PREFATORY NOTE.

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In the present work, Mr. Gatschet has carried out a much needed investigation. The tribes who inhabited the watershed of the north shore of the Mexican Gulf must always occupy a prominent place in the study of American Ethnology, as possibly connecting the races of North and South America, and those of the Valley of the Mississippi with those of Anahuac and Mayapan.

Years ago the general editor of this series stated, in various publications, the problems that region offers, and on finding the remarkable legend of Chekilli, translated it and published it, as pointing to a solution of some of the questions involved. This legend has, at his request, been taken by Mr. Gatschet as a centre around which to group the ethnography of that whole territory, as well as a careful analysis of the legend and its language.

The first volume contains the general discussion of the subject, and closes with the Creek version of the Legend and its translation. The second will contain the Hitchiti Version, the Notes, and Vocabulary.

One statement of the author, overlooked in the proof reading, seems of sufficient importance to be corrected here. The Choctaw Grammar of the late Rev. Cyrus Byington was published complete, and from his last revision (1866-68), not as an extract from his first draft, as stated on page 117. The full particulars are given in the Introduction to the Grammar.

THE EDITOR.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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