made when they were taken from the shrine, but the images themselves have not been seen since they were restored to the Indians.

Cemetery of A-wa'-to-bi.-The sand-dunes somewhat back from the mesa and to the west of the ruin of A-wa'-to-bi served as an aboriginal burial place in former times, and from it has been taken some of the best pottery found in Tusayan. These sand-hills are sparsely covered with stunted bushes, and their contour is continually changing on account of the drifting sand. Every sand-storm alters the surface, bringing into view the skeletons of the dead and fragments of food-vessels, some of which are covered with most interesting symbolic decorations. It was not always the habit of the A-wa'-to-bi people to "kill" these food-vessels on the interment of the dead, as many unbroken bowls have been found there. The dead were buried in a sitting posture, the knees drawn up to the breast.*

EXPLANATION OF PLATES.

PLATE I.—Map of ruin of A-wa'-to-bi. This map was plotted by Mr. A. M. Stephen during our visit to the ruin. The heavy black line indicates the edge of the mesa; the lighter lines the contours.

a. Highest point of the western portion of the ruin.

b. s. Site of the room in which the bear's skeleton was found.

c. Rooms with stacks of burnt corn.

e. Northeastern corner of ridge of rooms of the eastern division. h. Site of northwestern corner of main ruin.

n. s. Narrow room.

p. Po-wa-ko kib-va.

p. h. Room with fragments of pigment and niche with hair strings. w. s. Room with southern window.

The figures indicate the size of rooms excavated. Ground plans of buried chambers are to be found in all the higher mounds, but the more important are indicated by special lettering.

PLATE II.-Ground plan of the standing walls of the Mission, with measurements and altitudes.

PLATE III.-Old shrines near A-wa'-to-bi.

I. Shrine near the burial sand-hills.

2. Shrine at the extreme west end of the mesa.

3. Shrine with offerings, situated among the foot-hills at the extreme west end of mesa.

4. Shrine of the A-lo'-sa-ka.

The Walpi people now bury their dead in the foot-hills to the south of the mesa. Food-vessels, with food, a planting-stick, and a twig, with feathers, are placed above the grave.

JAPANESE MINOR RELIGIOUS PRACTICES.—Of miscellaneous minor religious practices, the name is legion. Such are the sprig of holly stuck to a door-post to keep out evil spirits, the imprint of a hand over the door or entrance to a house, and similarly the rude picture of a horse pasted up over the house doors to avert smallpox. What may be the rationale of this I know not, but Mr. Aston, in a private communication, suggests that the horse may be intended to hint to the evil spirit that the family is abroad. Another curious practice is that of depositing on some mountain-top the instrument with which a crime has been committed. Till within a few years ago Nantai-zan, a high summit in the Nikkō district, now that happy hunting ground of "globe-trotters," was littered with swords that had thus been offered to the mountain god. Or, leaving the land for the sea, how touching is the sailor's habit of scattering grains of rice on the waves as an offering to Kompira or some other deity with power to still the billows.-B. H. Chamberlain in Jour. Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxii, London, 1893, p. 358.

HOW INDIAN Songs are BORROWED.-Indian songs, I have discovered, travel far, and those of one tribe are soon at home in another. There seems to have been quite an extended acquaintance between tribes, the Rocky mountains proving no serious barrier. Customs and songs borrowed from the Crow Indians have obtained for a century at least among the Nez Percé. Dakota songs are also found there with an equally remote introduction. The Omahas took from the Sioux the Ma-wa-da-ne songs, and from the Otoe the Haeka-ne. The Dakotas appropriated the Omaha Hae-thu-ska songs, as did the Winnebagos. I have had Omahas sing me the songs of many different tribes, but they were always credited to the tribe to which they belonged. I have never met an instance of plagiarism among the Indians. Certain kinds of songs can be purchased by individuals, and the song becomes personal property, but the purchaser would never claim to have composed it.-Alice C. Fletcher, "Omaha Indian Music," in Peabody Museum Papers, vol. i, 1893,

No. 5.

PIÑON GATHERING AMONG THE PANAMINT
INDIANS.

BY B. H. DUTCHER.*

While on a trip into Death valley, Inyo county, California, in the latter part of the summer of 1891, I had the good fortune to spend two nights and one day in a camp of Panamint Indians, who were engaged in obtaining their annual supply of "piñons."

In company with John Hughes, the Indian mail-carrier to the Death Valley signal station, another buck and a young squaw, I left Keeler, on Owens lake, September 18, and started eastward across the summits of the Inyo range toward Cottonwood cañon, in the Panamint mountains. Our first day's journey carried us to the eastern extremity of a high mountain ridge, extending east and west from the Inyo to the Panamint mountains, and separating Saline valley on the north from Panamint valley on the south. The crest or plateau top of this ridge was more or less rocky and broken and covered at its eastern end by a large grove of piñon trees (Pinus monophylla), among which the camp was situated.

As this camp was but temporary and established only for shelter while the nutting was in progress, a brief description of it may not be out of place. In the shadow of a small group of piñon trees a number of small circles or "corrals" had been built. Perhaps there were some five or six of these in all, each seeming to accommodate one family or that fraction of a family that was present in the camp. In diameter they measured eight or ten feet, and their walls consisted merely of the broken piñon branches and of the small bushes that grew around, piled up into a loose row two or three feet thick and about as many high. The circle was broken or imperfect where entrance or exit was needed, and where two of these circles became tangent a passage was generally made from one to the other. Their uses seemed to be few-to secure a little privacy for the occupants; to serve as a slight wind-break during the night, when the family slept inside, and during the day to serve as a rack in holding out of the dirt the blankets, extra clothes, cooking uten

*Of the Death Valley Expedition of 1891.