strengthened; the lookout mounds; their skulls, etc., indicate for them a higher place in the scale of being than the majority of the tribes and remnants of tribes whom the white settlers of western Ohio found there. Mr. Moorehead believes they were Mandans.
Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-'84. By J. W. Powell, Director. Washington. Pp. liii + 564.
This handsome volume gives ample evidence as to the active prosecution of the work of the Bureau of Ethnology during the year that it covers. The director reports that the field-work of 1883-'84 embraced explorations of mounds in several States east of the Rocky Mountains; explorations of ruins in Arizona and New Mexico; further researches among the Zuñi, by Mr. Cushing; and studies of signs, languages, and myths in various localities. At the same time office-work in preparing for publication materials already gathered was being vigorously carried on. The first of the papers accompanying the director's report is on Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of the United States, by Prof. Cyrus Thomas, and was noticed in this magazine in March of last year. There is a paper by Mr. Charles C. Royce, on the Cherokee Nation of Indians, being a narrative of their official relations with the colonial and Federal governments. This record gives attention in orderly sequence to the historical traditions of the Cherokees, to their early contacts with explorers and colonists, to successive treaties and cessions of territory, with the events leading thereto, and the ensuing results. Through the paper appear biographical notices, accounts of the trials and struggles due to deportation and conflict, and many interesting facts showing the persistent advance of this intelligent people in civilization, numbers, and prosperity. The paper is accompanied by two large folded maps showing the former and present boundaries of the territory occupied by the Cherokees, also by a map of the year 1597, being the earliest which shows their location. The Mountain Chant, a Navajo ceremony, is described by Dr. Washington Matthews. The essay is divided into a translation of the myth on which the ceremony is based, an account of the nine days' exercises, and the originals and translations of the songs and prayers used in the course of the ceremonial. Four colored plates representing pictures made on the ground with colored powders, and many cuts showing implements and actions employed during the course of the rites, illustrate the paper. An account of the arts and customs of the Seminole Indians of Florida, with illustrations, is contributed to the volume by the Rev. Clay MacCauley. Mrs. Tilly E. Stevenson describes The Religious Life of the Zuñi Child, which includes a ceremony, performed before the child is four years old, by which he is supposed to receive the sacred breath of supernatural beings. The colored masks worn by the boys, and the colored figures made on the ground in this ceremony, are represented on lithographic plates.
History of Egypt. By F. C. H. Wendel. New York: D. Appleton & Co. (History Primers.) Pp. 159. Price, 45 cents.
The author's purpose in preparing this little book has been to give a brief account of Egyptian history which would be as reliable as the present state of Egyptological science presents, and to create a deeper interest in the study of ancient Egypt. He rightly believes that this study is of the greatest value, and of an importance that is growing more manifest every day to the student of almost every branch; for in it probably lie, at least in a large part, the foundations of our science and art. The story is told in a careful, scholarly manner; bears the marks of a thorough study and preparation; and is brought up as nearly to the latest discovery as is practicable in a book which requires time to pass through the press. For sources of information the Egyptian monuments are almost wholly relied upon—thus securing the correctness that is derived from contemporary records. The vexed question of chronology is ingeniously solved, or rather cut, by adopting Eduard Meyer's plan of "approximate dates," or of giving the latest date that can be assigned to the era, and leaving it understood that it is impossible to determine how much earlier the event may have taken place. This date, for the accession of Menes, is about 3200 b. c. The book supplies a real want of a compact,
