SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT 6 



Dr. William C. Sturtevant, ethnologist, spent the week of July 29- 

 August 4, 1967, in South Carolina working with the last living speaker 

 of any of the Siouan languages of the east — a Catawba man 85 years 

 old. The informant proved somewhat less than satisfactory, owing 

 to his age and rather poor recall of a language he has not spoken for 

 some years. However, a vocabulary file of a few hundred entries was 

 built up, and several short texts and songs were collected. In addition 

 to transcription in a phonetic orthography, all materials were re- 

 corded with a tape recorder, to form a permanent record of a different 

 nature than the Catawba linguistic materials collected by others be- 

 fore the advent of convenient mechanical recording devices with good 

 fidelity. The language has not yet been adequately analyzed, nor 

 has its precise relationship to other Siouan languages been established ; 

 the tape recording will be invaluable when these tasks are eventually 

 undertaken. 



Dr. Sturtevant spent 7 weeks continuing his field research among 

 the New York State Seneca, during four separate trips. In September 

 he devoted 10 days to close observation of the work of a skilled 

 Seneca mask carver on the Allegany Reservation, making detailed 

 notes on his construction techniques and taking numerous photographs 

 to document the various steps in the process. For a few days of this 

 period Dr. Sturtevant received valuable assistance from Dr. William 

 H. Davenport of Yale University, a specialist on primitive art. It 

 became evident during this fieldwork that observation of construction 

 is an essential preliminary to the structural analysis of the forms of 

 these Seneca masks and will be of considerable assistance in the ethno- 

 esthetic study initiated during the previous fiscal year. During Jan- 

 uary and February, Dr. Sturtevant spent about 2 weeks on the 

 Cattaraugus Reservation attending the annual midwinter ceremony 

 of this Seneca group and discussing it with participants. The data 

 obtained form part of a continuing study of the religion of this com- 

 munity, which has previously received little attention from ethnolo- 

 gists, in contrast to most other Iroquois non-Christian communities. 



In April 1958, Dr. Sturtevant visited Gainesville, Fla., for consul- 

 tations on Florida anthropology with Dr. John M. Goggin. From 

 there he traveled to Oklahoma via Montgomery, Ala. (where he ex- 

 amined the collections of the Alabama Department of Archives and 

 History), and the region around Philadelphia, Miss, (where he spent 

 three days surveying the possibilities for research among the Missis- 

 sippi Choctaw). In Oklahoma he examined the photograph and 

 specimen collections of the Oklahoma Historical Society, attended 

 the joint annual meetings of the Society for American Archeology 

 and the Central States Anthropological Society, and had brief con- 

 tacts with members of several Oklahoma tribes. Dr. Sturtevant also 



