REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 47 



that the ideas of the savage and barbarous peoples are expressed in the nomen- 

 clature much more fully and significantly than are those of cultured peoples, so that 

 the records of personal and geographic names are often of great utility as indices 

 to the intellectual characteristics, customs, and institutions of the Indian tribes; 

 information of this class abounds in America. Thus there is a large store of infor- 

 mation in the publications of the early and later travelers in America, but the liter- 

 ature is so vast and so widely scattered that the information is nearly inaccessi- 

 ble to students. 



Even before the institution of the Bureau of American Ethnology, ethnologists 

 generally recognized the need of systematic information concerning the aboriginal 

 tribes, and several students had made essays toward the collection of such informa- 

 tion from the voluminous literature, either for personal use or for publication. When 

 the Bureau was organized, one of the lines of work projected was the compilation of 

 such information from the published literature and from manuscripts, the compila- 

 tion being guided and corrected, and the material enriched by concurrent research 

 among the Indians themselves. The bibliographic work undertaken in the Bureau 

 and so long successfully carried forward by Mr. Pilling, was designed largely as a 

 means to this end. In addition, all of the collaborators of the Bureau were instructed, 

 and many correspondents were urged, to obtain and record general facts pertaining 

 to the tribes with which they came in contact; and most of the collaborators of the 

 Bureau have been employed from time to time in collating the material gathered in 

 this way. Anterior to the institution of the Bureau most of the students engaged 

 in systemizing the ethnologic data, arranged the material alphabetically on cards or 

 in books, generally under tribal and other proper names; this was the method pur- 

 sued by Dr. 0. T. Mason, of the Smithsonian Institution, who was engaged in the 

 work before the institution of the Bureau ; and essentially the same plan was pursued 

 by Mr. James Mooney during his earlier researches before he became connected with 

 the Bureau. 



Under this method of assembling the data, it frequently happened that the rec- 

 ords were brief and incomplete and that the terms under which the entries were 

 made were variable, so that much care and thought were necessarily devoted to the 

 ascertainment of synonymy. As the work progressed with the Bureau the studies 

 continued, and the director and collaborators engaged in the compilation came to 

 speak of the work as a "Synonymy'' of the Indian tribes. As the material con- 

 tinued to accumulate, and particularly as the more extended and more accurate 

 information gained by actual researches among the Indians was incorporated, it was 

 found that the synonymy proper diminished relatively, while the body of general 

 information became greatly expanded. Now that the records have so increased as 

 to fill several hundred thousand cards, it is found that the work forms a great cyclo- 

 pedia relating to the Indian tribes, which even in manuscript form is of large and 

 constantly increasing utility. With the development of a plan for publication, as 

 set forth in the last report, the inadequacy of the original name for the work came 

 to be appreciated, and during the present year it has been decided to begin the issue 

 of the work in a series of bulletins corresponding with the aboriginal linguistic 

 stocks, under the designation "Cyclopedia of the American Indians." 



Throughout the fiscal year Mr. F. W. Hodge has had charge of the work on the 

 cyclopedia, and during most of the time he has been engaged in preparing the records 

 pertaining to several southwestern stocks for publication. Early in the year Mr. J. 

 Owen Dorsey also contributed to the work, and during July, August, and Septem- 

 ber, Mr. James Mooney was occupied partly in extending the portion of the cyclo- 

 pedia relating to the Siouan ^.amily. Several bulletins are practically ready for the 

 press, and, save for conditions growing out of the modification of the law governing 

 the public printing, some of these would have been sent to the press before the close 

 of the year. 



In 1883 Mr. C. C. Royce was employed in the Bureau to collect and tabulate the 

 various treaties with the Indian tribes relating to the cession and transfer of lands. 



