Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/565

 Record of A merican Folk-Lore. 2 1 7

Pujunan. To the " American Anthropologist " (vol. ii. N. S. pp. 266-276) for April-June, 1900, Mr. Roland B. Dixon contributes an illustrated paper on the " Basketry Designs of the Maidu Indians of California." The baskets described (now in the American Museum of Natural History, New York) were collected among the northern Maidu in the summer of 1899. In a series of some forty baskets nearly two dozen different designs appear, for about twenty of which satisfactory explanations are forthcoming. Fully half of the designs are representations of animals, while "plants and inorganic objects are shown in the designs in about equal numbers, both together about equalling the animal patterns." The feather design is, how- ever, the most commonly occurring single pattern. According to Mr. Dixon, "it would not be surprising to find as many as fifty distinct designs used on their baskets by Indians of the Maidu stock." It appears also that " the knowledge of the designs is almost exclu- sively confined to the older women, the younger generation knowing only very few." This paper is a valuable contribution to the study of rapidly vanishing primitive arts.

Salishan. As pages 163-392 (with plates xiv.-xx.) of vol. ii. of the "Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History" (April, 1900), appears James Teit's "The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, edited by Franz Boas," which should be read in connec- tion with the same author's earlier volume on the " Traditions of the Thompson River Indians," which forms vol. vi. of the Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society. Much valuable information as to the life-activities of these Indians, their arts, industries, etc., food, social devices, and general folk-lore is to be found in this excellent essay.

Siouan. Osage. Under the title, " The Osage Indians in France," Miss Alice Fletcher gives in the "American Anthropologist" (vol. ii. N. S. pp. 395-400) for April-June, 1900, an account of the visit to France, in 1827 of six Osage Indians. The account is derived from two rare French pamphlets printed in Paris in 1827. The visit is said to have been induced by the earlier visit of an ancestor of Kishagashugah, the chief of the six Osages, to King Louis XIV. The pamphlets testify to a lively interest in the Indians, their man- ners and customs, since one of them was already in its third edition in 1827. One of the pamphlets has a colored frontispiece represent- ing the six Indians.

Uto-Aztecan. Mexican. Mr. M. H. Saville's brief article on "An Onyx Jar from New Mexico, in Process of Manufacture," in the "Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History" (vol. xiii. 1900, pp. 105-107) is very interesting, because the specimen de- scribed (found several years ago near the city of Tlaxcala, and now

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