ANTHROPOLOGY AT WASHINGTON. 791 



have been surveyed, photographed, and explored, with a view to 

 ascertain their nature, purposes, and contents, and a considerable 

 body of facts pertaining thereto has been gathered. 



Ruins. — Aboriginal remains of this class are chiefly confined 

 to the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico. Their examination 

 is in charge of Victor Mindeleff, who is now preparing an exten- 

 sively illustrated work upon them. Each visit to these regions 

 results in the discovery of hitherto unknown groups of these in- 

 teresting ruins. A large number have been photographed and 

 surveyed so carefully that models of many of them have been 

 made to a scale, and are now on exhibition in the National Mu- 

 seum. Careful examination of the methods of architecture of the 

 ruins connects them closely with the existing pueblos, among the 

 present inhabitants of which indeed have been found exact tradi- 

 tions of the former occupancy of these ruins by their ancestors, 

 while the causes that led to their abandonment are often known. 



Sign-Language and Pictography. — The collection and study 

 of the material for a monograph on these subjects is in charge of 

 Colonel Garrick Mallery. Nowhere, perhaps — at least in modern 

 times — has the sign-language been so extensively used as in 

 America. The collection of the gestures employed in different 

 parts of the country, and their comparison with those used in 

 other parts of the world, have involved great labor, but are now 

 nearly completed. The study of pictographs is a natural correla- 

 tive to that of gesture-language, the latter being an earlier form 

 of the preceding. Various portions of the United States have 

 been visited, and a large number of pictographs have been photo- 

 graphed or sketched. These occur in the form of petroglyphs or 

 rock-carvings, of paintings on the hides of animals, and etchings 

 on birch-bark. Colonel Mallery's final report upon the above sub- 

 ject may be looked for at no distant day. 



Mythology. — The number of myths current among any one 

 Indian tribe is surprising ; and, as they differ to a greater or less 

 degree even among tribes of the same locality and are quite dis- 

 tinct in different regions, their total number in the country at 

 large is enormous. As ideas of a religious or superstitious char- 

 acter are known to be very enduring, it has been thought by 

 some that myths may prove an important adjunct in the work of 

 classifying tribes. They are also important as constituting the 

 philosophy of savagery and barbarism, and by their study we ar- 

 rive more closely than in any other way at primitive ideas of the 

 nature of things, of the forces of nature, and of primitive methods 

 of reasoning. No opportunity has been lost by the bureau assist- 

 ants to collect Indian myths in their purity, and a vast body of 

 them are now awaiting study. 



Photography. — The director of the bureau has been fully 



