XIV LETTEE OF TRANSMITTAL. 



The vocabularies have been gathered, as circumstances permitted, 

 from forty distinct localities, and are divisible into seven linguistic stocks. 

 Their preparation for publication was intrusted to the philologist Albert S. 

 Gatscket The Cachina, a sacred dance of the Zufii, a representation of 

 which appears in the frontispiece, was observed and described by Francis 

 Klett, accompanied by a small party. The entire contribution has resulted 

 from the incidental labors of members of several expeditions, and but 

 points the way to a large and almost untrodden field of research among 

 aboriginal remains. The opportunity for further exploration in the west- 

 ern mountain, plateau and valley region, among the mounds, debris of 

 habitations, caves, sites of present and extinct pueblos, and search for in- 

 scriptions, is great, and the work is most fascinating. The ruins of early 

 habitations line numbers of the little mountain valleys of the Southwest, 

 especially in New Mexico and Arizona. 



Exhaustive search will doubtless yield much to reward the investigator 

 and throw a more certain light upon the origin and condition of the pre- 

 sumably populous Indian tribes that once occupied this now sparsely-settled 

 region, glimpses of which reach us from the writings of the earliest historic 

 period. 



When considering the primitive source whence aboriginal stocks are 

 drawn, Northern Mexico and portions of the southwest of the United States 

 comprise an uncertain ground, and whether migrations to these localities 

 set in from north to south or from south to north still remains uncertain, and 

 how far the sources have been from Asiatic lands to the eastward as against 

 a migration following from the rising to the setting of the sun still remains 

 a subject of speculation. 



Professor Putnam has been assisted in the preparation of his reports 

 by Dr. C. C. Abbott, Dr. S. S. Haldeman, Dr. H. C. Yarrow, H. W. 

 Henshaw, and Lucien Carr, the labor of each of whom merits a grateful 

 recognition. 



A sketch of the Santa Barbara Islands and the contiguous coast is in- 

 troduced to show the sites where investigations were conducted by the sur- 

 vey, and also the locations of numerous shell-heaps and burial places. 



It remains but to make mention of the assistants who, in addition to 



