First Annual Report Of The Bureau Of Ethnology To The Secretary Of The Smithsonian Institution

"List of publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology (comp. by Frederick Webb Hodge)":

A valuable recounting of the first formal archaeological excavations in Puerto Rico Originally published as the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1907, this book was praised in an article in American Anthropologist as doing “more than any other to give a comprehensive idea of the archaeology of the West Indies.” Until that time, for mainly political reasons, little scientific research had been conducted by Americans on any of the Caribbean islands. Dr. Fewkes' unique skills of observation and experience served him well in the quest to understand Caribbean prehistory and culture. This volume, the result of his careful fieldwork in Puerto Rico in 1902-04, is magnificently illustrated by 93 plates and 43 line drawings of specimens from both public and private collections of the islands. A 1907 article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland described the volume as “a most valuable contribution to ethnographical science.”

Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80, by J.W. Powell, Director, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of Ethnography.

Bibliography of North American philology, by J. C. Pilling Linguistic and other anthropologic researches, by J. O. Dorsey Linguistic researches, by S. R. Riggs Linguistic and general researches among the Klamath Indians, by A. S. Gatschet Studies among the Iroquois, by Mrs. E. A. Smith Work by Prof. Otis T. Mason The study of gesture speech, by Brevet Lieut. Col. Garrick Mallery Studies on Central American picture writing, by Prof. E. S. Holden The study of mortuary customs, by Dr. H. C. Yarrow Investigations relating to cessions of lands by Indian tribes to the United States, by C. C. Royce Explorations by Mr. James Stevenson Researches among the Wintuns, by Prof. J. W. Powell

Edwin Thompson Denig was assigned as the post bookkeeper at Fort Union on the Upper Missouri in 1837 by the American Fur Company. He spent close to two decades there and married into the Assiniboine. In the summer of 1851, Father Pierre Jean de Smet spent two weeks at Fort Union. He encouraged Denig to write a number of sketches of the manners and customs of the Assiniboine and neighboring tribes. Denig compiled additional information in response to queries by early ethnographers, including Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who were collecting ethnological information about Indian tribes in the United States.