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Show XLVIII BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY About this time Mr J. Owen Dorsey, first a missionary and then an assistant in the Bureau of Ethnology, studied the religious cults of the Ponka Indians and other tribes related to them, and collected a great body of valuable material about them. I must not in this place forget to mention the brilliant work of Miss Alice Fletcher in this same field- the tribal fraternities of the Amerinds. She has already published much material on the subject, and is preparing a great monograph on one of the fraternities of Pawnee. Dr J. Walter Fewkes some years ago was appointed ethnologist in the Bureau and sent among the Tusayan people especially for the purpose of studying their religious cults. From these expeditions he has returned with a very large body of material relating to the Hopi fraternities, with a deep insight into their characteristics, and with a wealth of illustration which enables him to set forth the subject in a manner which is simple, clear, and forceful. Early in the last decade Mr Cushing, Mrs Stevenson, and Dr Fewkes each prepared a model of an altar, with its paraphernalia of worship, one of which ( that by Mr Cushing) was put on exhibition at the Chicago Quadrennial Exposition. These models are still in the United States National Museum. Subsequently other altars were prepared under Dr Dorsey's direction for the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago. Thus we already have made a fair beginning in the study and representation as museum models of the altars of the Pueblo tribes and their symbolism. Some of the important contributions to this subject by Dr Fewkes are published with this report, and in connection with these I take occasion to publish the illustration which I prepared in 1870 of an altar which I saw used in a ceremony at Shumopovi, as the first one prepared for the Bureau of Ethnology I can not now give a complete account of this ceremony, nor can I give a complete account of the symbolism represented upon the altar; I can only set forth that which I learned at the time. Nor can I affirm that the illustration is perfect. I secured much of the paraphernalia of the altar and brought them with me to Washington, and I also got such |