Forty-Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1930-1931, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1933.
History
Forty-Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1930-1931, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1933.
Indexes
Dr. Truman Michelson, ethnologist, was at work among the Kickapoo of
Oklahoma at the beginning of the fiscal year. A really representative
body of Kickapoo mythology is now available, and it is quite certain
that it is more northern than Fox mythology. The ritualistic origin
myths are still terra incognita. A good beginning has been made on
Kickapoo social organization. In the middle of July Doctor Michelson
went among the Foxes of Iowa. The object of the trip was to restore
one Fox text phonetically and to obtain some new texts, in the current
syllabic script, on Fox ceremonials, in both of which projects he
was successful. Doctor Michelson returned to Washington August 4. He
completed his memoir on the Fox WâpAnōwiweni and transmitted
it for publication February 7. His paper, Contributions to Fox
Ethnology, II, Bulletin 95 of the bureau, appeared in the course of the
fiscal year.
The remainder of the time was largely taken up studying materials
gathered previously and also in extracting from Petter’s Cheyenne
Dictionary such stems and words as can be rigorously proved to be
Algonquian. The material on the physical anthropology of the Cheyenne
showed clearly the great variation that occurs among living races. A
proper technique was worked out for determining the Cheyenne words
of Algonquian origin. Though Petter’s alphabet is inadequate, it was
possible to partially control this material by comparing it with
that of Doctor Michelson. Approximately 700 of such words and stems
were extracted. Though the technique mentioned above is very slow,
Doctor Michelson is convinced that it is the correct procedure. It was
entirely feasible to establish about 70 phonetic shifts which have
transformed Cheyenne from normal Algonquian into divergent Algonquian.
Toward the close of May Doctor Michelson left for Oklahoma and renewed
his work with the Cheyenne of that State. He restored phonetically the
material extracted from Petter, with the result that it is now possible
to formulate the transforming phonetic shifts with greater nicety.
He also measured a number of Cheyenne. Though the number is not yet
large enough to be absolutely decisive in a statistical sense, there
is good reason to believe that the vault of their skulls is low, thus
resembling the Dakota Sioux rather than most Algonquian tribes. Some
new data on Cheyenne social life and mythology were obtained. It was
his privilege to consult with some other anthropologists in Oklahoma
and to visit one museum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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