Book Reviews

Abstract

THESE Reports, each of which is presented in a large, well-printed volume, contain the record of much solid and useful work. The first of them—the Report for 1883–84—includes an elaborate paper, by Prof. Cyrus Thomas, on burial-mounds of the northern sections of the United States. This is followed by an essay in which Mr. Charles C. Royce tells the story of the official relations of the Cherokee nation of Indians with the Colonial and Federal Governments of North America. In the third paper, Dr. W. Matthews gives an account of what Prof. Powell describes as one of the most illustrative ceremonies of the Navajo, a tribe formerly widely diffused, and now settled in parts of New Mexico and Arizona. Dr. Clay MacCauley deals with the Seminole Indians of Florida, and Mrs. Tilly E. Stevenson gives a vivid picture of the religious life of the Zuñi child. Of the papers associated with the Report for 1884n–85, the first is on the ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia, by Mr. William H. Holmes. To this excellent paper we have already called attention. It is followed by another, by the same author, on textile art in its relation to the development of form and ornament. Dr.Franz Boas contributes to the volume an instructive and well-arranged paper, in which he sets forth the results of his observation and study of the central Eskimo. Prof. Cyrus Thomas gives some aids to the study of the Maya codices, and Mr. J. Owen Dorsey brings together interesting versions of two Osage traditions. These versions are printed in the original language, with an interlinear and a free translation of each, and with explanatory remarks.