64 AXNl'AI. IIKPOHT SMlTHSONlAX INSTITUTION, 1922. 



borrowings. He* expects to obtain data on these points regarding the 

 Shawnee and Potawatomi also. 



The beg'innino; of the fiscal year fonnd Mr. J. P. Harrington, 

 ethnologist, engaged in completing his bulletin on the Kiowa lan- 

 guage, in several respects one of the most remarkable of the Amer- 

 ican Indian tongues. Aside from the phonetic system, with its un- 

 usual frequency of long vowels and diphthongs, we may point to 

 the noun, several declensions of which form the singular by adding 

 the same suffixes which other declensions use for forming the plural. 

 These singulars of plural form are doubtless conceived as collective, 

 for a personal pronoun in apposition also has the plural form. Thus 

 pronominal agreement arises many times more complicated than 

 that in the three-gendered languages of Europe, and is further in- 

 volved by subjective, objective, and indirective pronouns largely 

 combining to form a single syllable — a very terse yet involved sys- 

 tem of speech. A number of Kiowa and Tanoan songs were found 

 to have the melody following in exaggerated form the intonation of 

 the spoken language. Thus the song " agoyopovi navi ha, wambo 

 winda " has tlie liigli tones of its words also high pitched in the song. 

 This has led to the important discovery that certain melodies in in- 

 toned languages may take their clue from the. intonation of the 

 words. The Kiowa vocabulary secured is quite complete and forms 

 an interesting contribution to the study of the place names, animal 

 names, and plant names adopted by a tribe when it leaves its old 

 home and moves to a ncAv region. Mr. Harrington proceeded at the 

 close of July to California to continue his studies of the Indians of 

 the Chumashan area of that State. This expedition jjroved fruitful 

 in results beyond all expectation. Special emphasis was laid on the 

 place names, material culture, and language. More than 300 photo- 

 graphs of Indian places and historic landmarks were secured, to- 

 gether with a wealth of highly interesting and important data. The 

 collecting of Indian place names in the Eastern States was neglected 

 until too late, so that we have only a few names in distorted spelling 

 and of uncertain etymology. It is still possible to ol^tain full data 

 in man}' parts of the AVest. and there is scarcely any work which the 

 LJureau can undertake which is more important or urgent, either in 

 po])ular interest or as a help to the future ethnologist, historian, or 

 archeologist. 



Linguistic study is peculiarly important in this area, since it resur- 

 rects past culture and records perishing material for companson Avith 

 remote languages. Thirty new Ventureiio songs were obtained from 

 one singer, all with native words. The technique of the split-stick 

 accompaniment and the dance steps were faithfully studied and the 

 words were exhaustively compared with the corresponding prose 

 forms. 



