REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 61 



Dr. W. J. Hoffman continued the arrangement and classification of 

 material embracing the subjects of pictography and gesture language 

 of the North American Indians, but more particularly of the date and 

 sketches secured by him during previous field seasons. 



While Mr. J. Owen Dorsey did no field work during the year, he de- 

 voted much of the time to original investigations. Samuel Fremont, 

 an Omaha Indian, came to Washington in October, 1888, and until 

 February, 1889, assisted Mr. Dorsey in the revision of the entries for 

 the (^egiha-English Dictionary. A similar work was undertaken by Lit- 

 tle Standing Buffalo, a Ponca Iudian from the Indian Territory, in April 

 and May, 1889. The summary of Mr. Dorsey's office work is as follows : 

 He completed the entries for the <f egiha-English Dictionary, and a list 

 of Ponca, Omaha, and Winnebago personal names was made. He 

 translated from the Teton dialect of the Dakota all the material of the 

 Bushotter collection in the Bureau of Ethnology, and prepared there- 

 from a paper on Teton folk lore. He also prepared a brief paper on 

 the camping circles of Siouan tribes, and in addition furnished an ar- 

 ticle on the modes of predication in the Athapascan dialects of Oregon 

 and in several dialects of the Siouan family. He also edited the man- 

 uscript of the Dakota grammar, texts, and ethnography, written by 

 the late Bev. Dr. S. B. Biggs. This will soon be published as Part 1, 

 Volume VII, Contributions to North American Ethnology. In May, 

 1889, he began an extensive paper on Iudian personal names, based on 

 material obtained by himself in the field, to contain names of the fol. 

 lowing tribes : Omaha and Ponka, Kansa, Osage, Kwapa, Iowa, Oto 

 and Missouri, and Winnebago. 



Mr. Albert S. Gatschet's office work was almost entirely restricted to 

 the composition and completion of his Grammar of the Klamath Lan- 

 guage of Oregon, with the necessary appendices. The grammar and 

 dictionary are now printed and will soon be published. The ethnog- 

 raphy will follow. 



During the year Mr. Jeremiah Curtin arranged and copied myths of 

 various Indian families, and also transcribed Wasco, Sahaptin, and 

 Yana vocabularies previously collected. 



On his return from the Cheroki reservation in 1888, Mr. James 

 Mooney began at once to translate a number of the prayers and sacred 

 songs obtained from the shamans during his visit. The result of this 

 work will appear in a paper in the seventh annual report of the bureau 

 entitled "Sacred formulas of the Cheroki." Considerable time was 

 devoted also to the elaboration of the botanic and linguistic notes ob- 

 tained in the field. In the spring of 1889 he began the collection of 

 material for a monograph on the aborigines of the Middle Atlantic 

 slope, with special reference to the Powhatan tribes of Virginia. As a 

 preliminary, about one thousand circulars, requesting information in 

 regard to local names, antiquities, and surviving Indians, were distrib- 

 uted throughout Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and northeastern Oar- 



