Recent Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology ¹

Abstract

WE welcome the long-looked-for monograph on the Hako ceremony of the Pawnee by Miss Alice C. Fletcher, the Thaw Fellow of Harvard University, as upon her, so to speak, has fallen the mantle of Cushing. Not only has she a long and intimate acquaintance with certain tribes of the Plains Indians, but her affection for and sympathy with the Indians is so marked that the old and prominent natives have confided to her their sacred lore; and she was even able to induce Tahirussawichi to come to Washington, he being the keeper of the old and sacred objects, whose life has been devoted to the acquisition and maintenance of certain sacred rites. In 1898 he was taken to the Capitol and the Library of Congress. While the vastness and beauty of these structures gave him pleasure, they did not appeal to him, for such buildings, he said, were unfitted to contain sacred symbols of the religion of his ancestors, in the service of which he had spent his long life. He admired at a distance the Washington Monument and when he visited it he measured the base by pacing, but he would not go up, saying, “I will not go up. The white man likes to pile up stones, and he may go to the top of them; I will not. I have ascended the mountains made by Tira'wa.”