Major J. W. POWELL, the Director, devoted much time during the year to the preparation of the paper to accompany a map of the linguistic families of America north of Mexico, the scope of which has been alluded to in previous reports. This report and map appear in the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau.
Mr. HENSHAW was chiefly occupied with the administrative duties of the office, which have been placed in his charge by the Director, and with the completion of the linguistic map.
Col. MALLERY, after his return from the field work elsewhere mentioned, was engaged in the elaboration of the new information obtained and in further continued study of and correspondence relating to sign language and pictography. In this work he was assisted by Mr. HOFFMAN, particularly in the sketches made by the latter during previous field seasons, and in preparing a large number of the illustrations for the paper on Picture-writing of the American Indians which appears in the present volume.
Mr. J. OWEN DORSEY did no field work during the year, but devoted much of the time to original investigations. Samuel Fremont, an Omaha Indian, came to Washington in October, 1888, and until February, 1889, assisted Mr. Dorsey in the revision of the entries for the Ȼegiha-English Dictionary. Similar assistance was rendered by Little Standing Buffalo, a Ponka Indian from the Indian Territory, in April and May, 1889. Mr. Dorsey also completed the entries for the Ȼegiha-English Dictionary, and a list of Ponka, Omaha, and Winnebago personal names. He translated from the Teton dialect of the Dakota all the material of the Bushotter collection in the Bureau of Ethnology, and prepared therefrom a paper on Teton folklore. He also prepared a brief paper on the camping circles of Siouan tribes, and in addition furnished an article on the modes of predication in the Athapascan dialects of Oregon and in several dialects of the Siouan family. He also edited the manuscript of the Dakota grammar, texts, and ethnography, written by the late Rev. Dr. S. R. Riggs, which has been published as Volume VII, Contributions to North American Ethnology. In May, 1889, he began an extensive paper on Indian personal names, based on material obtained by himself in the field, to contain names of the following tribes, viz: Omaha and Ponka, Kansa, Osage, Kwapa, Iowa, Oto and Missouri, and Winnebago.