KEPOKT OF THE SECRETAKY. 45 



nation of the sources, location, and quantity of food supplies and of 

 new materials used in the industrial life of the various tribes — mate- 

 rials of wood, stone, bone, shell, etc. In this way it is hoped that a 

 more complete understanding of the density and distribution of the 

 prehistoric population may be reached, and the location and sig- 

 nificance of trade routes established. A clearer idea is also sought 

 of the shifts in population undoubtedly brought about by the intro- 

 duction of corn. Without some study of the kind no proper estimate 

 of the social and religious institutions of the people of prehistoric 

 America is possible. 



His work on the languages of the Indians of the lower Mississippi 

 Valley has been continued, and at the end of the year it was directed 

 particularly to the preparation of a grammatical sketch of the 

 Natchez language from materials collected by him during the last 

 10 years from one of the three surviving speakers of that tongue. 



In April Dr. Swanton visited Oklahoma in order to collect addi- 

 tional information regarding the little understood and now almost 

 forgotten social systems of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. 

 Although small in bulk, the material obtained in the course of the 

 investigation is valuable. It has already been incorporated into a 

 manuscript paper on the social organization and social customs of 

 the Indians of the Muskhogean stock. During the trip he also 

 secured the services of an educated Chickasaw in writing texts in 

 his native tongue, and one of these has already been received. 



Before his return to Washington, Dr. Swanton visited Anadarko, 

 where he learned that the language of the Kichai Indians is on the 

 point of extinction, and began the collection of a vocabulary. He 

 has made arrangements for more extended work upon this language 

 in the fall. 



He has submitted two papers for publication during the year, 

 first a philological paper entitled "A Structural and Lexical Com- 

 parison of the Tunica, Chitimacha, and Atakapa Languages," which 

 is being published as Bulletin 68, in which he believes he has shown 

 the relationship of what had hitherto been classed as three inde- 

 pendent stocks; and, second, an extended historical study of the 

 Creek Indians and their neighbors. 



Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, ethnologist, on his return from field work, 

 July 5, 1918, took up the final reading of the proofs of his report in 

 the Thirty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Eth- 

 nology. These proofs were sent to the Printing Office November 9, 

 1918, and the printed report was ready for distribution May 12, 1919. 



At this time he also took up the work of preparing for the press 

 the texts, with free and interlinear translations, of an Onondaga 

 version of the Myth of the Beginnings, the Genesis Myth of the 



