence will arise, and each contributor will be credited with the amount 

 of capital advanced for the common stock. It is highly desirable that the signs as 

 described by each should be compared by him with those of others, and notes of coin- 

 cidence or discrepancy made. Perhaps, in some instances, the signs as described by 

 one of the other contributors may be recognized as intended for the same sign for the 

 same idea or object as that of the correspondent, and the former may prove to be the 

 better description. The personal habitude of some individual in any tribe, and still 

 more frequently the usage or "fashion" of different tribes, may, by a peculiar abbre- 

 viation or fanciful flourish, have induced a differentiation in description with no real 

 distinction either in conception or essential formation. All collaborators will there- 

 fore be candid in admitting, should such cases occur, that their own descriptions are 

 mere unessential variants from others printed, otherwise adhere to their own and 

 explain the true distinction. When the descriptions show substantial identity, they 

 will in the final publication be united, with a combined reference to all the authorities 

 giving them, as they are in some cases of those taken at Washington in the present 

 Vocabulary. 



It will probably be also noticed that a sign described will have the same actually 

 substantive formation as some other in the Vocabltlary which is stated to be with a 

 signification so markedly distinguished as to be insusceptible of classification as a 

 synonym. It will then be important for each contributor of the rival signs to refresh 

 his memory as to accuracy of description or significance, or both, and to announce his 

 decision. No error is necessarily involved. It will be very remarkable if precisely 

 the same sign does not prove to be used by different persons or bodies of people with 

 wholly distinct significations, the grajihic forms for objects and ideas being mut'h more 

 likely to be coincident than sound is for similar expressions, yet in all oral languages 

 the same precise sound is used for utterly diverse meanings. Q'he first concei)tion of 

 many objects must be the same. It has been found, indeed, that the homoi)]iony of words 

 and the homomorphy of ideograi)hic pictures is noticeable in opi)osite significations, 

 the conceptions arising from the opposition itself. The differentiation in portraiture or 

 accent is a subsequent and remedial step taken only after the confusion has been 



