REPOET OF THE SECEETAEY. 45 



spondence. As a result of this work the number of titles in the catalogue 

 (which is now about finished) reaches some 6,200 — more than eight times the 

 number in the largest catalogue in the same field hitherto published. Hon. 

 George R. Carter, former governor of the Territory of Hawaii, has given much 

 encouragement to this work; in fact, with Professor Ballou, he formed the 

 leading spirit in its inception, though the beginning of the work for the bureau 

 was undertaken quite independently. Doctor Thomas has appended a subject 

 or cross-reference catalogue of about 3,200 titles, which is so nearly complete 

 that it is hoped the entire work will be submitted for publication before the 

 end of August, 1909. In addition to this work Doctor Thomas assisted to some 

 extent in the preparation of Part 2 of the Handbook of American Indians, and 

 attended to such official correspondence as was referred to him. 



Mr. James Mooney, ethnologist, during the entire year was occupied chiefly 

 in an investigation of the subject of the Indian population north of Mexico at 

 the period of first disturbance and occupancy of the country by the whites. 

 A preliminary study was condensed for introduction into Part 2 of the Hand- 

 book of the Indians. The final work is expected to appear as a bulletin of 

 the bureau. The investigation is being carried out in detail for each well- 

 defined geographic section, and for each tribe or tribal group separately, from 

 the earliest period to the present, with careful sifting of authorities and con- 

 sideration of Indian habits of living. No such detailed and extended study 

 of the subject has ever before been attempted, and the result must prove of 

 interest and importance. The usual share of attention was given also through- 

 out the year to the preparation and proof reading of various articles for the 

 Handbook of the Indians and to routine correspondence. On request of the 

 Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Mr. Mooney, together with Doctor 

 Swanton, attended the meeting of that body at St. Louis, June 17-19, as repre- 

 sentatives of the bureau, and presented papers on the ethnology of the central 

 region. 



During the year Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnologist, was engaged as follows : 

 The months of October, November, and December, 1908, were spent in Okla- 

 homa, Texas, and Louisiana. In Oklahoma the Natchez linguistic material 

 collected by Gallatin, Pike, Brinton, and Gatschet was gone over with one of 

 the four surviving speakers of the Natchez language, and about fifty pages of 

 text were recorded. In Texas the Alibamu Indians were visited in an en- 

 deavor, partially successful, to determine the relationship of the Pascagoula 

 tribe, formerly resident near them. In Louisiana the linguistic material col- 

 lected by Gatschet and Duralde was gone over with some of the surviving 

 Attacapa, Chitimacha, and Tunica. On the way to Washington Doctor Swan- 

 ton visited Columbia, S. C, to examine the early archives of that State. The 

 most important result of the expedition, however, was the discovery at Marks- 

 ville, La., of a woman who remembers a large amount of the Ofo language 

 formerly spoken on Yazoo River. As large a vocabulary of this language as 

 possible was recorded. 



In the office Doctor Swanton completed the proof reading of his work " Tlin- 

 git myths and texts," which was ready for the press at the close of the year. 

 He completed also a bulletin on " The Indian tribes of the lower Mississippi 

 Valley and northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico," and read proofs of the same. 

 Additional work was accomplished as follows: The editing of the late J. O. 

 Dorsey's material on the Biloxi language (in press), and the proof reading of 

 the same; the copying of texts collected during the field expedition above 

 referred to, and incorporating the linguistic material then obtained with the 

 material previously collected in the Natchez, Attacapa, Chitimacha, and Tunica 

 languages, and the copying on cards of the Ofo vocabulary; the reading of 

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