1618 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
‘Mr. Sayers. Can the gentleman point to a period when the public 
funds have ever been so small as they are to-day, in comparison with 
the expenditures? 
Mr. Brnenam. The gentleman from Texas well knows that there is 
no trouble to-day with the appropriations with reference to the future 
or the next fiscal year. That question has been fully debated on this 
floor. 
Mr. Sayers. A very distinguished member of your party in the 
other branch of Congress does not believe that the danger is imminent 
or threatening. 
Mr. Brneuam. Well, the Senate will keep within the limits. There 
was an intimation given out in that body a few days ago, I know. 
But I submit this, as I have given the matter some considerable 
attention, with a view to placing this question clearly before the 
committee. 
The work of the Bureau of Ethnology is practically confined to the 
United States. When America was discovered the Indians or aborig- 
inal inhabitants of the United States were organized in many hundreds 
of tribes, speaking many hundreds of languages; but these languages 
belong to a little more than sixty radically distinct stocks. The arts, 
the languages, the institutions, the mythologies, and religions of these . 
peoples were various, and prove on investigation to be of intense 
interest to the scholars of America and to the world. These peoples 
are rapidly disappearing as tribes. Their arts are almost wholly 
transformed; their institutions by which tribal society was maintained 
are almost lost; their languages are rapidly disappearing—some are 
lost; their mythologies and religions are vanishing. If any consistent, 
truthful, and thorough account of these peoples is ever obtained it 
must be obtained now; already much is gone and much is obscured, 
and with every year more and more disappears. 
These are the sibylline leaves of American history, in which all the 
people are interested. The discoveries made by the Bureau of Eth- 
nology are rapidly diffused into the literature of the country, and 
its reports become standard works in all the schools, from the lowest 
to the highest. It may be fairly said that universally the people are 
interested in the preservation of this historic material’ The appro- 
priation of $50,000 made for the current year is inadequate to prop- 
erly carry on these investigations, and to cut the work down is greatly 
to cripple it. 
To cut the work down temporarily is to lose the services of trained 
men, which is necessarily a serious loss. 
lam free to say I do not expect this approprition to be added to, 
but I must repeat that my constituents are largely interested in this 
kind of work, and in their behalf I protest against cutting down this 
appropriation to a figure which is lower than at any period since 1885. 
The Committee of the Whole resumed its session, 
