SCIENCE. 
137 
species, Pronuba maculata, Prodoxus marginatus, P. cinerius, 
P. eenescens and P. intermedins), are described, and the paper 
concludes with remarks which point to these diffent Yucca 
Moths as admirable illustrations of the derivative origin of 
species. 
THE WYANDOTTES. 
By Major J. W. Powell. 
The Indians now known as the Wyandottes, were first 
found on the lower St. Lawrence. Subsequently they in- 
habited a narrow district of country on the shores of Lake 
Huron, and were known as the Hurons ; later they lived in 
Michigan about Detroit ; then in Ohio in what is known as 
Wyandotte county ; from Ohio they were moved to Kansas 
and placed on a reservation ; and from Kansas to the Indian 
Territory. In their wanderings from point to point, as 
they were driven from advancing civilization, a few of their 
number were left behind, so that the Wyandottes are scat- 
tered from the lower St. Lawrence to the Indian Territory 
along the route of their migration. These Indians call 
themselves Wundat; the etymology of the word is not 
known. In their social organization four units are recog- 
nized — the family, the gens, the phratry and the tribe. The 
family, as the term is here used, is nearly synonymous with 
household. It is composed of the persons who occupy one 
lodge, or, in their permanent wigwams, one section of a 
communal dwelling. The head of the family is a woman. 
The gens is an organized body of consanguineal kindred in 
the female line. “The woman carries the gens,” is the for- 
mulated statement by which a Wyandotte expresses the idea 
that descent is in the female line. Each gens has the name 
of some animal — the form of such animal being its tutelar 
god. Up to the time when the tribe left Ohio, eleven gentes 
were recognized as follows : Deer, Bear, Highland Turtle 
(striped), Highland Turtle (black). Mud Turtle, Smooth large 
Turtle, Hawk, Beaver, Wolf, Sea Snake, Porcupine. in 
speaking of an individual he is said to be a Wolf, a Bear, 
or Deer, as the case may be, meaning thereby that he 
belongs to that gens ; but in speaking of the body of people 
comprising a gens they are said to be relatives of the Wolf, 
the Bear, or the Deer, as the case may be. 
There are four phratries in the tribe — the three gentes, 
Bear, Deer and Striped Turtle constituting the first ; the 
Highland Turtle, Black Turtle and Smooth Large Turtle 
the second ; the Hawk, Beaver and Wolf the third ; and 
the Sea-snake and Porcupine the fourth. The eleven gentes 
as four phratries constitute the tribe. 
The civil government inheres in a system of councils and 
chiefs. In each gens there is a council composed of four 
women. These four women councilors select a chief of 
the gens from its male members ; that is, from their brothers 
and sons. This gentile chief is the head of the gentile 
council. The council of the tribe is composed of the ag- 
gregated gentile councils. The tribal council, therefore, is 
composed one-fifth of men and four-fifths of women. 
The government of the Wyandottes, with the social organ- 
ization upon which it is based, affords a typical example of 
tribal government throughout North America. Within that 
area there are several hundred distinct governments. In so 
great a number there is great variety, and in this variety we 
find different degrees of organization, the degree of organi- 
zation being determined by the differentiation of the func- 
tions of government and the correlative specialization of 
organic elements. 
A SIMPLE DEVICE FOR PROJECTING THE VI- 
BRATIONS OF LIQUID FILMS WITHOUT A 
LENS. 
By H. S. CARHART, A. M., Professor of Physics and Chemistry, 
Northwestern University, Evanston, 111. 
This instrument is designed to project upon the screen 
the vibrations of a film of soapy water produced by the voice 
or by an organ pipe. It might be called the self-projecting 
phoneidoscope. It differs from Sedley Taylor’s phoneido- 
scope in three particulars : first, the vibrations are commu- 
nicated to the film through the agency of a mouthpiece and 
a ferrotype diaphragm ; second, the vibrations are projected 
on a screen ; third, the film is employed to project itself 
without a lens. 
It consists of a wooden tube, having a telephone mouth- 
piece at one end and expanding into a large funnel at the 
other, the funnel being of metal. In the side of the tube a 
stop-cock is inserted. A film is obtained in the open end 
of the funnel and a little air is then blown through the stop- 
cock. This distends the film slightly, causing it to act as a 
convex mirror. It is then placed in a beam of sunlight and 
reflects it at the proper angle. Upon singing a. note at the 
mouthpiece a sharply defined system of waves is projected. 
Photographs of these have been taken. Caps fitting into 
the funnel and provided with a square or triangular open- 
ing, are also employed to give films of different shape. 
THE LANGUAGES OF THE IROQUOIS. 
By Mrs. E. Smith. 
The language of each nation represents its thought. If 
these thoughts have remained unrecorded, it is from the 
language itself that they must be obtained by tracing out 
the origin, history and meaning of its words. Each word 
has its history, which it can be made to reveal by tracing 
out the origin, history and their most hidden secrets, and 
the thoughts, customs and beliefs of the originator be read 
as truthfully as if recorded by the historian’s pen. For 
“ words unaided cannot lie twenty words in Tuscarora 
represent supernatural beings. Does this leave a doubt as 
to the tendency of their minds? The Tuscarora word for 
burial ground signifies “ placed in the ground in a sitting 
posture,” proving that some time in the past such was their 
method of burial. The very structure of the Indian lan- 
guages, where the words are so self-explaining, affords un- 
limited scope to the etymologist in his search into word 
history. There are two distinct periods in the modern his- 
tory of the Iroquois. The inundation of new ideas on the 
advent of the whiteman introduced almost a new vocabu- 
lary, differing according to the ideas of the observers. For 
instance, the horse when first seen by the Senecas was 
drawing logs, hence was called a log drawer. Another 
tribe saw it carrying packs, and termed it pack-carrier. 
The Tuscaroras adopted the English word and term it hn- 
hath. It is quite remarkable that so few words have been 
borrowed from the English. And these have become so 
Indianized by prefixes and appendages or changes in their 
vowel sounds as to be scarely recognizable. Among them 
are : U-ts — oats ; Sa-i tar — cider ; Ha-hass — horse ; Vi-ni- 
gair — vinegar ; Qui-tair — Peter ; Ta-wait — David ; Tju-rus 
— Julius; Nay-yak-it-ando — jacket. Lastly was-tun for 
Boston, adding to this the plural suffix ha-kah, a term 
which in English might be interpreted ites. We have 
then Was-tun-ha-kah, or Bostonites, which in the Iro- 
quois is the general term for Americans or the whole 
American nation. This almost supernatural intuition of 
the Indian mind crystallizes, I do not doubt, the opinion 
also and belief of at least 250,000 pale faces residing in the 
metropolis of Massachusetts. Of the length of some of 
incorporative words, which sometimes contain verb, sub- 
ject, object, adjective or preposition, I would remark that 
the examples generally given in encyclopedias and works 
on language are almost entirely English Indian. That is, 
a missionary, perhaps, translating a portion of the Bible, 
finds some abstract word entirely beyond the comprehension 
of the Indian mind ; he therefore takes Webster’s definition 
of the word and translates that into the Indian in the form 
of one word until it has the appearance of the heading to a 
German railway time-table, the words consisting sometimes 
of forty letters and eleven or twelve syllables. The longest 
word thus Anglo-Indianized with which I have met is the 
Mohawk word for stove polish, the word itself being as in- 
dicative of the ingenuity of the inventor as the polish itself. 
It consisted of a glowing description of all the excellencies 
of said stove polish, which it required fifty-eight letters to 
express. The abstract nouns, represented as being absent 
from many of the Indian languages, are found in the Tus- 
carora, such as life, death, love, hate. An interesting 
feature of the language also might be traced in the prefer- 
