I made two excursions down into the Indian Country. There are about 500 Choctaws living in Neshoba County. They still keep up many of their primitive customs. While there I attended one of their ball plays. Some day I will give you a full description of this great game of the red man.

I acquired a great deal of information while down there and I have employed an Indian there to collect information for me, as I expect to go down there again next summer.

The Indian is a suspicious creature and has been bamboozled so much by the whites that they were very suspicious of me at first. I subsidized one of them, and tipped several of them, the chief among others, until I carried my point.

I have made an arrangement with a Mr. Welsh of Neshoba to collect some Choctaw war songs, which an old Indian there knows. I collected several traditions and myths and some fragmentary information.

While I am gratified at the bonanza I have struck in the Indian line, I have accomplished nothing in the way of antiquities. People sometimes tell me of localities where antiquities may be found, but when I visit the place, I find the antiquities are natural formations. And right here to be candid and conscientious with you, I can not advise you to visit this country on an archaeological tour. For I know there is not sufficient archaeological interest to justify you in coming all the way from Pennsylvania, and I would not wish you to be disappointed.

I send you by this mail a box of relics. All were found in Oktibbeha County, except the bird shaped relic and a small flat fine corned stone, looking much like a half used up piece of soap. I send you this stone because such pieces of smooth flat stone were used by the Choctaws in smoothing off the outside of pottery. Mr. Welsh, who was raised among them and perfectly familiar with their language and customs, tells me that he has often seen these smooth flat little stones in use by them in smoothing off the outside of pottery whilst engaged in manufacturing it. How much this has been worn in use, I am unable to say.