SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. Ixix 



liold affairs, and terms referring to colors; men more appropiiatc than 

 AvonuMi in instructing liim about their hunts, fishing, travels, their legal 

 customs, wars and raids, house-building, and simikr work. Omit asking 

 them about the deceased, for it makes them angry and sullen. They do not 

 as a rule willfully lead the investigator into error when they see that ht is 

 in earnest. Errors often originate in preconceived notions or theories and 

 inappropriate questions of the investigator, sometimes also in the want of 

 abstract terms in the interpreter's language. To insure correctness in an 

 Indian myth, animal story, or any relation whatever, it should first be 

 taken down in Indian, and of this a verbatim translation secured. 



Ethnographic sketches of both tribes, but chiefly of the Modocs, were 

 published in the newspapers of the Pacific coast at the time of Ben 

 Wright's massacre, but they were not accessible to me; more circumstantial 

 were those M'ritten at the time of the Modoc war (1872-73), and specimens 

 of these may be seen in A. B. Meacham's publications, in the " Overland 

 Monthly " of San Francisco, and in Stephen Powers's " The Modok," in 

 Contributions III, pp. 252-262. 



Ethnographic objects manufactured by and in actual use among both 

 tribes were purchased at different periods by collectors. The National 

 Museum in Washington owns several of them ; but the most complete col- 

 lection is probably the one made in 1882 by the Swiss naturalist, Alphons 

 Forrer, a native of St. Gall, which was partly sold to the Ethnographic 

 Museum of St. Gall, partly (eighty-five articles) to that of Berne, the capi- 

 tal of Switzerland. Forrer lived several months among the Klamaths, 

 and thus was enabled to secure the best specimens. There are two haniisish 

 or " magic arrows," an implement which has probably become ver}^ scarce 

 now. The majority of these objects are manufactured from wood, fur- 

 skin, and basket material. There is no suitable clay found in the Klamath 

 River Highlands, hence these Indians never made any pottery. 



The report of Lieutenants WiUiamson alid Abbot contains a large 

 array of astronomic positions and of meteorologic observations made during 

 the expedition, which will prove useful to later observers. The zoologic, 

 botanic, and geologic reports made by different scientists were considered 

 of high value at the time they were first published. It will be remembered 



