FOREWORD

VIII
AND MONOGRAPHS

The late Major John Wesley Powell, founder and first director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, was quoted from the Twenty-first Annual Report of that institution:

"Frank Hamilton Cushing was born in Northeast, Pennsylvania, July 22, 1857. Initially physically frail, he withdrew from the usual social circles of childhood and youth and developed a remarkable connection with nature; as his frail body’s growth slowed, his mental powers grew in such a way that they separated him even further from more conventional peers. In childhood, he found 'sermons in stones and books in running brooks'; and in youth, his school was the forest around his father’s homestead in central New York. There, his passion for nature intensified, and the habit of interpreting things according to natural principles, rather than conventional rules, grew so strong that it directed his later life. Meanwhile, freed from the constant drain on his mind caused by the friction of social relationships, his mind gained strength and power; he became a genius."