912 



SCIENCE 



[K. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 



dishonest in selecting for its point of depar- 

 ture an incidental statement in a work not 

 specially devoted to the Omaha, instead of 

 taking the fuller accounts in the " Omaha 

 Sociology." ' In this paper there is given the 

 translation of the words employed in address- 

 ing a dying Inke-sabe, and these words cer- 

 tainly imply a belief that the person addressed 

 is going to rejoin his ancestors, the buffalo. 

 On the same page Dorsey also cites a legend 

 in which the liike-sabe are said to have been 

 at one time buffalo. If Dorsey's critics wish 

 to say that he has mistranslated his inform- 

 ant's words, they should so state. If they wish 

 to say that he has sucked his information out 

 of his thumbs, they should so state. If they 

 wish to say that his informants did not repre- 

 sent the consensus of Omaha opinion, they 

 should so state. They should state further 

 that Dorsey himself does not hesitate to tell 

 us that the legend was unknown to two of his 

 best informants. Dorsey was ahead of his 

 generation and of some of the succeeding gen- 

 eration in not suppressing data that might in- 

 terfere with the smoothness of his tale. 



" The Omaha Tribe " must, however, b'e con- 

 sidered primarily as a field report. Judged 

 from this point of view, it will be found want- 

 ing in several respects. In the first place, the 

 tremendous wealth of concrete material is 

 classified according to canons of aboriginal 

 rather than of scientific logic. Thus, the 

 Medicine Pipe ceremony is described under 

 the heading of Music, apparently because its 

 native name means " to sing for some one." 

 Data on agriculture and hunting are assembled 

 with those on the ritual of the maize and the 

 ceremonial hunt. " Social Life " is made to 

 include not only such legitimate topics as 

 kinship terms, courtship and marriage, and 

 etiquette, but also cooking and foods, dress- 

 ing and tanning skins, quill work, weaving, 

 personal adornment and clothing. 



Secondly, there are large fields of ethnolog- 

 ical interest that the authors either do not 

 touch at all or treat in a very unsatisfactory 

 manner. Foremost among these is mythology 

 and folklore. Inconsistent as such a supposi- 



' L. c, pp. 229, 233. 



tion is with the authors' general attitude, we 

 are tempted to assume that their failure to 

 enter into these subjects is an expression of 

 their admiration for the thoroughness with 

 which J. O. Dorsey has accomplished the task 

 that was to be done in this field.' Unfortu- 

 nately the reader does not profit by this ex- 

 hibition of tacit generosity. For all he could 

 learn from Miss Fletcher and Mr. La Flesche, 

 there has never been published any systematic 

 collection of Omaha tales. Moreover, the fact 

 that a splendid collection exists does not ab- 

 solve monographers of a tribe from the duty 

 of briefly characterizing the native mythology 

 with reference to both substance and form and 

 of showing its relations to other mythologies. 

 The few paragraphs devoted to this matter in 

 the volume before us (pp. 600, 601, 608) can 

 not be regarded as even a serious attempt in 

 this direction. 



Another very remarkable deficiency appears 

 in the discussion of material culture and art. 

 The fact that these subjects are treated with 

 disproportionate brevity is a venial fault, for 

 there are few monographs in which all phases 

 of culture are treated with uniform thor- 

 ouglmess, and some allowances must be made 

 for individual interests. But every profes- 

 sional ethnologist may reasonably be expected 

 to pay some attention to points that have come 

 to be of theoretical interest to his fellow-stu- 

 dents. Many questions of this sort relating 

 to the material culture of the Plains Indians 

 have been indicated by Dr. Wissler,' but very 

 few of them are elucidated by the authors. 

 We do not learn anything of the form of the 

 travois mentioned on page 275; the descrip- 

 tion of the cradle-board (p. 32Y) is too vague 

 for comparative purposes; no opinion is ex- 

 pressed as to the antiquity of the men's shirt 

 among the Omaha (p. 355). As the distribu- 

 tion of painted and embroidered patterns haa 

 been diligently studied among the Plains In- 

 dians for at least ten years, and as Kroeber 



" ' ' The Cegiha Language, ' ' Contributions to 

 Xortli American Ethnology, Vol. VI. 



" ' ' Material Culture of the Blackf oot Indians, ' ' 

 Anthrop. Papers Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. V., 

 Pt. 1. 



