6 BUREAtT 01^ AMERlCAiq ETHNOLOGY 



studies among the Iroquois groups in New York and Canada with 

 the aim of cleaning up some of the ethnological problems in the 

 northeastern area that remain from the research of previous students. 

 The Kosenwald Fund of Chicago financed a field trip to the Senecas 

 at Coldspring on the Allegany Reservation in southwestern New 

 York during the interim that followed the end of the first semester 

 at the University and preceded removal to Washington. Dr. Fenton 

 wrote up his field notes on the Seneca Midwinter Festival as a sup- 

 plement to notes taken in 1934, as soon as he was esta^blished at the 

 Bureau. In April and May, Dr. Fenton wrote a monograph on 

 Iroquois Suicide from cases collected during 1935, as a member of the 

 United States Indian Field Service, and parallel cases that occur in 

 the earlier ethnological and historical sources on the Iroquois. He 

 submitted the manuscript for publication in June before leaving for 

 the field. Another manuscript, Tonawanda Longhouse Ceremonies: 

 Ninety Years After Lewis Henry Morgan, written in 1936 and 

 recently rewritten, was submitted for publication at the same time. 



SPECIAL RESEARCHES 



Miss Frances Densmore, a collaborator of the Bureau, in continua- 

 tion of her study of Indian music, submitted two manuscripts entitled 

 "Choctaw War and Dance Songs" and "Choctaw and Seminole 

 Songs," with phonograph records and transcriptions of 31 Choctaw 

 and 9 Seminole songs. The Choctaw songs were recorded near 

 Philadelphia, Miss., in January 1933, and the Seminole songs were 

 recorded at Brighton, Fla., in February of the same year. Tran- 

 scriptions and phonograph records of two performances on a Choctaw 

 flute were also submitted. These flutes were played by medicine men 

 during ball games to bring success to one group of players and 

 confuse their opponents. Robert Henry, who recorded the flute 

 playing, is a leading medicine man at the ball games. The 66 Choc- 

 taw songs, now in possession of the Bureau, were listed according 

 to their catalog numbers. Fourteen manuscripts on the music of 

 the Winnebago, previously submitted, were combined in one manu- 

 script and retyped preparatory to publication, the retyped material 

 comprising about 300 pages. The 205 Winnebago songs were ar- 

 ranged in final order, and listed according to serial and catalog num- 

 bers. The galley and page proof, also the miusic proof, of Nootka 

 and Quileute Music were read during the year. 



During the fiscal year ended June 30, 1939, John G. Carter, a 

 collaborator of the Bureau, devoted considerable time to the ethno- 

 graphic and Indian sign-language material contained in the manu- 



