LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 
SMITHSONIAN Institution, BuREAU or ETHNOLOGY, 
Washington, D. C., November 1, 1889. 
Sir: [ have the honor to transmit to you the copy for “Contributions 
to North American Ethnology, Vol. VII, A Dakota-English Dictionary.” 
This material was furnished to the Bureau in 1882 by the author, the 
Rey. 8. R. Riggs, A. M., who died at Beloit, Wis., in August of the follow- 
ing year. Besides the material now transmitted, Mr. Riggs prepared the 
copy for another volume, to be entitled “Grammar, Texts, and Ethnogra- 
phy of the Dakota,” which material is still in my possession. 
As the English-Dakota dictionary of the edition of 1852 contained 
many inaccuracies, Mr. Riggs wished to furnish, as a companion volume to 
the present one, a revised and enlarged English-Dakota dictionary, but 
owing to his illness and death the preparation of that part of the work 
devolved on the Rev. J. P. Williamson, missionary at the Yankton Agency, 
Dakota. The following quotation is from Mr. Williamson’s letter to me, 
dated May 11, 1883: 
I commenced my English-Dakota dictionary before Dr. Riggs made any arrange- 
ment to republish his work. . . . Ido not know that any agreement has been 
made obligating me to submit it as a part of the Dakota series. Yet [ would not refuse 
the Smithsonian Institution my manuscript if it were ready, and 1 think that it will be 
complete some time next winter. 
During the last illness of Mr. Riggs, and while I was correcting proof for 
him, I received several letters, in which a few pertinent sentences occur, thus: 
I think best to trust the whole matter to you for the present. I send on Mr. 
Cleveland’s Teeton! words. You know better than any one else how I have heretofore 
used them. If,I should be taken away, A. L. Riggs and T. L. Riggs will have this 
matter to attend to. 
1 Tam constrained to differ from Mr. Riggs in the spelling of the English equivalent for “Titonwan.” 
The word “Teton,” with the ‘‘e” pronounced as in “me,” has been used for more than a quarter of a 
century in gazetteers and geographies, and to me it seems preferable to ‘‘Teeton.” Besides, Messrs. 
A. L. and T. L. Riggs have recently furnished another variant, ‘Titon.” Let us retain ‘‘Titonwan” 
as the Dakota word and ‘‘ Teton” as its English equivalent.—J. O. D. 
Ix 
