Search Results

Creator:

Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology  Search this

Extent:

245 Linear feet ((376 boxes and 10 map drawers))

Type:

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Date:

1878-1965

Summary:

The records in this collection embody the administrative functions of the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1879 to 1965. The collection consists of correspondence, card files, registers, official notices, annual and monthly work reports, research statements, research proposals, grant applications, personnel action requests, notices of personnel action, meeting minutes, purchase orders and requisitions, property records, biographical sketches, resolutions, newspaper clippings, reviews of publications, drafts of publications, circulars, programs, pamphlets, announcements, illustrations, cartographic materials, photographic prints, photographic negatives, bibliographies, and reprinted publications.

Scope and Contents:

The records in this collection embody the administrative functions of the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1879 to 1965. The collection consists of correspondence, card files, registers, official notices, annual and monthly work reports, research statements, research proposals, grant applications, personnel action requests, notices of personnel action, meeting minutes, purchase orders and requisitions, property records, biographical sketches, resolutions, newspaper clippings, reviews of publications, drafts of publications, circulars, programs, pamphlets, announcements, illustrations, cartographic materials, photographic prints, photographic negatives, bibliographies, and reprinted publications.

Correspondence comprises the bulk of this collection. A significant portion of this correspondence originates from the Bureau's duty to field inquiries regarding North American aboriginal cultures and respond to requests relating to the duplication of BAE library and archival materials. Inquiries and requests, received from all parts of the world, were submitted by colleagues, museum curators and directors, students, professors, amateur archaeologists, government agents, military officials, Smithsonian Institution officials, artists, and members of the general public. Other correspondence reflects the Bureau's day-to-day operations and internal affairs. Subjects discussed in this correspondence include research projects, field expeditions, annual budgets, personnel matters, the acquisition of manuscripts, the disbursement of specimens, and production of BAE publications. Correspondence is occasionally accompanied by announcements, circulars, programs, pamphlets, photographs, drawings, diagrams, bibliographies, lists, newspaper clippings, and maps. Also among these records are the card files and registers of incoming and outgoing correspondence maintained by early BAE administrative staff. For a list of correspondents, see the appendix to this finding aid, available in the NAA reading room.

The majority of illustrations, artwork, and photographs that appear in this collection are associated with BAE publications, including BAE Annual Reports, BAE Bulletins, Contributions to North American Ethnology and Smithsonian Institution, Miscellaneous Collection. Maps located among the collection originate, by and large, from BAE field expeditions and research projects. BAE staff also amassed great quantities of newspaper clippings that concerned BAE research or points of interest. Of particular note are three scrapbooks comprised of clippings that relate to "mound builders" and the work of the BAE's Division of Mound Explorations.

Also worthy of note are the various records relating to the 1903 investigation of the BAE. Records related to the investigation highlight the Smithsonian Institution's longstanding dissatisfaction with the internal management of the BAE, its concerns over the BAE's loose relationship with the parent organization, and displeasure with the manner in which BAE scientific research was developing. Other materials of special interest are the various administrative records covering the period 1929 to 1946 and 1949 to 1965. The majority cover personnel matters; however, others justify the work of the BAE and bear witness to growing concerns that the BAE would eventually be absorbed by the Department of Anthropology within the United States National Museum.

Arrangement:

The collection has been arranged into the following 12 series: (1) Correspondence, 1897-1965; (2) Cooperative Ethnological Investigations, 1928-1935; (3) Miscellaneous Administrative Files, 1929-1946; (4) Miscellaneous Administrative Files, 1949-1965; (5) Records Concerning the Photographic Print Collection, 1899-1919; (6) Records Concerning Employees; (7) Fiscal Records, 1901-1902 and 1945-1968; (8) Records Relating to the 1903 Investigation of the BAE; (9) Property Records and Requisitions; (10) Clippings; (11) Publications; (12) BAE Library Materials, Pamphlets and Reprints

Administrative History:

The Bureau of Ethnology was established by an act of the United States Congress on March 3, 1879, but it was largely the personal creation of the geologist and explorer Major John Wesley Powell. His earlier explorations of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon formed the basis of the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. While exploring the area, Powell became alarmed at what he perceived to be the decline of the aboriginal way of life due to rapid depopulation. In a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, he warned that "in a few years, it will be impossible to study…Indians in their primitive condition, except from recorded history" (Hinsley). He urged swift government action; the result of which was the appropriation of $20,000 (20 Stat. 397) to transfer all documents relating to North American Indians from the Department of Interior to the Smithsonian Institution and its Secretary's appointment of Powell as director of the newly established Bureau of Ethnology, a position he held until his death in 1902. In 1897, its name was changed to the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) to underscore the limits of its geographical reaches.

Under Powell, the BAE organized the nation's earliest anthropological field expeditions, in which the characteristics and customs of native North Americans were observed firsthand and documented in official reports. Images of Indian life were captured on photographic glass plate negatives, and their songs on wax cylinder recordings. Histories, vocabularies and myths were gathered, along with material objects excavated from archaeological sites, and brought back to Washington for inclusion in the BAE manuscript library or the United States National Museum.

The fruits of these investigations were disseminated via a series of highly regarded and widely distributed publications, most notably BAE Annual Reports, BAE Bulletins, and Contributions to North American Ethnology. BAE research staff also responded routinely to inquiries posed by colleagues, government agencies, and the general public on matters ranging from artwork to warfare. Moreover, the BAE prepared exhibits on the various cultural groups it studied not only for the Smithsonian Institution, but also for large expositions held nationwide.

In 1882 Powell, under instruction of Congress, established the Division of Mound Explorations for the purpose of discovering the true origin of earthen mounds found predominately throughout the eastern United States. It was the first of three temporary, yet significant, subunits supported by the Bureau. Cyrus Thomas, head of the Division, published his conclusions in the Bureau's Annual Report of 1894, which is considered to be the last word in the controversy over the mounds' origins. With the publication of Thomas' findings, the Division's work came to a close.

The course of BAE operations remained largely the same under Powell's successors: W.J. McGee (acting director) 1902; William Henry Holmes, 1902-1910; Frederick W. Hodge, 1910-1918; J. Walter Fewkes, 1918-1928; Matthew W. Stirling, 1928-1957; Frank H.H. Roberts, Jr., 1957-1964; and Henry B. Collins (acting director), 1964-1965. However, following a 1903 internal investigation of the Bureau's administrative activities, Smithsonian officials called for a broader scope of ethnological inquiry and greater application of anthropological research methodologies. The BAE responded in 1904 by expanding agency activities to include investigations in Hawaii, the Philippines, and the Caribbean.

The BAE extended its geographical reaches once again, in the 1940s, to include Central and South America. In 1943, the Institute of Social Anthropology (ISA) was established as an independent subunit of the Bureau for the purpose of developing and promoting ethnological research throughout the American Republics. The findings of ISA-sponsored investigations were published in the six volume series, Handbook of South American Indians (BAE Bulletin 143). Julian H. Steward, editor of the Handbook, was appointed director of ISA operations and held the position until 1946 when George M. Foster assumed responsibility. The ISA was absorbed by the Institute of Inter-American Affairs in 1952, thus terminating its relationship with the BAE.

In 1946 the BAE assumed partial administrative control of the recently established River Basin Surveys (RBS), its third and final autonomous subunit. The purpose of the RBS was to salvage and preserve archaeological evidence threatened by post-World War II public works programs, more specifically the rapid construction of dams and reservoirs occurring throughout the country. Excavations conducted under the RBS yielded considerable data on early North American Indian settlements, and subsequent deliberations on this data were published as reports in various BAE Bulletins.

In 1965, the BAE merged administratively with the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Anthropology to form the Office of Anthropology within the United States National Museum (now the Department of Anthropology within the National Museum of Natural History). The BAE manuscript library, also absorbed by the Department of Anthropology, became the foundation of what is today the National Anthropological Archives (NAA).

In its 86 year existence, the BAE played a significant role in the advancement of American anthropology. Its staff included some of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' most distinguished anthropologists, including Jeremiah Curtain, Frank Hamilton Cushing, J.O. Dorsey, Jesse Walter Fewkes, Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Albert H. Gatschet, John Peabody Harrington, John N.B. Hewitt, William Henry Holmes, Ales Hrdlicka, Neil Judd, Francis LaFlesche, Victor and Cosmo Mindeleff, James Mooney, James Pilling, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, Matthew Williams Stirling, William Duncan Strong, and William Sturtevant. The BAE also collaborated with and supported the work of many non-Smithsonian researchers, most notably Franz Boas, Frances Densmore, Gerard Fowke, Garrick Mallery, Washington Matthews, Paul Radin, John Swanton, Cyrus Thomas, and T.T. Waterman, as well as America's earliest field photographers such as Charles Bell, John K. Hillers, Timothy O'Sullivan, and William Dinwiddie. Several of its staff founded the Anthropological Society of Washington in 1880, which later became the American Anthropological Association in 1899. What is more, its seminal research continues to be drawn upon by contemporary anthropologists and government agents through the use of BAE manuscripts now housed in the NAA.

Sources Consulted:

Hinsley, Curtis. Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1910. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981.

McGee, WJ. "Bureau of American Ethnology." The Smithsonian Institution, 1846-1896, The History of its First Half-Century, pp. 367-396. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1897.

Sturtevant, William. "Why a Bureau of American Ethnology?" Box 286, Functions of the BAE, Series IV: Miscellaneous Administrative Files, 1948-1965, Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology, National Anthropological Archives.

Related Materials:

Additional material relating to BAE administrative affairs and research projects can be found among the National Anthropological Archives' vast collection of numbered manuscripts. Too numerous to list in this space, these include official correspondence, monthly and annual work reports, fiscal records, field notes, personal diaries, expedition logs, catalogues of specimens, vocabularies, historical sketches, maps, diagrams, drawings, bibliographies, working papers and published writings, among various other material. Most of these documents are dispersed throughout the numbered manuscript collection as single items; however, some have been culled and unified into larger units (e.g., MS 2400 is comprised of documents relating to the Division of Mound Explorations). Artwork and illustrations produced for BAE publications are also located among the NAA's numbered manuscript collection as well as its photograph collection (e.g., Photo Lot 78-51 and Photo Lot 80-6).

Photographs concerning BAE research interests can be found among the following NAA photographic lots: Photo Lot 14, Bureau of American Ethnology Subject and Geographic File ca. 1870s-1930s; Photo Lot 24, BAE Photographs of American Indians 1840s to 1960s (also known as the Source Print Collection); Photo Lot 60, BAE Reference Albums 1858-1905; and Photo Lot 85, BAE Miscellaneous Photographs 1895 to 1930. Other photographic lots include portraits of BAE staff and collaborators, namely Photo Lot 33, Portraits of Anthropologists and others 1860s-1960s; Photo Lot 68, Portraits of John Wesley Powell ca. 1890 and 1898; and Photo Lot 70, Department of Anthropology Portrait File ca. 1864-1921.

Additional materials in the NAA relating to the work of the BAE can be found among the professional papers of its staff, collaborators and USNM anthropologists. These include the papers of Ales Hrdlicka, John Peabody Harrington, Otis Mason, J.C. Pilling, Matthew Williams Stirling, and William Duncan Strong. Documents relating to the work of the BAE can be found among the records of the River Basin Surveys (1928-1969) and the Institute of Social Anthropology (1941-1952).

Records related to this collection can also be found in the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA). SIA accession 05-124 includes information regarding the 1942 transfer of six audio recordings related to the Chumash Indian language from the Bureau of American Ethnology to the National Archives, nine pages of Chumash translations, and "The Story of Candalaria, the Old Indian Basket-Maker." The Fiscal and Payroll Records of the Office of the Secretary, 1847 to 1942 (Record Unit 93), includes voucher logs, disbursement journals and daybooks of money paid out to the BAE from 1890 to 1910. BAE correspondence can also be found among the Records of the Office of the Secretary (Record Unit 776, accession 05-162). The Papers of William Henry Holmes, second director of the BAE, are also located among the SIA (Record Unit 7084).

Accession records concerning artifacts and specimens collected by the BAE are located in the registrar's office of the National Museum of Natural History.

Related collections can also be found at the National Archives and Records Administration. RG 57.3.1, the Administrative Records of the United States Geological Survey, includes register of applications for BAE ethnological expositions conducted between 1879-1882. RG 75.29, Still Pictures among the Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, includes 22 photographs of Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Navajo, and Apache Indians taken by William S. Soule for the BAE during 1868-1875. RG 106, Records of the Smithsonian Institution, includes cartographic records (106.2) relating to Indian land cessions in Indiana created for the First Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1881 (1 item); a distribution of American Indian linguistic stock in North America and Greenland, by John Wesley Powell, for the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, ca. 1887 (1 item); a distribution of Indian tribal and linguistic groups in South America, 1950 (1 item); the Indian tribes in North America, for Bulletin 145, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1952 (4 items). Sound Recordings (106.4) include songs and linguistic material relating to the Aleut, Mission, Chumash, and Creek, gather by the BAE in 1912, 1914, 1930-41. Some include translations (122 items).

Provenance:

The Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology were transferred to the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology Archives with the merger of the BAE and the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History in 1965. The Smithsonian Office of Anthropology Archives was renamed the National Anthropological Archives in 1968.

Restrictions:

The Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology are open for research.

Access to the Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology requires an appointment.

Rights:

Contact repository for terms of use.

Citation:

Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

Identifier:

NAA.XXXX.0155

See more items in:

Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw391046c25-21e2-4334-a01f-9a6f734ae9cd

EDAN-URL:

ead_collection:sova-naa-xxxx-0155

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Names:

Geronimo, 1829-1909  Search this

Extent:

683 Linear feet

Culture:

Indians of Central America  Search this

Indians of North America  Search this

Indians of South America  Search this

Type:

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Sound recordings

Maps

Stats (copies)

Newspaper clippings

Printed material

Photographs

Botanical specimens

Field notes

Correspondence

Financial records

Personal records

Poetry

Writings

Date:

1907-1959 (some earlier)

Summary:

Harrington was a Bureau of American Ethnology ethnologist involved in the study of over one hundred American tribes. His speciality was linguistics. Most of the material concerns California, southwestern, northwestern tribes and includes ethnological, archeological, historical notes; writings, correspondence, photographs, sound recordings, biological specimens, and other types of documents. Also of concern are general linguistics, sign language, writing systems, writing machines, and sound recordings machines. There is also some material on New World Spanish, Old World languages. In addition, there are many manuscripts of writings that Harrington sketched, partially completed, or even completed but never published. The latter group includes not only writings about anthropological subjects but also histories, ranging from a biography of Geronimo to material on the history of the typewriter. The collection incorporates material of Richard Lynch Garner, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, and others. In his field work, Harrington seems sometimes to have worked within fairly firm formats, this especially being true when he was "rehearing" material, that is in using an informant to verify and correct the work of other researchers. Often, however, the interviews with informants (and this seems to have been the case even with some "rehearings") seem to have been rather free form, for there is a considerable intertwining of subjects. Nevertheless, certain themes frequently appear in his work, including annotated vocabularies concerning flora and fauna and their use, topography, history and biography, kinship, cosmology (including tribal astronomy), religion and philosophy, names and observations concerning neighboring tribes, sex and age division, material culture, legends, and songs. The fullness of such materials seems to have been limited only by the time Harrington had to spend with a goup and the knowledge of his informants.

Arrangement:

(Some of the titles are tentative). Papers relating to Alaska/Northwest Coast, including (1) Aleut; (2) Tlingit/Eyak; (3) Northern Athapascan (Beaver, Carrier, Chipewyan, Sarsi, Sekani, Cree); (4) Nicola/Thompson; (5) Lummi/Nespelem; (6) Duwamish; (7) Chimakum/Clallam; (8) Makah/Quileute; (9) Quinault/Chehalis/Cowlit; (10) Chinook/Chinook Jargon; (11) "Kwalhioqua-Tlatskanai"; (12) Tillamook, (13) Alsea/Siuslaw/Coos; (14) Southwest Oregon Athapascan (Chasta Costa, Chetco, Upper Coquille, "Gold Beach", Smith River, Tolowa, Tutini, Upper Umpqua), (14) Galice/Applegate; (15) Takelma, general and miscellaneous; (16) Klamath; (17) Wiyot/Yurok/Mattole; (18) Coast Yuki/Northern and Central Pomo/Kato; (19) Coast Miwok; (20) Lake and Coast Miwok/Southeastern Pomo/Wappo; (21) Nisenan/Northern Sierra Miwok; (22) Southern Pomo/Central Sierra Miwok; (23) Karok/Shasta/Konomihu; (24) Chimariko/Hupo; (25) Achomawi/Atsugewi/Wintu/Yana; (26) Chamariko/Achomawi/Atsugewi/Wintu/Yana; (27) Costanoan (Chocheno, Mutsun, Tumsen); (28) Salinan (Antoinano, Migueleno); (29) Yokuts (Chunut, Tachi, Wikchamni, Yawdanchi, Yawelmani, Koyeti); (30) general and miscellaneous; papers relating to southern California and the Basin area,

including (31) Chumash (Barbareno, Cruzeno, Ineseno, Obispeno, Purisimeno, Ventureno); (32) Chauilla; (33) Chemehuevi; (34) Gabrielino; (35) Juaneno; (36) Kitanemuk; (37) Luiseno; (38) Serrano; (39) Tubatulabal; (40) Diegueno; (41) Mohave/Yuma; (42) general and miscellaneous; papers relating to the Southwest, including (43) Apache; (44) Hopi; (45) Jemez; (46) Acoma/Laguna; (47) Cochiti; (48) Navaho; (49) Pima/Papago; (50) Illeta; (51) Taos; (52) Picuris; (53) Tewa; (54) Zuni; (55) general and miscellaneous; papers relating to the Plains, including (56) Comanche; (57) Caddo/Pawnee/Wichita; (58) Dakota/Lakota; (59) Hidatso/Mandan/Crow;

(92) general and miscellaneous; notes and writings on special linguistic studies, including (93) correspondence; (94) financial records; (95) personal records; (96) poetry; (97) newspaper clippings; (98) printed material/reprints/photostats/microfilm; (99) maps; (100) photographs (101) sound recordings; (102) botanical specimens

Joseph S. Danner, Edward S. Davis, Ella C. Deloria, Frances Densmore, Paul Desiardins, Lydia Dornherr, Harry W. Dorsey, Frederick Huntington Douglas, David C. Dozi, Edward P. Dozi, Robert Drak Aitken), Rose S. Gaffney, David E. Gales, S. H. Gapp, Clark M. Garber, Lucrlson Fenton, Jesse Walter Fewkes, Reginald G. Fisher, Barbara Freire-Marreco (see also Barbara Aitken), Rose S. Gaffney, David E. Gales, S. H. Gapp, Clark M. Garber, Lucretia Garcia, Maria Garcia, Paul Garcia, Walter C. Garwick, William Gates, Ja Gapp, Clark M. Garber, Lucretia Garcia, Maria Garcia, Paul Garcia, Walter C. Garwick, William Gates, James A Geary, Otto William Geist,

Richard H. Geoghegan, Harold S. Gladwin, Pliny Earle Goddard, T. R. Goodwin, Howard W. Gorman, Blanche C. Grant, George Grasty, Louis H. Gray, Alexander Grigolia, Alexandra Gromoff, F. A. Gross, Ruther Gruber, Erwin G. Gudde, Grace Guest, Ralph Gustafson, Berard Haile, Alfred Irving Hallowell, Howard M. Hamblin, Lucile Hamner, Adelaide Harrington, Arthur Harrington, Awona Harrington, Edmund Ross Harrington, Elliot Harrington, Mark Raymond Harrington, Robert Fleming Heizer, Marta Herrera (Orozoco), Melville Jean Herskovits, Edgar Lee Hewett, George Gustave Heye,

Thomas Willing Hicks, Willard Williams Hill, William B. Hill, Philip K. Hitti, Hulda R. Hobbs (Heidel), Frederick Webb Hodge, Robert Hofsinde, W. C. Holden, Nils Homer, R. B. Horsefield, James Hovey, Grace Hudson, John W. Hudson, William Hughes, Edward P. Hunt, George Hunt, Wayne Henry (Wolf Robe) Hunt, Arnold J. Jacobins, Jean Allard Jge, George M. Lamsa, William T. Linkins, Ralph Linton, Alan Lomax, Theodore R. Lonewolf, uis Kroeber, Benjamin T. Kurtz, Walter and Hilda Kurze, Oliver LaFarge, George M. Lamsa, William T. Linkins, Ralph Linton, Alan Lomax, Theodore R. Lonewolf,

Boas Long, Ivan Alexis Lopatin, Robert Harry Lowie, Charles F. Lummis, Phoebe Maddux, Frank Marashulo, Frank Marr, John Marr, Edna P. Marsh, Gordon H. Marsh, William B. Marye, Elizabeth Mason, John Alden Mason, Anna P. Mattinger, Wayne L. Mauzy, William Ralph Maxon, Parker McKenzie, F. Romero Mendez, Clinton Hart Merriam, E. Vigo Mestres, Truman Michelson, Harry E. Miller, Ralph L. Milliken, William S. Mills, Willie Miranda, Albert Mohr, Dionisia Mondragon, Manuel Mondragon, Lucy Montgomery, Harriet Moore, Mildred C. Moore, R. E. Moore, Rosalind Moore, Carlos Morales, Marion Moreno, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, Philip A. Munz, O. J. Murie,

Roy Nash, Mrs. W. J. Nichols, Eugene A. Nida, Frans M. Olbrechts, Cornelius Osgood, Asbjorn P. Ousdal, Charles F. Outland, Henry E. Parmenter, Elsie Clews Parsons, A. W. Payne, Ellen Peace, Elizabeth Wells Pearce, Arthur B. Perkins, Mrs. Rodolphe Petter, Kenneth L. Pike, Arnold R. Pilling, Nellie B. Pipes, I. J. Pitman, J. O. Prescott, Erik Kellerman Reed, Nathaniel Julius Reich, Jane Richardson, Arthur Stanley Riggs, Frank Harold Hanna Roberts, Jr., Helen H. Roberts, Clarence M. Ruth, Everett Sanders, Edward Sapir, Charles F. Saunders, F. H. Saville, Paul Schumacher, Donald Scott, Blanche Seeley, Ettie Seeley, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant,

A. W. Setychell, Jessie Shaw, Anna O. Shepard, Frank T. Siebert, Rita Siedenberg, Albion M. Sitton, Nich Sivonen, H. D. Skinner, Mrs. N. P. Sloan, Clement Smith, Stella Smith, Jack Snow, Maria Soto, Frank Gouldsmith Speck, Robert F. Spencer, Marjorie Spinks, Waldo C. Spraque, Winifred Stamm, Moses Steinberg Marian Stirling, Matthew Williams Stirling, William Duncan Strong, Edgar Howard Sturtevant, Georgianna Barbara Such, John R. Swanton, Turkey Tayac, Douglass Taylor, Lincoln Thompson, Morjorie L. Tichy, Janet Tietjins, Bennie Tilden, J. R. R. Tolkien, W. Cameron Townsend, George L. Trager, Lovell B. Triggs, Edwin H. Tuttle,

Ruth Underhill, Richard Fowler Van Valkenburgh, Rosendo Vargas, Charles Frederick Voegelin, Paul Vogenitz, James W. Waldo, Paul A. F. Walter, Althea Warren, Fred Washington, Thomas Talbot Waterman, Edith White, Joseph J. White, Leslie A. White, Grace T. Whiting, Robert B. Whitsett, Benjamin Lee Whorf, H. E. Williams, William L. Wonderly, Arthur Woodward, Robert W. Young, and Father Zephyrin of the Santa Barbara Mission.

Restrictions:

The John Peabody Harrington papers are open for research.

Access to the John Peabody Harrington papers requires an appointment.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Linguistics  Search this

Indians of North America -- Languages  Search this

Ethnomusicology  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Toponymy  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Genre/Form:

Sound recordings

Maps

Stats (copies)

Newspaper clippings

Printed material

Photographs

Botanical specimens

Field notes

Correspondence -- 1930-1950

Financial records

Personal records

Poetry

Writings

Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw31fe9575b-f7aa-4286-9787-0cfc495ab461

EDAN-URL:

ead_collection:sova-naa-1976-95

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

0.63 Linear feet ((2 boxes))

Culture:

Duwamish (Dwamish)  Search this

Indians of North America -- Northwest Coast of North America  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Vocabulary

Lecture notes

Maps

Place:

King County (Wash.)

Date:

1910

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Alaska/Northwest Coast series contains Harrington's Duwamish research. The materials primarily consist of field notes and lecture notes.

The field notes consist of small slips and 8" x 10" sheets on which Harrington recorded notes on phonetics, vocabulary, and some short sentences. A general vocabulary section--mostly nouns--covers geographical terms, animal names, material culture objects, and terms for age, sex, and religion. Each Duwamish (Duw.) word is followed by the English translation; a few comparisons are given in Snohomish and Clallam. There are larger vocabulary sections dealing with tribenames and placenames. The tribenames are Duwamish terms referring to the neighboring tribes of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula--mostly other Salish groups. The placename category includes many etymologies as well as sketch maps and references to a "Big map" of Seattle Harbor.

Miscellaneous packets of field notes include biographical information on the Duwamish speakers he worked with and others, a partial bibliography, and notes labeled "< Meany." The latter were apparently personal communications from a professor at the university.

Harrington's lecture notes, evidently used for the course on "The Indians of the Northwest," contain a good deal of original field data. The notes, which were found in great disarray; have been arranged to follow fourteen categories outlined by Harrington on a heading sheet. The sections on history, potlatches, and material culture, in particular, include numerous excerpts from articles by Arthur A. Denny, Myron Eels, and Joseph A. Costello. Much of this secondary source data was checked over with an unspecified person, presumably William Rogers. His comments, labeled "Duw.," frequently appear at the bottom of a page. Notes on "The Indian placenames of King County," consist entirely of original data on places in the vicinity of Lake Washington, White River, and Cedar River. As in the corresponding vocabulary section, etymologies and sketch maps are included.

Biographical / Historical:

Johnn P. Harrington investigated the language and culture of the Duwamish (currently grouped with speakers of other Puget Sound Salish dialects as "Lushootseed") during the period June 17 to August 15, 1910 while residing in Seattle, Washington. He had come there to teach courses on "The Indians of the Northwest" and "The Science of Language" at the University of Washington summer school and to give a series of six popular lectures on "The Siberian Origin of the American Indian" under the auspices of the American Institute of Archaeology.

He studied the Duwamish language with Chief William Rogers at the reservation at Suquamish each weekend during the session. After its close, he made trips with Rogers and a man named Moore to Seattle and Renton ("homeland of the Duwamish") to record placenames. His interpreter in the work was Edward Percival.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Puget Sound Salish languages  Search this

Snohomish language  Search this

Clallam language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Names, Ethnological  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Vocabulary

Lecture notes

Maps

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 1.6

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 1: Native American History, Language, and Culture of Alaska and the Northwest Coast

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw3457aa78d-ee93-4b1b-af72-c4dbcee95cd1

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref12636

Creator:

Knez, Eugene I. (Eugene Irving), 1916-2010  Search this

Names:

East China Seas Program  Search this

Korean National Museum of Anthropology  Search this

National Folk Museum of Korea  Search this

National Museum of Korea  Search this

Extent:

57.6 Linear feet

Type:

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Place:

Korea

Tibet

Bhutan

East Asia

Nepal

Date:

circa 1920–2000, With Information Dating Back to 1481

Summary:

The Knez papers include material concerning many aspects of his career up to the time he retired from the Smithsonian. Of particular strength is the documentation of Asian exhibits, both temporary and permanent ones installed during his time at the Institution. There is also considerable material concerning specimens and collections acquired earlier. Material concerning Knez's work as a field researcher, bibliographer, and editor are also among the papers. After his retirement, Knez became involved in a study of Buddhism among the Tibetans living in India. Copies of film made for this study have been deposited in the Human Studies Film Archives. It should be noted that the papers represent only a portion of the Knez papers, for he has retained some of them.

Scope and Contents:

Knez was not a prolific writer. Though his research encompassed East and Southeast Asia, his field expeditions for collections and his charge to establish the first permanent Asian halls while at the Smithsonian limited his scientific writings to documentation required for Smithsonian exhibitions and his ongoing interest in the material culture of Sam Jong Dong and The Three Ministries, located in the Kimhae region of southeast Korea. To overcome Asian language barriers, Knez had to utilize informants, Korean scholars, and translators in order to carry out his research. The materials that he collected or were forwarded to him about Asia, however, represent an impressive body of information that researchers of Southeast Asia would want to review for general studies. Of special importance would be the information about culture around the South China Sea, and especially studies about Korean and Japanese ethnology and anthropology, the pre-colonial and colonial period, the period right after World War II, the Korean War, and changes in Korean agricultural farming life, from the early 1900s through the 1980s. A knowledge of Chinese calligraphy, Korean Hangul, and pre-World War Two Japanese (Taisho and Showa Periods) are required to understand the complete record documenting Korean history.

These papers contain detailed correspondence and memoranda, documenting Knez's professional life as a curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. Visual images, photographs, slides, videotapes, film, and sound recording as well as research information and correspondence provide a complete record of the exhibitions that Knez established at the Smithsonian. Correspondence, memoranda, and photographs provide a less complete picture of Knez's activities before his appointment as curator. There is a very strong and complete record of his activities while stationed in Korea after World War II and during the Korean War. This material includes correspondence, photographs and film footage. Knez also brought out of Korea photographs that were taken by the Japanese during the colonial period. There is also film footage taken around 1946 on Cheju Island. In addition, there are postcards and photo cards that contain a rich visual image of Korea dating back before the 1920s.

The largest series within these papers contains Knez's material culture research on Korea. This series includes field notes, interviews, transcriptions, correspondence, photographs, publications and translations about Korean history dating back to 1481, Japanese publications and translations regarding anthropomorphic and agricultural studies of Koreans and Korean agricultural life, and Knez's draft publications. There is a large series of photographs and slides documenting Asian art collections as well as Asian cultures. The Knez Papers also includes a phonograph record collection which is not dated and contains Korean and Japanese opera and folk songs. In addition, there is a collection of Confucius teachings, school books, and genealogy written in Chinese calligraphy and Hangul.

The arrangement of these papers and the file folders within the series are not always well ordered. Multiple accessions were transferred to the National Anthropological Archives. Where subject information was the same, folders were filed into existing series developed in the 1970s and 1980s. In similar fashion, individual items that were not within folders were interfiled in existing folders that contained the same information.

The research series (series six), which primarily documents Knez's research activities and information he received or collected on Korea has some provenance. The material was reboxed several times, but there remains segments of information that are completely related. At other times, there is no logical relationship between one group of files and the next. Most of the folders were never dated. Therefore, it is difficult to understand the different periods in Knez's life when he worked on his Korean studies, without going through the entire series. Photographs are not always dated. Only a very small number were used in Knez's 1997 publication (where they are dated), The Modernization of Three Korean villages, 1951-1981 (Smithsonian Institution Press).

Most of the series within these papers contain different aspects of Knez's interest in Asia, and in particular, his focus on Korea. For example, correspondence regarding Knez's activities during his stay in Korea after World War II and during the Korean War will be found in series two, Subject File; photographs documenting the same time period will be found in series six, Research Projects, and series thirteen, Biographical and Autobiographical Material. And, series ten, Motion Picture Film and Sound Recordings, contain visual images of Knez's activities in Korea during 1946, 1950-1951.

Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged into fourteen (14) series:

SERIES 1.Accession Correspondence and Information and Examination and Reports of Collections, 1959-1977 and undated, with information dating back to 1893, boxes 1-4

SERIES 2.Subject File, 1937-1999 and undated, with information dating back to 1852, boxes 4-32

SERIES 3.Professional and Non-Professional Association Material, 1955-1980, with information dating back to 1896, boxes 33-36

SERIES 4.Exhibitions, 1960-1977 and undated, with information dating back to 1876, boxes 36-43

SERIES 5.Research Grants, 1963-1981 and undated, with information dating back to 1884, boxes 43-46

SERIES 6.Research Projects, 1909, 1929-2000 and undated, with information dating back to 1481, boxes 47-115

SERIES 7.Geographical and Publications Files, 1929-1977 and undated, boxes 116-139

SERIES 8.Korean and Chinese Writings, boxes 140-141

SERIES 9.Collection and Research Photographs, 1946-1977 and undated, boxes 142-161

SERIES 10.Motion Picture Film and Sound Recordings, 1946-1978 and undated, boxes 162-164

SERIES 11.Phonograph Recordings, 1959- and undated, with recordings possibly dating back to the 1940s, boxes 165-170

SERIES 12.Invitations and Greetings, box 171

SERIES 13.Biographical and Autobiographical Material, Family Photographs, and Notes, circa 1920s-1997 and undated, boxes 172-174

SERIES 14.Oversize, 1952-1971 and undated, box 175 and oversize map case drawers

Biographical / Historical:

Eugene I. Knez was born Eugene Irving Knezevich on May 12, 1916, in Clinton, Indiana, where he graduated from high school in 1935. His mother and father, Ida and Sam Knezevich, were divorced in 1932, and in 1936, his mother married Edward P. Pearson. The family moved to California where Knez enrolled in pre-medical studies at Los Angeles City College. Knez transferred to the University of New Mexico (UNM), but before completing his studies, returned to Indiana to be with his father, who was ill. There, Knez enrolled at Indiana University. Since Indiana University did not offer courses in anthropology, Knez took classes in sociology and psychology so that he could fulfill the requirements of UNM. Upon completion of his course work at Indiana University, UNM awarded Knez a B.A. in 1941.

While attending the University of New Mexico, Knez was primarily interested in the Native American Indian. During the summer of 1939 he was appointed Park Ranger-Historian in the National Park Service at Coolidge, Arizona. When he returned to Indiana to be with his father, Knez found a summer job as an assistant to a psychologist, who was testing inmates at the Indiana State Farm.

Knez was drafted as a private in the United States Army in 1941. He was promoted to sergeant in 1942 and during that same year was selected for Officer's Candidate School. Knez graduated OCS as a second lieutenant. Knez was trained and later moved into personnel classification and assignment sections in various divisions before and during World War II. In 1945, he was promoted to captain while in a combat support unit on Saipan.

At the end of the war Knez was assigned to Korea. This assignment began a pivotal sequence of events in his life. With his background in anthropology, Knez was placed in charge of the Army's Bureau of Culture, National Department of Education, United States Military Government in Korea headquartered in Seoul. His responsibilities included the restoration of cultural and religious activities, including museums. At the Bureau, Knez developed a sensitivity towards Korea and her people in the aftermath of Japanese colonialism. Knez undertook the restoration of Admiral Yi's large inscribed boulder and a Buddhist pagoda that had been partially dismantled by the Japanese. He established The National Museum of Anthropology (which became the National Folk Museum). In 1946 Knez sponsored an expedition to Cheju Island to collect ethnographic artifacts and record music for the Museum. During that year he also received permission to excavate two royal Silla Tombs at Kyonju with staff from the National Museum of Korea (NMK). This was the beginning of an endearing association with Korea and her people, which culminated in Knez receiving the award of The Order of Cultural Merit (gold medal) in 1995 from the Republic of Korea.

Knez was discharged from the United States Army in 1946. From 1947 to 1948, he attended Yale University as a research assistant in anthropology and worked at the Peabody Museum. He then joined the federal government and from 1949 to 1953 Knez served as a Cultural Affairs and Public Affairs officer at the American embassies in Korea and Japan. From 1949 to 1951, Knez was chief of Branch Operations, United States Information Agency, first headquartered in Seoul and then moving from Seoul to Pusan with the invasion by North Korea.

During his assignment in Korea, Knez undertook several major activities that had a profound effect on his life. With the approaching North Korean forces getting ready to invade Seoul for the second time, Kim, Chewon, director of the National Museum of Korea, approached Knez and made a personal request to help save the Museum's treasures. Though Knez was a war time member of the American Embassy he undertook the task without receiving official permission. He coordinated the movement of the Museum and Yi dynasty collections and some of the Museum staff by having them shipped by railroad boxcar from Seoul to Pusan.

During the fighting Knez began his ethnographic material culture research at Sam Jong Dong in the Kimhae region north of Pusan. When it appeared in 1951 that the United Nations was losing the war, Knez received permission to spend two months of his home leave to stay in Korea to continue his research. This study was to continue into the 1990s.

While in Pusan, Knez recommended that two dinners be held to help the morale of Korea's cultural leaders, those who were refugees from Seoul. One dinner was to be for the older generation and the second for younger Korean scholars and members of the cultural community. At the second dinner, Knez met his future bride, Choi, Jiae, a highly regarded Korean actress.

During 1951, Knez was transferred to Tokyo as Policy and Program officer for the United States Information Agency. In 1952 he was assigned as the USIA regional Public Affairs officer in Fukuoka.

In 1953, Knez left the USIA and joined the staff at Hunter College, located in the Bronx, New York, first as a lecturer and then as an instructor. While teaching at Hunter, Knez attended graduate school at Syracuse University. In 1959, he received a Doctor of Social Science Degree in anthropology from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Knez's thesis was Sam Jong Dong: A South Korean Village. During the school year 1968-1969, the Maxwell School went from awarding the D.S.Sc. degree to the Ph.D. In 1970, Knez successfully petitioned the School to have his degree changed.

In 1959, Knez was appointed Associate Curator of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. He was given the responsibility for Asian ethnology and was assigned the task of establishing the first permanent Asian exhibitions in two halls at the United States National Museum (later, the National Museum of Natural History). At the time, the Asian collections available for the halls were poor or non-existent. Knez began his first of several field expeditions to augment the Museum's artifact and cultural collections. Almost all of the Asian exhibitions that he planned had to have collections taken directly from the field.

The first permanent exhibition was opened in 1961 and contained information on the South Asian World in Miniature, India and Pakistan. During the year two more exhibitions were completed, documenting India, Pakistan, and Thailand. In 1962, Knez completed fifteen more exhibitions; he completed eight in 1963 and 1964; one in 1965; and one in 1967. The themes for the exhibitions included China, Japan, Iran, Korea, Tibet, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Pakistan, India, East Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, Islam, and Buddhism.

From 1963 through 1973, Knez put together additional temporary exhibitions, which included themes on Korea, China, India, Japan, Bhutan, and acquisitions of Hindu and Buddhist sculpture. In 1967, Knez provided the objects and created the documentation for the United States Department of State exhibition honoring the visit of the King and Queen of Thailand. Knez developed an exhibition about Korea, which went on display between 1977 and 1979 and was coordinated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.

Knez retired from the Smithsonian in November 1978 and was appointed Anthropologist Emeritus in 1979. Knez moved to Hawaii and developed ties with the University of Hawaii as a visiting scholar at the Center for Korean Studies. Knez continued his research on the Kimhae region, and in 1993, published his revised, The Modernization of Three Korean Villages, 1951-81: an Illustrated study of a people and their material culture.

May 12, 1916 -- Born

1935 -- Graduated High School

1941 -- Drafted, Private, United States Army B.A., University of New Mexico

1942 -- Officer's Candidate School, 2nd Lieutenant, United States Army

1945 -- Promoted to Captain, United States Army

1945-1946 -- United States Army, In charge, Bureau of Culture, National Department of Education, Seoul, Korea

1946 -- Excavation, National Museum of Korea, Royal Silla Tomb, Kyongju Ethnographic and Geographic Survey, National Folk Museum of Anthropology, Korea, Cheju Island

August 1946 -- Honorable Discharge, United States Army

1947-1948 -- Yale University, Peabody Museum, Research Assistant in Anthropology

1947 -- Study of American Indian Shaker cult, Washington State Museum, Seattle

1949 -- Changed Name from Knezevich to Knez

1949-1951 -- Wartime Center Director, United States Information Service, Pusan, Korea

1951 -- Shipment of National Museum of Korea Collections and Staff from Seoul to Pusan

1951-1952 -- Ethnographic Study of Kimhae Area, Korea, towards a dissertation

1952-1976 -- United States Army Reserve (retired as Full Colonel)

1953-1959 -- Lecturer and Instructor, Hunter College, New York

1959 -- Fellow, American Anthropological Association D.S.S.C. (later, Ph.D.) Syracuse University Anthropologist, Smithsonian Institution

1961-1962 -- Overseas Collecting Trips to Asia

1961 -- First Asian Exhibition Installation

1962 -- Letter of Appreciation, Republic of Korea

1965 -- Smithsonian Special Act (Development of Asian Collections) Award

1966 -- Member of the United States Museums Advisory Delegation Planning Meeting for the Establishment of a Korean National Science Museum Center, Seoul

1970 -- Award, Korean Village Study, Smithsonian Institution, Secretary's Fund

1971 -- Exhibition, A Korean Village: Its Changing Culture, which was later adapted as a traveling exhibition in the United States and Canada

1974 -- Exhibition, Bhutan: The Land of Dragons

1975 -- Invited Participant, Pakistan-Sind Government International Seminar

1977 -- Exhibition, Arms and Armor of Japan

1978 -- Retired, Smithsonian Institution Fellow, The Explorers Club, New York

1979 -- Anthropologist Emeritus, Smithsonian Institution Award, Himalayan Project, Tibetan Buddhism and Its Role in Society and State, National Endowment for the Humanities, which led to a publication by Knez with Franz Michael

1981 -- Award, Fulbright Senior Scholar, Korea, Council for International Exchange of Scholars

1995 -- Presentation of The Order of Culture Merit (Gold Medal), Republic of Korea

Related Materials:

The National Anthropological Archives holds Franz H. Michael and Eugene I. Knez photographs and sound recordings relating to Tibetan Buddhism in northeastern India (NAA.PhotoLot.80-13).

Separated Materials:

The motion picture film was transferred to the Human Studies Film Archives in 2002 (HSFA.2002.09).

Provenance:

Most of the papers were donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Dr. Knez in 1978. There have been additional accretions since then.

Restrictions:

The Eugene Irving Knez papers are open for research.

Access to the Eugene Irving Knez papers requires an appointment.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Village life -- Korea  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Citation:

Eugene Irving Knez papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

Identifier:

NAA.1980-22

See more items in:

Eugene Irving Knez papers

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw35632d487-40c6-4e14-9b21-bab85debd8dd

EDAN-URL:

ead_collection:sova-naa-1980-22

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

2.91 Linear feet ((7 boxes))

Culture:

Tlingit  Search this

Eyak  Search this

Indians of North America -- Northwest Coast of North America  Search this

Indians of North America -- Subarctic  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Narratives

Place:

Yakutat (Alaska)

Date:

1939-circa 1957

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Alaska/Northwest Coast series contains Harrington's Tlingit and Eyak research. The materials consist of vocabulary, grammar, texts, notes on natural history and other related materials, and writings.

Harrington collected an early vocabulary list from Thomas Skeek. He also recorded rehearings with Skeek, and possibly Sheldon James, of vocabulary from Franz Boas' (1917) "Grammatical Notes on the Language of the Tlingit Indians" [former B.A.E. MS 4103 pt.]. George Johnson provided forms in Yakutat Tlingit (the "Juneau language"), which are marked by "Y." "C." Harrington also copied and reheard a manuscript by Elizabeth Langdon Jacobs titled "Alaskan Tlingit and its Athabaskan Relatives," a paper based in part on her Oregon Athapascan fieldwork around 1935. New data are unmarked, although presumably from Skeek, as suggested by the dates Jan. 18 and 19, 1940. A third basis for elicitation was H. V. Velten's (1939) "Two Southern Tlingit Tales." Only a few lexical items from this article were reheard with Skeek. The remaining vocabulary consists mainly of nouns arranged by Harrington's semantic categories. [Parts formerly cataloged as B.A.E. MS 4100 pt.] Forms from Skeek (Tl.) are followed by those from Johnson (Y. and C.). Skeek is mentioned by name only when his forms are corrected by Johnson. Nonlinguistic data from these speakers and others are interspersed. References are made to specimens collected by Grasty.

The section of field notes Harrington labeled "Grammar" consists in part of notes on phonetics. It also includes a rehearing by Skeek and Johnson of a portion of a comparative Athapascan vocabulary divided into such categories as verbs, greetings, colors, and numbers. Compiled by Harrington and Robert W. Young in the fall and early winter of 1939, the Athapascan questionnaire was alternately referred to as the "Navaho lists" or the "Tlats[kanai] Voc[abulary]." The latter name alluded to the fact that it was organized to follow numbered entries from Boas and Goddard's "Vocabulary of an Athapascan Dialect of the State of Washington" (1924).

Texts are in English with scattered vocabulary items in Tlingit and ethnological and historical references. Stories from George Johnson concern Raven, King Salmon, and Fort Ankau. Myths told by Maggie Adams are about Raven. Tales from this last group were written down first by George Grasty and later copied and rechecked by Harrington.

Harrington's notes on the natural history of the Yakutat area [former B.A.E. MS 4103 pt.] are, in a sense, a diary of the boat trip made to the Head of the Bay. His descriptions of glaciers and the local flora and fauna are particularly detailed and related placenames and native terms are also provided. Scientific observations by Grasty alternate with historical and biographical information volunteered by Ellis and Johnson during the course of the trip.

Harrington's writings on Tlingit and Eyak are undated and could have been prepared as much as several years after his fieldwork was completed. They include works in various stages of preparation, only one of which was published. Dealing with phonetics are an outline titled "Lhiinkit Paper," a rough and final draft of a manuscript "Tlingit Sounds," and two versions of the paper which was eventually published as "Phonematic Daylight in Lhiinkit, Navajo of the North" (1945). "Salmon Write-up" [former B.A.E. MS 4100 pt.] consists of handwritten notes on salmon species with ethnographic details in fishing, storage, and modern-day canning techniques. The typescript "Southern Peripheral Athapaskawan in Alaska and Canada" [former B.A.E. MS 4100 pt.] was probably intended for publication as a B.A.E. bulletin with Robert W. Young as coauthor. Harrington completed only the sections on plant and animal parts and names. Species designations are given with native terms in Tlingit (Lh.) and Eyak (Atch.) and notes on appearances and uses.

Biographical / Historical:

John P. Harrington's work on Tlingit began in December 1939 while visiting Melville and Elizabeth Langdon Jacobs in Seattle. At the U.S. Marine Hospital he located Thomas Skeek (referred to as Skeek), a native of Kake, Alaska, and Sheldon James (James). He worked with these two speakers until at least mid-January of 1940.

From James he learned of George Johnson (GJ), a bilingual speaker of Tlingit and Eyak residing at Yakutat, Alaska. Harrington hoped to bring Johnson to Seattle immediately to work; however, it was not until April that he was authorized to begin the work. He spent 32 days--from approximately May 12 to June 14--at Yakutat, working regularly eight hours a day with George Johnson and his wife Annie. In the evenings Harrington put in time with other speakers such as Maggie Adams (Mag., M.) and Peter Lawrence. In May he and Johnson made day trips to Situk River and Fort Ankau and joined Jack Ellis (JE) and his son John on a three day trip to the head of Yakutat Bay in their gas-powered boat.

In nonlinguistic matters Harrington received the assistance of the Reverend and Mrs. E. M. Axelson, with whom he had corresponded during his attempts to contact George Johnson. For biological data on plant and animal specimens collected, he consulted his assistant George M. Grasty and various botanists in Juneau and Washington, D.C.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Tlingit language  Search this

Eyak language  Search this

Athapascan languages  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Ethnozoology  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Narratives

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 1.2

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 1: Native American History, Language, and Culture of Alaska and the Northwest Coast

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw379ebb6f1-158b-497d-8063-3399cb94e5e6

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref12488

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Merriam, C. Hart (Clinton Hart), 1855-1942  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

18 Boxes

Culture:

Salinan Indians  Search this

Indians of North America -- California  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Vocabulary

Narratives

Maps

Date:

1912-1932

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Northern and Central California series contains Harrington's research on Salinan.

His Migueleno field notes from 1912 and 1913 contain vocabulary, English summaries of myths, and ethnographic and biographical notes from Juan Solano and Pacifico Archuleta. The linguistic and ethnographic portion of these field notes were also copied onto slipfiles and filed semantically. The originals of notes labeled "Pac." appear to be missing.

Materials from his 1922 fieldwork consist of Antoniano and Migueleno field notes and vocabulary. These include extensive linguistic notes from Maria and David Mora. While Maria was the principal source for Migueleno and David for Antoniano, they occasionally gave cognate forms in both languages. Much of the data was given in response to questions regarding vocabulary items published by J. Alden Mason (1918). A citation such as "On Mas. M." was used to indicate this. One section of phrases was evidently elicited by Harrington for purposes of comparison with Esselen forms. Another set of files consists of vocabulary that Harrington copied from the original field notes and arranged semantically. The notes on plants and animals are particularly extensive and contain commentary from Petronilo Gomez. There are numerous references to terms copied from the vocabulary portion of Mason's "The Language of the Salinan Indians." A few copies of notes from Pacifico Archuleta and Juan Solano are also filed here.

Harrington's research from 1931 consists of notes from rehearings with Maria de los Angeles, David Mora, and, to a lesser extent, Tito Encinales, of published works by J. Alden Mason and Father Bonaventura Sitjar's Antoniano vocabulary. They, including a woman identified simply as Maggie, also reviewed linguistic data collected in 1922 from David and Maria Jesusa Mora. Harrington wanted to form an "ethnological dictionary" from the linguistic notes and arranged them into semantic groupings. The section on plants includes remarks on lists of plants native to Mutsun territory in California and to New Mexico and rehearing of ethnobotanical information published by Engelhardt (1929). There is also a section of stories containing English and Spanish summaries of myths.

The subseries also contains notes on placenames. The earliest set consists of notes which he made in Washington, D.C. in 1930 on a list of rancheria names obtained in 1929. English or Spanish equivalents are given for the Indian placenames. There are also notes from placename trips, which include etymologies of Indian placenames, explanations of the significance of sites, sketch maps, references to myths, biographical notes, and notes on photographs he took. Other materials include notes from interviews with Buck Davis and J.C. Curtin and rehearings of rancheria names published by Zephyrin Engelhardt (1929).

The miscellaneous section consists mostly of notes recorded from David and Maria Mora and from Maria de los Angeles from February 1930 to February 1932; some are undated. Among the data included are unsorted vocabulary and phrases (particularly on animals and plants), observations on phonetics, and ethnographic and biographical references in English and Spanish. Also filed here are notes on a letter from C. Hart Merriam (December 26, 1929), with comments on Esselen. The last group of notes is a set of instructions from Harrington to Arthur E. Harrington, his nephew, and Paul Garda, son of a Chumash informant, on making sound recordings from Maria de los Angeles and David Mora.

Biographical / Historical:

John P. Harrington undertook fieldwork on the Salinan dialects during three phases of his career. In 1912 and 1913 he worked for several days with two Migueleno speakers, Juan Solano and Pacifico Archuleta. He interviewed Archuleta again briefly in 1915. During a lengthy period of time in the field in 1922, he contacted David and Maria Mora, recording extensive Antoniano and Migueleno vocabularies from them. Approximately ten years later he returned to work with David as well as with Maria de los Angeles and her husband, Tito Encinales. The primary focus of his study was the rehearing of his earlier field notes and the checking of data from several manuscript and published sources. He also took a number of trips by car and on horseback to collect botanical specimens for identification and to gather placename data. Others that he worked with included Rosario Cooper and Petronilo Gomez.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Salinan language  Search this

Esselen language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Zoology -- nomenclature  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Toponymy  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Vocabulary

Narratives

Maps

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 2.15

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 2: Papers Relating to the Native American history, language and culture of northern and central California

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw3a9be1b9c-dd6a-48c5-b29d-5a0b9acedd6d

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref13856

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Laird, Carobeth, 1895-1983  Search this

Roberts, Helen H. (Helen Heffron), 1888-1985  Search this

Names:

Hewitt, J. N. B. (John Napoleon Brinton), 1859-1937  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

20 Boxes

Culture:

Yokuts  Search this

Indians of North America -- California  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Vocabulary

Songs

Maps

Place:

California -- History

Date:

1914-circa 1957

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Northern and Central California series contains Harrington's research on the Yokuts.

Notes from his fieldwork in 1914 include references to residents who he thought might be able to assist him in his research, detailed descriptions of house construction and the fabrication of sleeping mats, and small sketches of pictographs which Harrington had seen in the region. Amidst the miscellaneous notes are lists of baskets which he purchased, notes on photographs he took and bibliographic references from C. Hart Merriam. Harrington also copied extracts of his field notes onto slipfiles, which he filed under a variety of subject headings. The Tachi file contains ethnographic notes from Roberto Bautista and Agnes Light as well as a few Tachi lexical items. The file labeled "Tule" consists of mixed linguistic and ethnographic data from Jim Alto and Mr. Edmundson at the Tule River Reservation and notes on the Tachi dialect recorded from Pacifico Archuleta.

The section of linguistic, ethnographic, historical, and biographical notes consists of raw field data collected by Harrington and Carobeth from twenty residents of Yokuts territory during the period 1916-1917. Topics include vocabulary, placenames, tribenames, myths, ceremonial regalia and dances, songs, and religion. The notes from Josefa Damian, marked "Jos. Mar.," feature extensive data on relationship terms, age and sex terms, and moieties in Chunut, Tachi, Tejonefio, and Wowol. The most extensive notes were recorded from Francisca Lola. The notes contain voluminous amounts of linguistic data (vocabulary and paradigms) in Koyeti, Yawdanchi, Choynok, and Tachi as well as equivalent forms in "R. C." (Rio Chiquito). The material is also rich in ethnographic detail, providing information on uses of plants (Tejon ranch specimens), ceremonies, fiestas, dances, and material culture accompanied by diagrams and sketches. In addition, there are biographical notes on informants, myths, and texts of songs.

A year after collecting his field data on Yokuts, Harrington made copies of his notes and arranged them into several sizable slipfiles. One major file was created for the Chunut and Tachi languages, and another for the Yawelmani, Koyeti, Yawdanchi, and Wikchamni languages. There are also small slipfiles for Choynok and Palewyami. The slipfiles are organized semantically; headings included are cosmography, plants, animals, "artifacts" (material culture), sociology, religion, tribenames, and placenames. They include information regarding plant speciments collected by Harrington at the Tejon Ranch.

An additional step that Harrington took in the analysis of his Yokuts field data was the development of an outline grammar of the Yawelmani dialect. He extracted vocabulary and linguistic notes from the semantically arranged slipfiles, marking the slips which he copied with a check mark or the notation "gr." The data which he extracted are largely Yawelmani, although vocabulary and sentences from Koyeti, Yawdanchi, Chunut, and Tachi are included for comparative purposes. Harrington also submitted multiple manuscripts of his Yawelmani grammar to the Bureau of American Ethnology (former B.A.E. Mss. 2973, 3041, 3047, 3048, and 3054).

Harrington's files relating to the Tejon Ranch Case contain correspondence dating from 1921 to 1924, legal documents, a copy of a census taken at the ranch, and documentary evidence from a variety of secondary sources including military records, newspaper accounts, and Senate documents. The major portion of the records consists of notes from interviews with about twenty Tejon residents. The content is primarily biographical, with placename references. In many cases the notes were taken down in the form of depositions. Harrington simultaneously recorded lengthy Yokuts myth texts as well as stories in English and Spanish. Information from a number of the informants was formerly cataloged as B. A. E. ms. 3046. There is also a carbon copy of a "Report on Tejon Indians, Kern County, California" submitted by Herbert V. Clotts, Acting Superintendent of Irrigation, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on January 15, 1918.

Records relating to sound recordings pertain to songs performed by five Yokuts speakers and two Kitanemuks. The songs were recorded on wax by Harrington in Yokuts territory during the periods 1916-1917. The cylinders were sent to ethnomusicologist Helen H. Roberts in 1921 to review. The bulk of this section contains her lengthy notes on the texts of songs, accompanied by musical transcriptions.

The final section of this subseries consists of miscellaneous notes. There are notes from interviews and correspondence with information on boat construction, a sketch map received in a 1925 letter, notes relative to a conversation with J.N.B. Hewitt in 1926, notes from an interview with Angel Sanchez and Bill Skinner, and information from Roberts on song text. There are also copies of Harrington's own field notes and notes on secondary sources.

Biographical / Historical:

John P. Harrington worked on the Yokuts language a number of times during his forty years of fieldwork in California. This study certainly matches the breadth of the data for Karok and Salinan and is surpassed in volume only by his output for Costanoan and Chumash.

Harrington's first contact with the so-called "Tulareno" people occurred in late September to early October 1914 on a two-week trip to the San Joaquin Valley. At that time he made short visits to the Santa Rosa rancheria near Lemoore, to the Tule Indian Reservation near Porterville, and to Bakersfield as part of a dialect survey. A limited amount of additional data was obtained in 1914 and 1915 during the course of his work on Salinan and Chumash. Migueleno speaker Pacifico Archuleta, whose wife, Suncion, was Yokuts, gave a limited Tachi vocabulary, and Rosario Cooper, an Obispeno speaker, also provided several words.

In November 1916 Harrington traveled to the Tejon region, ostensibly to work with Jose Juan Olivas, an inland Chumash speaker. It appears, in addition, that for a virtually uninterrupted period from that time until September 1917, Harrington (assisted by his wife, Carobeth) made an in-depth study of a number of Southern Valley and Foothills Yokuts dialects, obtaining extensive vocabularies and texts, as well as a considerable amount of ethnographic and historical data. This work took them to the valley near the Santa Rosa rancheria and to the Tule River Reservation. Harrington also made trips with informants to obtain placename data and to collect, identify, and describe botanical specimens. The observance of ceremonial rituals during that winter afforded him the opportunity of recording on wax cylinders and in writing a significant number of songs.

The flare-up of the Tejon Ranch case, which threatened to disinherit many Indians of their tribal lands, brought Harrington back to the area in February 1922. As a special temporary appointee to the Department of the Interior, he was responsible for obtaining depositions from the elderly residents of the Tejon. He simultaneously elicited additional biographical, historical, and linguistic data for his own work. The case was argued before the Supreme Court on February 28, 1924. In June of that year the court held that the Indians had abandoned the land. The decision was based on the Indians' failure to present their claim to the commission appointed under the act of March 1851 to ascertain and adjust private land claims in territory ceded by Mexico to the United States.

In the fall of 1923, he took a number of Yokuts to the Ventura County Fair to perform dances, to demonstrate house and boat building techniques, and to exhibit their crafts. He also made trips to Yokuts territory in the early 1930s and again in January 1942. These were possibly side trips made during the course of other work to follow upon the Tejon Ranch case.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Yokuts language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Ethnomusicology  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Names, Ethnological  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Vocabulary

Songs

Maps

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 2.16

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 2: Papers Relating to the Native American history, language and culture of northern and central California

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw34367f9fc-3a4a-44fa-8d76-e8ad250f8dfe

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref13960

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Names:

Jochelson, Waldemar, 1855-1937  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

1 Item (box)

Culture:

Indians of North America -- Northwest Coast of North America  Search this

Unangan (Aleut)  Search this

Tlingit  Search this

Eyak  Search this

Duwamish (Dwamish)  Search this

Chimakum  Search this

Klallam (Clallam)  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Date:

circa 1907-circa 1957

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Notes and writings on special linguistic studies series contains material that supplement Harrington's Alaska and Northwest Coast field notes.

The Aleut file includes several pages of "Aleutian Storilets," a rough draft of an introduction to a grammar, six pages of information on Waldemar Jochelson, an annotated bibliography, and other miscellaneous notes. His Tlingit/Eyak files contain five pages of placename vocabulary from Mrs. Willie Loftus and Mrs. Frank Booth. Additional material relating to Tlingit consists of five pages of heading sheets and notes referring to Harrington's "Salmon Write-up" and a rough sketch and printer's proof of the diagram used on page 3 of his article "Phonematic Daylight in Lhiinkit, Navajo of the North" which was published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1945. Duwamish material consists of "Sounds of the Duwamish Language" presented in a large chart. Chimakum data from Louise Buttner and Clallam data from Emily Webster are included in three pages of miscellaneous notes. The Alea/Suislaw/Coos section contains two pages of notes on travels from Marshfield. Southwest Oregon Athapascan contains a mixture of linguistic and nonlinguistic data from Mark Collson, Coquille Thompson, Larry Frank Fogarty, and Johnny. Harrington's miscellany on Alaska/Northwest Coast consist of a few bibliographic, biographical, linguistic, and ethnographic notes. They mention tribes or languages in Alaska, Washington, or Oregon. The file of Harrington's writings on the Northwest Coast begins with material which was missing from his notes and drafts for the paper "Southern Peripheral Athapaskawan Origins, Divisions, and Migrations." There are a dozen pages under the heading "Nav[ajo] expansion," the last two pages of which are in the hand of Robert W. Young. The file continues with notes to the compositor and lists of corrections to be made to proofs of the article "Pacific Coast Athapascan Discovered to Be Chilcotin" which appeared in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1943. Among the materials which Harrington collected from others are twenty pages in the hand of John Paul Marr who acted as his field assistant in the 1940s. Marr's papers include notes on possible informants on Chinook jargon at Tahola, Washington; a copy of a Chinook word list from Chinook, A History and Dictionary of the Northwest Coast Trade Jargon by Edward H. Thomas; and questionnaires labeled "Words for Indian Use."

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Aleut language  Search this

Athapascan languages  Search this

Tlingit language  Search this

Eyak language  Search this

Puget Sound Salish languages  Search this

Chimakuan languages  Search this

Clallam language  Search this

Chinook Jargon  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Genre/Form:

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 8.1

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 8: Notes and Writings on Special Linguistic Studies

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw303732a42-257b-4262-8775-eb224a593e3a

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref15195

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Names:

Geronimo, 1829-1909  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

1 Boxe

Culture:

Apache  Search this

Hopi Pueblo  Search this

Tewa Pueblos  Search this

A:shiwi (Zuni)  Search this

Diné (Navajo)  Search this

Indians of North America -- Southwest, New  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Vocabulary

Maps

Date:

circa 1907-circa 1957

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Notes and writings on special linguistic studies series contains material that supplement Harrington's Southwest field notes. The materials cover the Apache, Hopi, Zuni, and Tewa. There are also some general and miscellaneous materials.

The Apache section supplements the notes and drafts for a proposed paper on the life of Geronimo. There is an electrostatic copy of a letter from W. B. Hill to Harrington dated September 23, 1936, in which he enclosed a photograph of Robert Geronimo, the son of the Chiricahua chief. The photograph was used by Charles K. Shirley to make an ink sketch, which is present along with a caption. The Hopi file includes a pocket-sized notebook which Harrington used while conducting fieldwork during May 1926. The notebook contains a brief record of a trip from Somes Bar to Eureka with Mr. Ike, a Karok informant; an expense account for the month of May; miscellaneous personal notes and addresses; and instructions on the use of a camera and compass. Data specifically relating to Hopi include several tiny sketch maps, notes on possible informants and on dances, songs, and kachinas, and a few lexical items from Tom Povatiya (Walpi) and Otto Lomavitu (Oraibi). There are also bibliographic notes for a proposed paper on "The Sounds of the Hopi Language," probably prepared in 1946. The Zuni notes consist of four native names for plants. There are two entries each under the headings "Fungus" and "Pinacea-Pine Family." Most of the supplemental notes on Tewa consist of an alphabetical list of tribenames and placenames from "Abechiu" to "Rio Grande." This file represents a portion of the etymological material which Harrington compiled around 1910 for use in his publication "The Ethnography of the Tewa Indians." Found with this file was a set of about fifty small slips containing one vocabulary item per slip. Most of the words are anatomical terms.

General and miscellaneous materials consist of a typed slip listing residents of Acomita, Casa Blanca, Seama, and Laguna who were possible informants for early fieldwork; a two-page description of Catherine Swan, a young woman whom Harrington met at Elden Pueblo in August 1926; a message to Robert Young (ca. 1936 to 1939) regarding the format of a Navaho primer; and information on the placename "Chaco" (January to February 1946). A note on Tewa and Spanish "accentuology" and notes for a description of the Olivella River were written in the 1940s. There are also two pages of notes on Washington Matthews's paper "The Night Chant, a Navaho Ceremony" (1902) as well as numbered captions for photographs which were taken at a number of archeological excavations. These are divided into separate sections on Rito de los Frijoles, Mesa Verde, Puye, and ruins in southern Utah; one caption mentions Professor Kidder.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Hopi language  Search this

Zuni language  Search this

Tewa language  Search this

Spanish language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Names, Ethnological  Search this

Excavations (Archaeology)  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Vocabulary

Maps

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 8.4

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 8: Notes and Writings on Special Linguistic Studies

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw3d780d737-eeec-444c-bb78-5854384d0595

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref15278

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

8 Boxes

Type:

Archival materials

Notes

Vocabulary

Date:

circa 1902-circa 1947

Scope and Contents:

This subseries is part of the Notes and writings on special linguistic studies series in the John P. Harrington papers. His research on non-American languages are gathered here in an alphabetically arranged file. His notes cover African languages, Ainu, Anglo-Saxon, Aramaic, Bulgarian, Burushaski, Chinese, Danish, English, French, Gaelic, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indic languages, Indo-European languages, Italian, Kurdish, Latin, Lithuanian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Semitic languages, Siamese, Slavic languages, Tagalog, Tamil, Tungus, Turkish, Ural-Altaic languages, Welsh, and Yiddish.The records contain a wide variety of materials, derived largely from secondary sources. There are bibliographic references, library request slips, and reading notes, as well as photostats and some printed matter. Also included are vocabulary lists, phonetic tables, texts, charts of linguistic relationships, notes from interviews, and copies of related correspondence. For the most part notes for any given language are scanty (from one to ten pages) and highly miscellaneous. His notes on Aramaic and Persian, however, are somewhat more organized and considerably more substantial, comprising several hundred pages each. Notes, largely on phonetics, that he obtained from his research at the New York Public Library and Columbia University account for a sizeable percentage of this subseries.

Biographical / Historical:

By far the major focus of John P. Harrington's linguistic studies was the numerous languages of North, Central, and South America. Over the course of his career, however, he amassed perhaps several thousand pages on other world languages.

Harrington studied classical and Indo-European languages at Stanford University from 1902 to 1905 and during his graduate work in Germany from 1905 to 1907. In the early years after his return to the United States he made a study on "The Frequency of French Sounds" and did comparisons between vowel sounds in French, Italian, Portuguese, and English.

Harrington's interest in many world languages was renewed in the early 1920s when he became friends with Paul Vogenitz, a translator in the Division of Foreign Mails at the Post Office Department. Vogenitz, a student mainly of European languages, urged Harrington to attend the language classes which he took from time to time. Although Harrington was not in a position to do this, the two men corresponded frequently in German, Spanish, Russian, and Nahuatl among other languages. Vogenitz also shared much of his knowledge with Harrington by preparing grammatical exercises, word lists, and phonetic summaries. Among the languages for which he provided this type of information are Ainu, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, and Yiddish.

From February through April 1923, Harrington corresponded with T. T. Waterman regarding the latter's plan to prepare a map of the linguistic families of the world. Probably because of their proposed collaboration, Harrington made a trip to New York City in March. On this occasion he made use of secondary sources at the New York Public Library and Columbia University.

As a result of Harrington's interest in Arabic influences on the Spanish spoken in the American southwest, he began his study of Persian in 1928 in "an attempt toward transliterating into an international phonetic script the Calcutta version of the quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam."

During the 1930s Harrington collaborated with Moses Steinberg and George M. Lamsa in the translation and reinterpretation of various religious texts in Aramaic, such as the Talmud and the Gospels.

Harrington also collected data on a wide variety of languages from approximately 1940 to 1947 while he was at work on a treatise titled "Linguistics." At this time he added material to his files on Latin, Greek, and the Celtic, eastern European, and Indic languages.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Language and languages  Search this

African languages  Search this

Ainu language  Search this

Aramaic language  Search this

Bulgarian language  Search this

Burushaski language  Search this

Chinese language  Search this

Danish language  Search this

English language -- Old English, ca. 450-1100  Search this

English language  Search this

Evenki language  Search this

French language  Search this

Georgian language  Search this

German language  Search this

Scottish Gaelic language  Search this

Greek language  Search this

Hebrew language  Search this

Hungarian language  Search this

Icelandic language  Search this

Indo-European languages  Search this

Italian language  Search this

Kurdish language  Search this

Latin language  Search this

Lithuanian language  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Persian language  Search this

Polish language  Search this

Russian language  Search this

Semitic languages  Search this

Thai language  Search this

Slavic languages  Search this

Tagalog language  Search this

Tamil language  Search this

Turkish language  Search this

Ural-Altaic languages  Search this

Welsh language  Search this

Yiddish language  Search this

Grammar, Comparative and general  Search this

Phonetics  Search this

Genre/Form:

Notes

Vocabulary

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 8.11

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 8: Notes and Writings on Special Linguistic Studies

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw326362a1b-d91d-463f-9366-9ae49d827364

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref15380

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Yatchmeneff, Ivan  Search this

Martin, Fredericka I.  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

7.29 Linear feet ((20 boxes))

Culture:

Unangan (Aleut)  Search this

Arctic peoples  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Narratives

Manuscripts

Place:

Saint Paul Island (Alaska)

Date:

1941-1949

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Alaska/Northwest Coast series contains Harrington's Aleut research. The materials primarily consist of vocabulary, texts, and grammar.

Harrington used the dictionary portion of Veniaminov (1846) as the basis for compiling his Aleut vocabulary. Photostatted entries were pasted up, one to a page, and reheard with native speakers. Ivan Yatchmeneff provided retranscriptions in Russian characters and retranslations in English, doing much of the writing himself. Excerpts from Jochelson (1919) and a number of nonlinguistic publications were frequently interspersed with the field data.

A portion of the rechecked vocabulary was arranged numerically by Veniaminov's Aleut entry. The remaining entries were organized semantically and supplemented by original notes. The categories dealing with ethnobotany, ethnozoology, and placenames are particularly extensive and include rough sketches, maps, and references to several collections of specimens.

Most of the texts are native stories in Aleut and English, obtained from Ivan Yatchmeneff and several others on St. Paul Island. The remainder were obtained from Alexandra Gromoff during her stay in New York. She frequently translated English texts written by Fredericka Martin Berenberg, who added marginalia and interlinear notes and forwarded the material on to Harrington.

Harrington began his work on grammar by translating and rehearing Veniaminov (1846) with the aid of Father Baranoff and Ivan Yatchmeneff. Later, in the summer of 1947, he asked Berenberg to work with Alexandra Gromoff in order to clarify certain grammatical points. Because Gromoff was undergoing an operation at the time, he referred to the completed inventory as the "Hosp[ital] Questionnaire. "

Harrington's own grammatical write-up was left in outline form. It consists of handwritten drafts of an introduction and notes for each chapter, many of which cite the published works or manuscripts of other linguists. In 1948 he submitted a typescript titled "Unalaska Aleutian Grammar" [former B.A.E. ms. 4783] for review as a potential publication of the B.A.E. Although it contains an introduction and a detailed table of contents and is supplemented by semantic word lists, this later draft is also far from complete.

Biographical / Historical:

Although very few of John P. Harrington's Aleut field notes are dated, his annual reports and correspondence, particularly that with Fredericka Martin Berenberg, indicate that he worked on St. Paul Island, Alaska, from October through December of 1941, writing up the material at later periods in Washington, D.C. (probably 1943 and again 1947 to 1949). Ivan Alexis Yatchmeneff (abbreviated Я, Yach., Yatch.), a speaker of the Unalaska dialect, was the primary source of linguistic information. A number of nonnatives traveling or living in the Aleutians provided him with cultural and botanical information.

Harrington had several collaborators throughout his work. John Paul Marr (Jackie, Jacq.), his field assistant during the late 1930s and early 1940s, accompanied him to the Aleutians to aid with the collection of plant and animal specimens, the review of secondary source materials, and the preparation of sound recordings. Makary A. Baranoff (Baranov, Fr. B.), a Russian priest on St. Paul Island, collaborated in the translation of Ivan Veniaminov's (1846) Opyt grammatiki and commented upon much of the linguistic data reelicited from Ivan Yatchmeneff. Fredericka Martin Berenberg (Mrs. Ber., Mrs. B., Freddie), who later edited The Aleut Language by Richard H. Geoghegan, shared her knowledge of the inhabitants, local history, and geography during Harrington's stay. After leaving the island, she continued to correspond with him, and in the late 1940s brought Alexandra Gromoff (Alex., Alec., Alice, A.), to live with her and attend college in New York State. Harrington managed to work briefly with Gromoff during several weekends in August and September 1948, although most of his work was done through Berenberg.

Harrington's study of Aleut relied heavily upon the work of the Russians Ivan Veniaminov (Ven.) and Waldemar I. Jochelson (Joch.). He also elaborated upon the historical and placename information obtained from a number of publications pertaining to the islands.

Harrington's only publication on Aleut is a review (1947) of The Aleut Language.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Aleut language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Ethnozoology  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Narratives

Manuscripts

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 1.1

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 1: Native American History, Language, and Culture of Alaska and the Northwest Coast

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw3d3fee4d8-09ec-4524-a871-a12d9a853e06

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref12321

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Names:

Smith, Jedediah Strong, 1799-1831  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

3.75 Linear feet ((10 boxes))

Culture:

Alsea  Search this

Siuslaw Indians  Search this

Coos (Kusan)  Search this

Umpqua Indians  Search this

Indians of North America -- Northwest Coast of North America  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Narratives

Place:

Oregon

Date:

1933, 1942

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Alaska/Northwest Coast series contains Harrington's research on Alsea, Siuslaw, and Coos. The materials consist mostly of vocabulary for the three languages, as well as terms in Lower Umpqua and Chinook jargon. A small section of notes deals mainly with phonetics and includes comments on Frachtenberg and Jacobs' publications, as well as general observations made by Harrington during various stages of his work in the field. A section of written notes are accompanied by "sementographs," visual representations of the sounds present in each language. Vocabulary and nonlinguistic information on plants and animals are also present, along with placename vocabulary. His placename notes also include information on tribal boundaries and linguistic relationships; the location, etymology, English pronunciation, and history of places in the three tribal areas, and anecdotes and biographical data. Abstracts in English of mythological texts are also present, along with descriptions, anecdotes, and reminiscences by Lottie Evanoff, Frank Drew, Spencer Scott, and Clayton Barrett, with references to events of both personal and historical significance. There is also material relating to the 1931 U.S. Court of Claims case "Coos Bay, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indian Tribes vs the United States" with comments by Frank Drew on the tesimony from tribal members. In addition, Harrington's files include notes from a conversation with George Wasson in 1933. Topics include Wasson's life and discussions regarding tribal territories and language boundaries, canoe construction, burial, and the historical figure Jedediah Smith. Harrington's notes also contain scattered quotations from Louie Fuller (LL), Clara Pearson (Clara), and Sammy Jackson, three Tillamook speakers Harrington had interviewed earlier in 1942.

Biographical / Historical:

John P. Harrington's work on these neighboring languages began in Oakville, Washington in early April of 1942. While interviewing Lizzie Johnson (Liz.) and Minnie Case (Min.) regarding Kwalhioqua, he also worked with John Albert (Ja.), the last speaker of Alsea (Als.) He had occasion to recheck the linguistic data with Albert sometime in May (there is a reference to May 23 in the notes), possibly at Siletz, Oregon, his home before moving to Oakville. These notes are labeled "Ja. rhg."

Around June, July, and possibly August of the same year, Harrington recorded Coos--both the Hanis (H., Empire) and Miluk (M., South Slough) varieties--and Siuslaw (Sius.) and Lower Umpqua (L.U., Ump.) from Frank Henry Drew (referred to as Frank) in Florence, Oregon. In Marshfield, Harrington interviewed Lottie Evanoff (Lottie, Lot.), formerly Lottie Jackson, daughter of a prominent Coos chief and cousin of Annie Peterson, who had worked with Melville Jacobs. Additional sources of information for Coos were Martha Johnson, a neighbor of Frank Drew; the Wasson sisters, Lolly, Nellie, and Daisy; and Lottie Evanoff's niece, Nellie Aason.

He also obtained information from Spencer Scott (called Spencer or rarely Spen.), who may have also served as an interpreter for Harrington. He knew John Albert and had formerly spoken Alsea with him when they were boys at Siletz. He could also speak Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw. Lesser amounts of Siuslawan data were provided by Clayton Hudson Barrett and his younger half-brother, Howard Barrett (called Clay. and Howard). Nonlinguistic information came from Alec Evanoff, Lottie's husband; Carl Severy, Frank Drew's son-in-law; the Collson family; John Waters; and Larry Hofer.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Alsea language  Search this

Siuslaw language  Search this

Coos language  Search this

Chinook Jargon  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Zoology -- nomenclature  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Toponymy  Search this

Coosan  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Narratives

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 1.11

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 1: Native American History, Language, and Culture of Alaska and the Northwest Coast

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw3dab4ab01-ed32-4b8a-9377-7d8266549ea0

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref12898

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Waterman, T. T. (Thomas Talbot), b. 1885  Search this

Greiner, Ruth H.  Search this

Marr, John Paul  Search this

Garfield, Viola Edmundson, 1899-1983  Search this

Gunther, Erna, 1896-1982  Search this

Young, Robert W., 1912-2007  Search this

Names:

Angulo, Jaime de  Search this

Bloomfield, Leonard, 1887-1949  Search this

Boas, Franz, 1858-1942  Search this

Frachtenberg, Leo Joachim, 1883-1930  Search this

Hoijer, Harry, 1904-1976  Search this

Jacobs, Melville, 1902-1971  Search this

Ray, Verne Frederick, 1905-2003  Search this

Swadesh, Morris, 1909-1967  Search this

Voegelin, C. F. (Charles Frederick), 1906-1986  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

1.83 Linear feet ((6 boxes))

Culture:

Indians of North America -- Northwest Coast of North America  Search this

Indians of North America -- Subarctic  Search this

Indians of North America -- Plateau  Search this

Coos (Kusan)  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Maps

Place:

Olympic Peninsula (Wash.)

Wishram (Wash.)

Northwest Coast of North America

Oregon

Puget Sound (Wash.)

Date:

1933, 1938-1943

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Alaska/Northwest Coast series consists of materials pertaining to the area Alaska / Northwest Coast as a whole and those which are too limited in scope to constitute a full subseries in themselves. Included are writings by Harrington, notes from his conversations with others, notes from secondary sources, and field notes and writings he collected from others. Some items date as early as 1933; most are from the period 1938 to 1943.

The writings represent Harrington's attempt to synthesize the results of his years of work in the Northwest--particularly with regard to his Athapascan studies. There are several typed drafts of an untitled paper [former B.A.E. ms. 4360] dated April 4, 1943 on the tribal distribution along the Oregon coast. This work, accompanied by a map, describes tribal boundaries in detail and makes reference to the geographical and cultural setting. There follow notes, outlines, rough and final drafts of three papers of varying length relating to Harrington's theories on the origin and relationship of the Athapascan languages. Two of these were published (1940, 1943). Illustrations sent to the printer are also included here. The section of writings also contains several pages of notes and very rough drafts of short articles on the etymology of the term "Athapascan."

The notes from conversations vary in length and content. Information from Franz Boas consists of two undated pages concerning phonetics in Coast Salish and Chinook. From a March 1933 discussion with Joe Maloney, Harrington obtained data on tribes of southwestern Oregon, predominently on the Coos. W. O. Thorniley of the Puget Sound Navigation Company provided biographical and general information of the Olympic Peninsula, with special attention to the Ozette and Queets areas. Thomas Yallup spoke on Wishram, the tribal boundaries and practices of neighboring tribes, and possible informants.

Most significant are records of Harrington's meetings with Melville Jacobs in December 1939. Those discussions referred to Jacobs' own studies and included comments on the work of other linguists and anthropologists such as Jaime de Angulo, Leonard Bloomfield, Franz Boas, Leo J. Frachtenberg, Harry Hoijer, Verne F. Ray, Morris Swadesh, and C. F. Voegelin. The notes also reflect a mutual interest in orthographies, the relationship of Athapascan languages (particularly Kwalhioqua and Tlatskanai), and the theory of the Siberian origin and migration of the North American Indian. This section includes a few interspersed notes from Erna Gunther and Viola Garfield.

Notes from secondary sources consists of a few pages on each of several miscellaneous topics. The notes reflect Harrington's attempt to locate a speaker of Cayuse, and his interest in the early voyages to the Northwest Coast. Also included are comparative data on Athapascan languages compiled into a chart from a variety of manuscript and published sources.

Notes and writings from others include a small set of sketch maps and field data collected for Harrington by his assistant John Paul Marr. These notes were obtained while Harrington was in Washington, D.C. and unable to get to the field himself. There is also a section of original field notes on Puget Sound ethnogeography obtained from Thomas Talbot Waterman. They cover his collection of placename data in Clallam and in the Shoalwater Bay area in the period 1919-1921 and are supplemented by original notes from Ruth H. Greiner dated 1920-1921. Her records consist of lists of numbered placenames in a variety of Puget Sound Salish languages, with translations, etymologies, and brief commentaries. These field data were part of the basis for a manuscript Waterman prepared for the Bureau of American Ethnology (Waterman 1922) and are keyed to a number of large maps contained therein. Harrington also collected a short typed paper by his co-worker Robert W. Young dated 1938. This article, relevant to their study of Navaho, puts forward a theory on the origin and dispersion of a branch of Athapascan languages. It contains charts and numbered examples of linguistic features in Navaho, Carrier, Sekani, Chipewyan, Hare, and Hupa, among other languages.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Athapascan languages  Search this

Chinook language  Search this

Puget Sound Salish languages  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Maps

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 1.15

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 1: Native American History, Language, and Culture of Alaska and the Northwest Coast

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw381bdc6ea-ff32-4acc-9764-681613663942

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref13103

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

1 Boxe

Culture:

Hopi Pueblo  Search this

Indians of North America -- Southwest, New  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Place:

Arizona

Date:

1913-1946

Scope and Contents:

This set of files contains Harrington's Hopi research. The materials consist of Oraibi linguistic notes, Walpi linguistic notes, notes on phonetics, writings, and miscellaneous notes.

His Oraibi notes include geographical terms provided by Bert Fredericks in slipfile format, a short etymology of the village name Awatobi, and a small rudimentary file of phonetic sounds. While at Elden Pueblo, Harrington also elicited several Oraibi terms from Otto Lomavitu, described as an educated Indian associated with the Moravian missionaries. Kuyawaima, an elderly Oraibi, provided information on basket-making during another interview in August 1926. The majority of the early records in the Oraibi dialect consist of numbered pages of Harrington's handwritten notes which emerge as a combination of vocabulary, phrases, and grammar in the early stages of development, followed by a brief text on Coyote with interlinear translation. Pages 38, 39, and 40 contain a selected number of terms in Zuni.There is one brief mention of an individual named Ignacio but it is not clear whether the vocabularies originated with him. The elicitation was based partly on a rehearing of a typed "Oraivi Vocabulary" found accompanying the handwritten notes. Harrington was in California in 1912 and early 1913 and was engaged in various projects, one of which was copying manuscripts at the Bancroft Library, a possible source of this material.

Harrington's Walpi data from the work in 1926 and 1939 are of a much less systematic nature. A pocket-sized notebook which he used while at the Grand Canyon contains notes from a brief survey of Walpi speakers, random vocabulary items from Percy Hilling, and an outline of the sequence of songs performed by kutKa, the chief of Walpi, and others. Also recorded during this period are additional lexical items, possibly obtained from a man named Sam, and five pages describing a placename trip which Harrington made from Polacca to Holbrook.

The material from 1939 consists of notes from several brief interviews with Walpi speakers encountered in the Fort Defiance area. On September 27, 1939, Harrington recorded one page of placenames from the son of Tom Polacca, an interpreter at First Mesa in the 1880s and 1890s. Additional placename data were obtained from an unidentified Hopi speaker at the home of Jack Snow. Following each of the vocabularies are copies which Harrington made of the names in 1944 in order to locate them on a map by Van Valkenburgh (1941). Three pages of miscellaneous vocabulary from an unidentified source also date from the 1939 period.

His notes on phonetics were likely made during his comparative study of Hopi and other Uto-Aztecan languages. Harrington made a number of observations on the phonetics of the language. These were recorded in the form of a "Hopi Mouthmap." Secondary sources referred to were Parsons (1936), Trubetskoi (1939), Whiting (1939), and Whorf (unspecified works). The mouthmap appeared in Hewett, Dutton, and Harrington's The Pueblo Indian World (1945).

His Hopi writings consist of preparatory notes and drafts in various stages of completion. From 1945-1946 are notes, handwritten drafts, and finished typescripts of his review of The Hopi Way by Laura Thompson and Alice Joseph, as well as the article "Note on the Names Moqui and Hopi." Both of these were published in the American Anthropologist. There is also a typed draft of an unpublished note, intended for release in Indians at Work, titled "Hopi Discovered To Be Most Nearly Akin to Northern Paiute."

Dating from both the periods around 1922 and 1939 are a number of pages of miscellaneous notations. These contain observations of an ethnographic nature, bibliographies, and brief extracts from secondary sources. One set, consisting of comments on seven "landnames," was obtained from an informant referred to as "Hopi at Jack Snow's." Also included is correspondence dated 1914 requesting information on Hopi rocks and a related photograph (originals in files of correspondence and photographs).

There are few field notes relative to the Hopi recordings Harrington made with Fewkes and Prescott and the related sound recordings have not been located.

Biographical / Historical:

John P. Harrington's field notes indicate that he worked on the Hopi language as early as 1913 and reviewed his material as late as 1944. Although he published a short article on Hopi in 1945 and a review of The Hopi Way (1944) in 1946, his notes on this language are not extensIve.

His first contact with speakers of Hopi evidently occurred in 1913, as suggested by his heading "Hopi Language. 1913." A more precise date and location are not given, but it is possible that Harrington made a side trip to the Third Mesa during February when he was working at a number of other pueblos or that he located a speaker of the Oraibi dialect at one of those locations.

From May through September of 1926, Harrington was called away from fieldwork in northern California to assist J. Walter Fewkes, head of the Bureau of American Ethnology, in archeological excavations at Elden Pueblo near Flagstaff, Arizona. According to The B.A.E. Annual Report for 1925 -1926 (p. 5), prior to the excavations, Harrington and J. O. Prescott assisted Fewkes in the recording of Hopi songs. Four of the older Hopi were brought from Walpi to the Grand Canyon, where they performed 11 katcina songs.

Harrington had a second opportunity to record several short vocabularies in the dialect of First Mesa in 1939 when he and Robert W. Young were beginning joint work on Athapascan in the Fort Defiance area of Arizona. His interest in Hopi was renewed again in March of 1944 when he made a comparative study with other Uto-Aztecan languages of the Takic subfamily.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Hopi language  Search this

Zuni language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Toponymy  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Basket making  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 4.3

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 4: Native American History, Language, and Culture of the Southwest

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw393ae4ea4-0c10-483e-8b23-9634516d98f2

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref14601

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Laird, Carobeth, 1895-1983  Search this

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe, 1850-1915  Search this

Stevenson, James, Colonel  Search this

Grant, Blanche C. (Blanche Chloe), 1874-1948  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

22 Boxes

Culture:

Taos Indians  Search this

Indians of North America -- Southwest, New  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Dictionaries

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Narratives

Date:

1909-circa 1944

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Southwest series contains Harrington's Taos research. The materials consist of field notes, grammatical and semantic slipfile, grammar, dictionary, linguistic notes, ethnographic and historical notes, and texts.

Among his field notes are slips prepared for semantic arrangement (former B.A.E. MS 2309 and 2290pt.). Many of the terms were used in the draft of an unpublished grammar, with some orthographic variations. The use of "q" for "kw" suggests an early date, possibly 1909-1910 . An early vocabulary is comprised of Harrington's comparative Taos terms used in his article "Notes on the Piro Language" (1909a).

From former B.A.E. manuscripts 2290pt., 2292pt., and 2296 come several categories of miscellaneous field notes. Included are a vocabulary elicited in 1910, typed and annotated notes which collate much of the information written on slips, and miscellaneous slips some dated 1920, some probably earlier-which contain brief Picuris comparisons. Data encompass placenames, tribenames, ethnogeographic terms, and some grammatical elaborations.

Another group of field notes appears to be Taos with Isleta comparisons. This is a tentative identification still subject to the scrutiny of linguists, who are not presently in complete agreement. The physical condition and type of paper used indicate that these notes may have been recorded during the period 1909 to 1911.

A set of slips, formerly cataloged as B.A.E. MS 2318 and 2295pt., fills four boxes. Field notes and reports suggest that this comprehensive body of material may have been accumulated, annotated, and rearranged over a period of time ranging from 1909 to 1928. The largest section of the file was arranged by Harrington according to grammatical categories and is especially substantial on verb and pronoun usage. Another group of slips is semantically arranged; some phonetic, ethnographic, and historical material is interjected.

The grammar section includes tabulations in English of pronoun prefix material which give an excellent indication of Harrington's methodology for accumulating slipfiles. Taos slips deal with pronoun usage, verb paradigms, and sentence structure. These are early notes, probably dating from 1909 to 1911. Mondragon was the principal source of information. The section also includes three drafts of manuscripts on Taos grammar, only of which one was published. "Ambiguity in the Taos Personal Pronoun" (1916) (former B.A.E. MS 2293pt. and 4682pt.) was condensed from another draft of an unpublished, more comprehensive grammar (former B.A.E. MS 4682pt.). A draft of a paper on numerals is filed with some of the original field notes from which it evolved (former B.A.E. MS 4681). Another major subsection consists of a draft of over 500 typed pages of a comprehensive grammar by Carobeth Laird, Harrington's wife at the time. The manuscript (former B.A.E. MS 2307 and 4680), titled "Grammatical Analysis of the Taos Language," is dated 1920. The fieldwork for the paper was done in Taos during July and August of 1918 with Taos speakers Lujan and Mondragon. A partial and preliminary draft and notes reveal some annotations by Harrington, who also was in Taos at the same time working with the same speakers.

This subseries also contains Harrington's Taos dictionary. The Taos-English section is in alphabetical order according to the first sound of the base. Although the English-Taos section gives the English word first, it follows the alphabetical order of the Taos term according to Harrington's list of initial symbols. Some entries in the dictionary are followed by the notes from which they evolved. There is also a file of Taos bird names, apparently intended for incorporation into the dictionary, as well as a small group of plant names. These also are in Taos-English and English-Taos. Filed with this material is a list of the scientific names for Taos birds; annotations were supplied by Florence Merriam Bailey and Vernon Bailey. (See "Studying the Mission Indians of California and the Taos of New Mexico" [1929].)

Harrington's linguistic notes (former B.A.E. MS 2292pt. and 2295pt.) include grammar, vocabulary, and textual material, apparently accumulated in July and August of 1918 from his work with Lujan and Mondragon. At least a portion of the material was collected with the assistance of his wife Carobeth, and a number of pages are in her hand. The pagination evidently underwent several reorganizations and is therefore somewhat chaotic. His other notes consist of comments on George L. Trager's "The Kinship and Status Terms of the Tiwa Languages" (1943) and on Elsie Clews Parsons' Taos Pueblo (1936). Relationship terms, age and sex nouns, personal names, rank nouns, and tribenames are mentioned.

Among his ethnographic and historical notes is his unfinished manuscript, "The Taos Indians" (former B.A.E. MS 3073). He relied heavily on Matilda Coxe Stevenson's field notes for his manuscript; her contribution is mainly ethnographic while a few pages are the work of her husband, James. Taos speaker Tony Romero is the source for the clan names. Harrington also incorporated his notes from 1908, 1909, 1911, 1918, and 1919. For historical data, Harrington relied on published sources, especially early Spanish documents for which he supplied original translations and throughout which some Picuris history is interwoven. The bibliographic information for the historical sources is interspersed throughout the notes.

There are also notes and excerpts from Blanche C. Grant's publications and miscellaneous notes on dances (former B.A.E. MS 2292pt.). A few random ethnographic notes on slips are written in English.

Contained in a series of texts are stories of Wolf and Deer and two versions of the Lord's Prayer with grammatical notes. Also included is the Tanoan linguistic diagram (former B.A.E. MS 2292 pt.) used in Harrington's "An Introductory Paper on the Tiwa Language, Dialect of Taos, New Mexico" (191 Oc). Jose Lopez and Santiago Mirabel provided the Taos terms used in this publication.

Biographical / Historical:

The first indication of John P. Harrington's work among the Taos Indians comes from his financial records of September 20, 1909, to January 15, 1910, when he was based in Santa Fe and doing fieldwork in various languages of the Southwest. Peak periods of in-depth work on Taos, sometimes in the field and sometimes in Washington, D.C., appear to be 1909-1911, 1918-1922, 1926-1930, and 1944-1945. He worked primarily with Joe Lujan (abbreviated "L.") and Manuel Mondragon ("M."), with Mondragon helping from 1910 to 1927. There are references to a trip which Harrington made with Margaret Tschirgi and F. E. Betts to the ruins east of Taos on September 30, 1928, but there are no further explanatory notes.

Mutual professional respect had arisen between Harrington and Matilda Coxe Stevenson of the Bureau of American Ethnology, at whose ranch he spent six weeks in the autumn of 1908. He was in possession of a large body of her original notes on south western Indians at the time of her death in 1915 and planned to arrange, annotate, and publish them. Her material on Taos appears in an unpublished historical and ethnographic manuscript titled "The Taos Indians."

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Tiwa language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Dance  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Names, Ethnological  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Dictionaries

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Narratives

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 4.10

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 4: Native American History, Language, and Culture of the Southwest

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw312afc488-7d19-481b-9b9b-2beaf8561249

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref14679

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Freire-Marreco, Barbara W. (Barbara Whitchurch), 1879-1967  Search this

Henderson, Junius, 1865-1937  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

3 Boxes

Culture:

Hualapai -- language  Search this

Indians of North America -- Southwest, New  Search this

Taos Indians  Search this

Tiwa Pueblos  Search this

Tewa Pueblos  Search this

Acoma Pueblo  Search this

Isleta Pueblo  Search this

Hopi Pueblo  Search this

Akimel O'odham (Pima)  Search this

Hualapai (Walapai)  Search this

Yavapai  Search this

Pueblo  Search this

Athapascan Indians  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Sketches

Place:

Elden Pueblo (Ariz.)

Date:

circa 1907-circa 1957

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Southwest series within the John P. Harrington papers contains general and miscellaneous materials. Certain notes in this subseries encompass the Southwest as an entity; others constitute small files of miscellany which do not relate directly to the preceding sets of field notes. Few precise dates are assigned to this section of material as it is based on information accumulated over an indefinite period of time.

One section contains archaeological field notes relating to Elden Pueblo. In 1926 Harrington was called to assist J. W. Fewkes at the excavation of ruins at Elden Pueblo near Flagstaff, Arizona. This set of files comprises the journal entries which Harrington made on an almost daily basis between May 27 and August 27, 1926. There are two sets of notes--the original handwritten ones and a typed copy which was submitted to Fewkes on November 10, 1926 (former B.A.E. MS 6010). The journal contains brief notes, sketches of pits and artifacts, references to photographs, and names of associates; there are no significant linguistic or ethnographic data.

The subseries also contains a comparative list of Taos, Picuris, Isleta, Tewa (San Juan), and Tanoan numerals, based mainly on Harry S. Budd's B.A.E. MS 1028. There are also notes on pueblo basket-making from his interviews with Dr. and Mrs. Colton and Mr. Gladwin (B.A.E. MS 2291) , as well as an account of an Indian scout (Yavapai) working for the U.S. Cavalry. In addition, there is an assortment of notes on photographs, bibliography, and a large chart of pronouns.

Harrington's writings are also present. These include preliminary drafts and notes for "The Southwest Indian Languages" and "The Sounds and Structure of the Aztecan Languages." Most of the information was evidently extracted from notes on hand at the time. Harrington mentioned James Johnson and Edward Hunt, both of whom spoke Acoma-Laguna and worked with him in July and August of 1944. Tom Polacca's son gave Hopi data. There are also a partial draft, notes, and bibliography for an article titled "Indians of the Southwest" (1942). Material relating to unpublished writings includes notes for a review of Mary Roberts Coolidge's The Rain-Makers (1929). An undated draft and notes on "The Southern Athapascan" are also included.

A group of original field notes from Harrington's collaborators were left in his possession; in particular, a group of handwritten slips taken between December 10, 1912, and April 6, 1913, were found in an envelope addressed to Harrington. Barbara Freire-Marreco evidently sent them from Polacca, Arizona, to Harrington in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The content is mainly grammatical, with vocabulary items and ethnographic material interspersed. The language has not been identified. A second set of notes consists of cards and a typed list, evidently compiled by Junius Henderson. The data include animal terms in Hopi (Moki), Pima, and Walapai.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Tanoan languages  Search this

Tiwa language  Search this

Isleta language  Search this

Tewa language  Search this

Laguna dialect  Search this

Acoma dialect  Search this

Hopi language  Search this

Pima language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Basket making  Search this

Archaeology  Search this

Numeration  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Manuscripts

Vocabulary

Sketches

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 4.12

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 4: Native American History, Language, and Culture of the Southwest

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw39c14572f-6a9e-42ff-ba40-1f88a00acd31

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref14711

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Michelson, Truman, 1879-1938  Search this

Hewitt, J. N. B. (John Napoleon Brinton), 1859-1937  Search this

Speck, Frank G. (Frank Gouldsmith), 1881-1950  Search this

Voegelin, C. F. (Charles Frederick), 1906-1986  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

2 Boxes

Culture:

Cheyenne language  Search this

Fox  Search this

Menominee (Menomini)  Search this

Miami  Search this

Mohegan  Search this

Pequot  Search this

Montauk  Search this

Montagnais Innu  Search this

Nanticoke  Search this

Piscataway (Conoy)  Search this

Anishinaabe (Chippewa/Ojibwa)  Search this

Potawatomi  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Vocabulary

Date:

circa 1907-circa 1957

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Northeast/Southeast series contains John P. Harrington's Algonquian research. It consists primarily of material he collected; there is very little original data, most of which are undated. The topics covered are Cheyenne grammar, Fox linguistic notes, Menominee grammar, Miami-Peoria grammar, Mohegan-Pequot-Montauk vocabulary, Montagnais miscellaneous notes, Nanticoke-Conoy-Unalachtigo linguistic notes, Ojibwa linguistic notes, Potawatomi linguistic notes, and comparative and miscellaneous notes.

The Cheyenne material consist of two pages of grammatical excerpts from Rodolphe Petter's English-Cheyenne Dictionary (1915).

The Fox notes stem from conversations which Harrington had with Truman Michelson on the Fox syllabary and grammar. One note is dated September 24, 1924; others are undated. One page gives the etymology of the word Chicago and a Potawatomi equivalent. Phonetic material (former B.A.E. MS 6021 pt. and 6025pt.) is based on William Jones's "Algonquian (Fox)" (1911). A bibliography is included, mainly on Michelson's publications and manuscripts which he submitted to the B.A.E.

The Menominee files contain a phonetic key from Leonard Bloomfield's Menomini Texts (1928), a short report on a conversation with Michelson (former B.A.E. MS 6025pt. and 6030), and a brief description of Menominee tentshaking was excerpted from W. J. Hoffman's The Menomini Indians (1896).

Miami-Peoria vocabulary were copied from Albert Gatschet's B.A.E. manuscripts 3025 and 3026b. (Those entries marked 3026b are no longer listed as part of that B.A.E. manuscript.)

An 1890 copy of a 1798 Montauk vocabulary taken by John Lyon Gardiner was loaned to Harrington by Foster H. Saville. There are also a three-page typescript of this manuscript and several pages of a Mohegan-Pequot bibliography.

For Montagnais, there are three bibliographical notes. Two placenames came from J.N.B. Hewitt in November 1926.

Reading notes on Nanticoke, Conoy, and Unalachtigo were taken principally from Speck's The Nanticoke and Conoy Indians . .. (1927) and from Hodge's "Handbook" (1907). Some linguistic and ethnohistoric material is included and there is a brief bibliography.

Ojibwa forms the largest portion of this subseries. It includes notes from a joint interview conducted most likely in 1940 with C. F. Voegelin and his informant, Gregor McGregor, who was technically considered a speaker of Ottawa. There are also notes Harrington took of Voegelin's lecture at the University of Michigan on June 25, 1940 (former B.A.E. MS 6020pt.). There is a slight emphasis on placenames in an otherwise random vocabulary. From James Hammond Trumbull's Notes on Forty Algonkin Versions of the Lord's Prayer (1873), Harrington copied the Southern Chippeway version (pp. 74 -75) and penciled in a slightly different English translation. A final potpourri of undated notes includes a miscellaneous vocabulary from secondary sources and a few pages of grammatical material. The etymologies of several Ojibwa words are briefly developed. Frederic Baraga's A Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language is the most frequently cited source (former B.A.E. MS 6020pt. and 6025pt.).

The Potawatomi files contain material from Harrington's interview with Chief Simon Kahquados in Blackwell, Wisconsin (n.d.) with whom he recorded general ethnographic information, particularly regarding the loss of Potawatomi lands due to Indian Office policies and illegal acts of the Menominee. A brief vocabulary is included. Unrelated to this interview is a Potawatomi phoneme chart.

Comparative material includes reading notes regarding the earliest appearances of certain Algonquian phonetic sounds. Harrington consulted primarily the works of Sir Isaac Pitman, Jean Claude Mathevet (Nipissing, Abnaki), and Silas Tertius Rand (Micmac). Additional peripheral bibliographical information is identified in the notes. The only date recorded is March 26, 1951. There are other scattered reading notes with Menominee, Cree, Fox, and Ojibwa phonetic comparisons, based mainly on Leonard Bloomfield's Menomini Texts (1938) and Plains Cree Texts (1934). One page of Arapaho terms was copied from Kroeber.

In the category of general linguistic and ethnographic notes (former B.A.E. ms. 6025pt.), information results from various conversations with fellow linguists: Truman Michelson and J.N.B. Hewitt on September 24, 1924; Hewitt in November 1924 and November 1926; Michelson in October 1930; and Michelson and Frank G. Speck in May 1934. Under the heading "The Southern Delawares," Harrington arranged random information on the Virginia Indians, touching briefly on history and ethnography. He included some Abnaki, Cree, and Cherokee linguistic terms, as well as a general bibliography. Vocabulary material in this series (former B.A.E. MS 6025pt.) consists of terms from various Algonquian languages, most probably taken from unidentified printed sources. One note gives "The Chief from Mass[achusetts]" as an informant. One group of terms is compared with Natick words and with a vocabulary recorded by Roger Williams.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Algonquian languages  Search this

Abenaki language  Search this

Cree language  Search this

Cherokee language  Search this

Cheyenne language  Search this

Fox language  Search this

Menominee language  Search this

Miami language (Ind. and Okla.)  Search this

Mohegan language  Search this

Montagnais language  Search this

Nanticoke language  Search this

Ojibwa language  Search this

Potawatomi language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Meskwaki; Sauk & Fox  Search this

Genre/Form:

Vocabulary

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 6.1

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 6: Native American History, Language, and Culture of the Northeast & Southeast

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw320d52ed8-2a4a-49a7-b5a3-67bbc9806544

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref14792

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

25 Boxes

Culture:

Indians of Mexico  Search this

Mayas  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Correspondence

Narratives

Place:

Yucatán Peninsula

Date:

circa 1920-1960

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Mexico/Central America/South America series contains Harrington's Yucatec research. The materials consist of vocabulary, grammar, texts, writings, and miscellaneous notes.

The Yucatec vocabulary falls into three distinct subsections. The first consists of wordlists from an unidentified informant, supplemented by a little ethnographic and anecdotal material. A second set of vocabulary was recorded from Domingo Canton Aguilar and his wife (abbreviated "Ag. Y Sra."). They contain references to the dialects of Nahuatl spoken by Alfonso Hernandez Catarina (Alf.) and Arcadio Sagahon (Arc.). The third and most extensive section is a file of semantically arranged lexical items. The notes include a mixture of excerpts from secondary sources and original data recorded by Harrington. There are some notes in unidentified handwriting scattered throughout. A number of large subject categories--corporeal, animals, and material culture--are subdivided.

The grammar files consist of extensive notes and a rough draft for a grammar of the Yucatec language. The material is somewhat repetitious due to the presence of variant drafts. The notes contain a mixture of general observations on various points of grammar, extracts from published sources, and original field data. The rough draft and accompanying notes are filed under two headings "Maya Grammar and Lists" and "Maya Language and Semantic Lists." The introduction includes a bibliography of other dictionaries and grammers, a description of the physical features of the Yucatan peninsula, and a discussion of the Maya linguistic stock. The body of the material is divided into categories on phonetics, morphology, verbs, adverbs, particles, nouns, pronouns, conjunctions, interjections, and unsorted topics. The sections dealing with phonetics and verbs (the latter is labeled "Uc. on Lop.") are particularly extensive. A typed manuscript of 308 pages (former B.A.E. ms. 4782) titled "Maya Grammar and Lists" was submitted by Harrington in 1952 for publication as a Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin. The language presented is the ''standard dialect of the states of Yucatan and Campeche." The grammar contains a detailed table of contents, furnishes details on the geographical background and history of the Yucatan peninsula, and discusses Maya grammars and dictionaries.

Yucatec textual material is of three types. The first set consists of myths, the second of records relating to the ''Treaty of Mani," and the third of notes on a Yucatec religious newspaper dating from 1949. Thirty pages of native myth texts contain interlinear translations in a mixture of Spanish and English. The stories include "El Milpero, el Cascabel, el Perro, el Tigre" and "El Zorro y la Esposa del Milpero." The four-page text "Le Ocb Yetel Can" is in the hand of David Arceo H. The "Story of the Blind Hammockmaker" was recorded from Arceo with English and Spanish translation. There is also a summary of the story of venado and tortuga. Material relating to the "Treaty of Mani" includes a word-by-word translation of the treaty, a typed version with free translation and notes, and correspondence with Arthuro Medina and David Arceo H. dating from July 1948 and March 1950. There is also a copy of one issue of the newspaper U Tajil T'au dated November-December 1949. There are a few pages of related notes.

Harrington's writings on Yucatec begins with notes and a rough draft for the article "Original Form and Application of Maya." The paper, which is concerned with the etymology of the name "Maya," discusses the six names by which the Yucatan peninsula is known. There are also notes and drafts for two related articles titled "Egyptian, Chinese and Mayoid Ideographic Writing" and "Reading the Maya Ideograms." This material is followed by a partial rough draft titled "Maya Ideograms Being Read"; it is not clear whether the handwriting, which is not Harrington's, is that of a copyist or a "ghost writer." Dating from June 28, 1950, are extensive notes on the Maya system of counting, arranged behind heading sheets which are labeled "How the Maya Count," "Maya Enumeration," and "V[alladolid] Maya Counting." It appears that Harrington originally worked on several drafts of an article with these different titles; the material is now inextricably mixed. The subtopics covered are arithmetical processes, systems of measures, and time reckoning (including discussion of the twenty-day month). Also filed here is a rough draft labeled "Draft for the Ag. typewritten paper on May[a] Numeration" and a typed draft titled "The Maya Count." "The Maya Count" discusses the system of counting used in the northern part of the Yucatan peninsula by speakers whose language was probably a direct descendent of the language in which the Maya hieroglyphics and codices were written. There are also notes and drafts of reviews which he drafted from 1948 through 1960. The file of writings ends with rough notes for proposed papers on "Maya Hieroglyphic Writing," "Maya Linguistic Stock," and "Influence of Maya and Yucatan Spanish on Each Other."

The section of miscellaneous notes on Yucatec includes a small file of correspondence. There is a letter from Isaias Uc C., Campeche, Mexico, in 1950; a carbon copy of a letter to Jesse Shaw dated April 14, 1952, regarding arrangements for Domingo Aguilar's travel to the United States; handwritten drafts of two letters to John Linkins; and a typed copy of a lengthy letter to Dr. Tozzer from an unidentified writer. Also included is a section labeled "Persons & Addresses," as well as some notes on the sound recordings which Harrington made during fieldwork in Mexico in 1950. The file concludes with what appear to be drafts of annual reports. There is the first page only of a typed statement titled "Maya Language Studies." This is followed by ten handwritten pages of notes which refer to three papers on Maya ideograms and numerals.

Biographical / Historical:

John P. Harrington's study of the Yucatec language of Mexico was undertaken in at least five distinct phases. Both in correspondence and in a draft of a Quiche grammar, Harrington claimed that his first study of the Maya stock was conducted with Eduardo Caceres, a fluent speaker of Maya proper from Merida in the state of Yucatan. They evidently worked together in National City and San Diego, California, around 1914.

In the Sixty-fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for 1947-1948, Harrington reported that he had recently completed a grammar of the Maya language as well as an article comparing the ideographic writing systems of the Maya, Egyptians, and Chinese. In the following year he continued his revision of these two works and studied the etymology of the word "Maya." His work on the grammar was evidently made possible through studies undertaken with two Yucatec speakers residing in New York City.

Notes indicate that Harrington was in contact with Arthuro Medina (abbreviated "Med.") by at least September 1948. Medina was from Tikul, near the ruins of Uxmal, a few miles south of Merida, and his wife was also from the Yucatan. Through them Harrington learned of a second Maya speaker, Castulo Ucan. Evidently beginning in mid-November 1949, Harrington made a number of trips of several days duration to New York to work with Ucan. Letters which he wrote to bureau chief Matthew W. Stirling in November and December describe Ucan (abbreviated "U.") as a good informant and make mention of the "Motul dictionary" which he used as a questionnaire during their work together.

Although he felt that his work with these informants had been satisfactory, Harrington still wished to travel to Merida to conduct fieldwork with additional informants. He arrived in Merida on Saturday, February 11 and returned to Washington, D.C., on April 11 "bringing a large quantity of linguistic material" as well as "ten half-hour recordings of stories in the Maya language" which he had recorded on tape.

Harrington's first Mexican informant was Isaias Uc whom he described to Stirling as "a treasure," someone who spoke Spanish as a professor, with "a wonderful vocabulary for grammatical terms." Their work included a review of the grammar by Daniel Lopez Otero. He also worked with David Arceo H. (evidently abbreviated "A."), whom he described as "an unsurpassed teacher of Maya," with a knowledge of proverbs and traditional Maya history. From Arceo he was able to obtain a handwritten translation of the Treaty of Mani, from Maya to Spanish, as well as tape recordings of the same.

Other informants with whom Harrington evidently worked during this same period include Pascual Ayora Taliaferro (also spelled "Talavera" and abbreviated "P.") and Geronimo Pacheco. He also received nonlinguistic information from Dr. Solis, Mr. Romero M., Mr. Nichols, Willey (possibly Gordon R. Willey), and Harry, among others.

On March 9, 1951, Harrington had the opportunity to return to Mexico to pursue studies of the classical Aztec, or Nahuatl, language. During the approximately six months he spent there he also worked with another Yucatec speaker, Domingo Canton Aguilar (abbreviated "Ag.") and his wife, who were from Xochimilco in the Distrito Federal. Harrington referred to the latter as Maria Pura Aguilar de C.

Aguilar accompanied Harrington back to Washington, D.C., to assist in the preparation of a grammar and a dictionary of the Maya language. In the same fiscal year (1951 -1952) Harrington completed a monograph on the numeration system of the Valladolid Maya Indians of Yucatan.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Maya language  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Toponymy  Search this

Grammar, Comparative and general  Search this

Maya numeration  Search this

Maya calendar  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Correspondence

Narratives

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 7.5

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 7: Mexico/Central America/South America

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw3fdc9de07-66ca-43ac-93ec-9e8a72b7dfe3

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref15127

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Correspondent:

Steward, Julian Haynes, 1902-1972  Search this

Mason, John Alden, 1885-1967  Search this

Farfán, José M. B.  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

18 Boxes

Culture:

Indians of South America  Search this

Aymara Indians  Search this

Bora Indians  Search this

Asháninka (Campa/Chuncha)  Search this

Cocama  Search this

Guarani Indians  Search this

Shuar  Search this

Kaingang Indians  Search this

Mataco Indians  Search this

Otomí (Otomi)  Search this

Quechua Indians  Search this

Puquina Indians  Search this

Uru Indians  Search this

Witoto Indians  Search this

Yagua Indians  Search this

Yunca Indians  Search this

Zaparo Indians  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Manuscripts

Correspondence

Vocabulary

Date:

1941-1948

Scope and Contents:

This subseries of the Mexico/Central America/South America series contains Harrington's records relating to South American languages. His research covered the following languages: Awishira, Aymara, Campa, Cholon, Cocama, Guarani, Jivaro, Kaingang, Mataco, Miranya, Otomi, Quechua, Uru-Puquina, Witoto, Yagua, Yunca, and Zaparo.

Harrington's records relating to Quechua are the most extensive set he compiled on a South American language. The first section of notes, labeled "Quechua Springboard," is a semantically arranged file consisting of lexical items extracted from Ernst W. Middendorf's Quechua dictionary. Harrington copied his entire dictionary, one item per page, in order to have a basic vocabulary for comparison with other languages of the region. The remainder of Harrington's Quechua records have to do with articles which he was preparing for publication. These include notes and drafts for the papers on Quechua phonetics and grammar that he coauthored with Valcarcel, a paper titled "Hokan Discovered in South America," and a review of "Poesia Folklorica Quechua" by J. M. B. Farfan.

Harrington's Witoto files also form a large section of this subseries. Materials include files of data for analysis as well as drafts of several papers. The first paper, titled "The Sounds of Witoto," is a brief undated article referring to the work of Preuss. Included are a two-page final version, a one-page carbon of a variant version, a two-page carbon of a Spanish translation, and a page of miscellaneous notes on phonetics. There are notes and rough drafts for articles on Witoto, Miranya, and Cocama. The highly unorganized records include excerpts from Harrington's "Cocama Grammarlet" and personal communications with Julian Steward and J. Alden Mason. There is also a comparative vocabulary of Witoto, Miranya, and Cocama. This so-called "analphabetikon" includes notes arranged under numerous semantic headings: age, rank, kinship, plants, animals, material culture, etc. This file was used in preparing vocabulary lists for inclusion in Harrington's second large paper on Witoto.

Harrington prepared at least four papers on Jivaro (abbreviated "Jiv."), a language which he felt was a "very divergent type of Arawakan." While most other linguists gave it an independent status, he felt that the resemblances with Arawak were genetic. The first article, "Jibaro Epitome," consists of a review of Juan Ghinassi's grammar (1938). The file continues with notes and drafts of "The Jivaro Language." Harrington presents ethnological data of the Jivaro by way of introduction and proceeds to give an outline of the language. A draft of a third paper, "Vocabulary of the Jivaro Language," actually consists of a working copy of a Jivaro vocabulary. The title page, labeled "Jivaro Spingboard" lists the dictionary by Ghinassi (Gh. or Ghin.) as the major source of the semantically arranged vocabulary. The file concludes with notes and a draft for the article "The Jivaro Indians."

The materials which Harrington compiled on the Miranya language are fairly extensive. The files begin with a comparative vocabulary organized in what he termed a "loose-leaf system." Miranya terms, as well as Witoto, Guarani, Cocama, and Arawak forms, are arranged in a number of standard semantic and grammatical categories. Extracts were taken from the works of Adam, Farabee, Kinder, Preuss, Rivet, Ruiz de Montoya, Tessman, and Whiffen. There are also three separate sections labeled "Farabee M. Voc.," "Tessman M. Voc.," and "Whiffen M. Voc." in which lexical items from these sources are listed, one word per page. Writings based on Harrington's study of the secondary sources follow. The file concludes with a short draft by Mason of a write-upon Miranya for "The Languages of the South American Indians" and a letter from Harrington to Steward dated April 4, 1943. Enclosed with the letter are pages one to four of a paper and pages 10 and 11 of a bibliography. They deal with a review of the problem of assigning Miranya to a larger linguistic stock.

The remaining materials on the other South American languages consist of notes from secondary sources, drafts of papers, and some correspondence. His notes on Otomi include field notes recorded by Harrington from Pablo Galicia, a native of San Juan Tutxtepec, interviewed in Xochimilco, Mexico in 1951. The miscellaneous notes section contains materials of a more general nature and include notes from conversations Harrington had with Mason and Steward. There are also notes on various South American languages with subsections on: Awishira (Abishira), Aymara, Arawakan, Campa, Chipaya, Cholon, Fitita, Guaranian, Mataco, Miranya, Okaina, Quechua, Resigaro, Tupi, Uru-Puquina, Witoto, Yunca, and Zaparo. Harrington's notes include general observations, bibliographic references, extracts from secondary sources, and partial drafts of papers. Of particular interest is an item filed under Quechua: a letter to Julian Steward from J. M. B. Farfan, dated July 9, 1943, enclosing a list of one hundred basic words in Quechua. The last four files of miscellany consist of drafts of various writings.

Biographical / Historical:

Harrington's earliest work in the field of South American languages resulted in a paper which he coauthored with Luis E. Valcarcel, director of the Museo Nacional in Lima, Peru. Correspondence indicates that the two men met during a visit which Valcarcel made to Washington in March 1941. By April 6 Harrington had already drafted a manuscript of the article "Quichua Phonetics. A Shortcut to the Scientific Writing of the Language of the Incas of Peru," which he then forwarded to Valcarcel in New York City for translation. In July Harrington rewrote the paper in English and sent it to Peru for publication.

In early 1943 Harrington was called back from the field to B.A.E. headquarters in Washington, D.C. Among his official duties at the bureau was the examination of data for the linguistic sections of the "Handbook of South American Indians." The bureau had accepted responsibility for preparing the handbook and had begun work on it in 1940 under the editorship of Julian H. Steward. J. Alden Mason of the University Museum in Philadelphia was given the task of "classifying and tabulating the languages of South America." As it was possible for Mason to make only a few independent studies of these languages himself, he relied on the assistance of scholars such as Harrington to provide information to him through correspondence. He inserted a number of Harrington's findings into his final report as notes.

For the most part Harrington's method entailed examining secondary sources, extracting and compiling linguistic and morphological data from them, and comparing these data for various languages with a view to establishing linguistic affiliations. He also had limited opportunities to obtain first-hand information from native speakers of Guarani, Quechua, and Otomi and from a non-native speaker of Jivaro.

In May 1943 Harrington undertook an extensive study of the Jivaro language. The vocabulary which he compiled and reheard was used for comparison with that of the Zaparo language. During the same year Harrington examined data on Campa and Witoto and compiled working vocabularies (which he called "springboards") for Cocama and Quechua. He also found preliminary evidence of the interrelationships of several groups of languages. He felt that Miranya was related to Tupi-Guarani, that Uru-Puquina should be grouped with Arawakan, and that Aymara should be assigned to the Hokan family. He also published "Hokan Discovered in South America," a discussion of the affinity of Quechua with Hokan in terms of phonetics, morphology, and vocabulary. Comparisons were drawn from a number of Hokan languages of North and Central America: Chimariko, Choctaw, Salinan, and Subtiaba, several of which Harrington had studied at earlier periods.

Harrington reported "winding up" a comparison of Witoto, Miranya, and Guarani in January 1944. By April he had undertaken a study of Cholon, finished a paper on Witoto ("Sobre fonetico Witoto"), and was at work on an article on Zaparo. He also prepared "a long screed on Yunca" which was later published as "Yunka, Language of the Peruvian Coastal Culture."

During the 1944-1945 fiscal year, Harrington proceeded to work on Guarani and Quechua, which he described as "the Indian languages of South America." He made use of a publication by Dr. Bertoni with whom he met briefly. In addition, he published three papers relating to Quechua: "Earliest Navajo and Quechua," "La lengua Aynlara, hermana mayor de la Quichua," and "Quechua Grammarlet."

Harrington continued to work intermittently on South American languages for the next several years. At the end of fiscal year 1947-1948 he submitted a large report on Guarani, which held official status with Spanish in Paraguay, as well as a smaller paper on Mataco which was published under the title "Matako of the Gran Chaco." He also wrote another piece on the phonetics of Quechua.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Indians of South America -- Languages  Search this

Aymara language  Search this

Bora language  Search this

Campa language  Search this

Cholon language  Search this

Cocama language  Search this

Guarani language  Search this

Shuar language  Search this

Kaingang language  Search this

Mataco language  Search this

Otomi language  Search this

Quechua language  Search this

Puquina language  Search this

Uru language  Search this

Witoto language  Search this

Yagua language  Search this

Yunca language  Search this

Zaparo language  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Phonetics  Search this

Grammar, Comparative and general  Search this

Wichi  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Manuscripts

Correspondence

Vocabulary

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

Identifier:

NAA.1976-95, Subseries 7.7

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 7: Mexico/Central America/South America

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw354659ff9-243c-4ced-89fb-c9352299bd75

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref15147

Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Young, Robert W., 1912-2007  Search this

Clark, Ann Nolan, 1898-1995  Search this

La Farge, Oliver  Search this

Hoijer, Harry, 1904-1976  Search this

Van Valkenburgh, Richard F.  Search this

Collection Creator:

Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961  Search this

Extent:

59 Boxes

Culture:

Diné (Navajo)  Search this

Indians of North America -- Southwest, New  Search this

Type:

Archival materials

Field notes

Dictionaries

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Date:

1935-1949

Scope and Contents:

This set of files contains Harrington's Navajo research. The materials consist of vocabulary, dictionary notes, grammar, rehearings of linguistic data, ethnobotany notes, ethnographic notes, texts, drafts and notes relating to primers, published and unpublished primers, unpublished and published papers, extracts from secondary sources, and miscellaneous notes.

The vocabulary section contains terms extracted from Young and Morgan's The Navaho Language, which were reheard principally to obtain Kiowa and Hano (Arizona Tewa) equivalences. Information is occasionally included from Harrington's Apache and Tewa notes. A brief typed vocabulary contains scattered grammatical material. There is also a slipfile of terms based mainly on An Ethnological Dictionary of the Navaho Language. It contains annotations and relevant excerpts from Harrington-Young correspondence. Plant names wIth Young's annotations are based on W. L. Jepson's A Manual of Flowering Plants of California (1925) and Washington Matthews' The Navajo Names for Plants (1886). Of the twenty semantic categories, the sections on animals, animal parts, plants, and placenames are particularly substantial.

The dictionary section consists of lexical terms from the Bureau of Indian Affairs' "Navajo Phrase Book," obtained from Willard Beatty and sent by Harrington to Young for rehearings. Navajo entries with Kiowa equivalences were apparently taken from a manuscript for a dictionary by Young. Two miscellaneous groups of entries are in Navajo/English.

The material on Navajo grammar is extensive and includes notes, drafts of a manuscript, excerpts from secondary sources, correspondence between Young and Harrington, and slips. The file was for proposed publications ranging from introductory manuals to the structuring of a comprehensive Navajo grammar.

A further substantial body of grammatical material is found on large slips. These include information from Young's voluminous correspondence, not otherwise interfiled. Part of this section is a further rehearing by Young of Morice's The Carrier Language. Another group of notes records comparisons with several southern Athapascan languages, evidently based on Young's notes, vocabulary items, correspondence, and other undocumented material. Harrington also used the slipfile format to index questions which he had earlier sent to Young.

Most of the rehearings of lingustic data are of Edward Sapir's linguistic terms by Young in 1940 and 1941. Though the copied materials may be similar in content, they do not appear to be exact duplicates of the Sapir linguistic holdings at the American Philosophical Society. Young also reheard terms from Hoijer's Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Texts late in 1940. George E. Hood commented on Hoijer's "The Southern Athapascan Languages," possibly at about the same time. There are typed excerpts from Young's May 1938 letters regarding Morice's The Carrier Language and miscellaneous linguistic information given by Hood and reheard by Richard Long. Other miscellaneous rehearings are with Alfred Sanchez (abbreviated"Alf." or "Alfredo"), Willietto Antonio, George Hood, and Robert Young (September 1939); and with Howard Gorman, Albert Sandoval, and John Charles (1939). There is also a rehearing with Henry Tsosie of terms from Gladys A. Reichard and Adolph Dodge Bittany's Agentive and Causative Elements in Navaho (1940), including some excerpts from the book. Finally, in February 1941, he reheard the vocabulary of Pedro Bautista Pino with Howard Gorman; Young did not consider these terms to be Navajo.

The files also contains Harrington's notes on Navajo names for plants, gathered from secondary sources and possibly original data from colleagues or friends. Young also annotated some of the notes.

Harrington's ethnographic files includes notes, vocabulary, and illustrations on the structure of dwelling places as well as some information on the mythic origins of the Navajo. Many of the illustrations are by Charles Keetsie Shirley. On the same subject is a set of cards in Young's hand which was sent to Harrington at Fort Wingate in August 1939. At Harrington's request, Young also translated what appears to be a lesson on hogans, possibly a section of a proposed text for instructional purposes. A group of Chaco Canyon placenames were given by Ed Henry in June 1939; several others were extracted from various secondary sources. Other ethnographic subjects briefly covered are the Hoop and Pole game, a social and economic survey questionnaire, White Hat's funeral (1939), the Lord's Prayer as recorded by Berard Haile, and notes on Sandoval's sound recordings. Malcolm Farmer supplied nonlinguistic information and there is a small set of highly miscellaneous ethnographic and historical notes.

The text section contains billingual texts that Young collected and sent to Harrington in 1936. They were written with interlinear translations and followed by a precis in English. Titles include: "Deer and Coyote," "Where the People Came Out," "A Wedding Ceremonial," and "The Woman Who Changed into a Bear." A recording session on October 31, 1949, with Dick Left, Richard Long, and Harry (not further identified) provided Navajo songs, ceremonies, and legends. Harrington's notes supply the identity of the discs and peripheral information such as the gestures accompanying the songs. Some linguistic annotations are interspersed. The discs described in the notes have not been located.

Notes, drafts, and mockups from Harrington and Young's work creating Navajo primers are also present. During the course of their work together from 1937 to 1939, Harrington and Young prepared drafts for two primers, "Little Bear Primer" and "Spotted Dog Primer," a pre-primer (probably the so called "Doda Primer"), and a playbook or cut-out book. Despite an assurance that at least both of the major works were to be printed, neither of the primers were ever published. He and Young also served as translators for a set of four primers in the "Little Herder" series, and Harrington was also credited with developing the "Harrington-La Farge phonetic system" utilized in the three-volume set entitled Little Man's Family. Harrington and Young also helped translate Ann Nolan Clark's "Who Wants To Be a Prairie Dog?"

Other materials related to Harrington's writing include notes for his "Southern Peripheral Athapaskawan Origins, Divisions, and Migrations" and preliminary drafts and notes for the Navajo portion of "Earliest Navaho and Quechua" (1944) coauthored by Robert W. Young. There are also notes and drafts for his unpublished writings, among which include "Navaho Mouthmap," "The Indian Dog Comes into His Own,"and "What Light Can Navajo Throw on Indogermanic Reconstruction?"

Among his miscellaneous notes is a comparison of Navajo with other Indian languages. There are brief notes on trips made in 1940, a list of the names of non-Indians, miscellaneous correspondence, and notes which are neither linguistic nor ethnographic.

Because of their long-term collaboration, Young's notes are inextricably intermixed with those of Harrington. Although some are labeled "Y," Young's unlabeled contributions can be identified through his handwriting and printing, and even with his style. Other hand-copied material is the work of B.A.E. assistant, Arvilla Johnson. Harrington's daughter Awona produced many of the copies in eighteen-point type.

Biographical / Historical:

Although John P. Harrington published brief articles on Navajo in 1911 and 1929, his most sustained work in this language spanned the years 1935 to 1946. Correspondence and reports indicate that during this period he was in the field from July to November 1939, and from August to mid-November 1940 at such places as Fort Wingate and Gallup, New Mexico, and Phoenix, Tuba CIty, and Window Rock, Arizona. His success in the field is due in no small part to his brilliant young collaborator, Robert W. Young, whom he first contacted in August 1936 and with whom he carried on an extensive correspondence into the mid-1940s. In fact their joint efforts in Navajo were accomplished mainly by mail.

Harrington collaborated or corresponded with others, among whom were Ann Nolan Clark, Oliver La Farge, Francis Elmore, Harry Hoijer, William Hill, and Richard Van Valkenburgh. He also contacted various university professors and graduate students, some of whom taught at such programs as those directed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Camp Wycliffe) and the University of New Mexico School of American Research.

Harrington consulted a wide array of secondary sources and reheard or compared data from them which he later combined with original notes. These include several hundred terms from then-unpublished manuscripts of Edward Sapir, and two of Harry Hoijer's publications--Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Texts (1938) and "The Southern Athapascan Languages" (1938). He made extensive use of two works published by the Franciscan Fathers, An Ethnological Dictionary of the Navaho Language (1910) and A Vocabulary of the Navaho Language (1912). He turned to W. L. Jepson and Washington Matthews for botanical terms, and to Adrien G. Morice for Carrier comparisons. In a search for precise grammatical terminology, he consulted a score or more of grammars, dictionaries, and publications on language and linguistics in Latin, Greek, Indo-Germanic, and several Arabic languages. Most prominent are Walter A. Ripman's Latin Handbook (1930) and Alan H. Gairdner's publication on Arabic phonetics (1935).

He worked with many Navajo speakers, some of whom were well-educated. Mentioned frequently are Willietto Antonio, Chee Dodge, Howard Gorman, George E. Hood, Hoskie Naswood, Albert Sandoval (also called "Chic"), Charles Keetsie Shirley, and Sam Tilden.

Local Numbers:

Accession #1976-95

Local Note:

This subseries was broken up into two catalog records to facilitate viewing of digital surrogates. See the catalog record for John Peabody Harrington papers: Navajo (part 2) to view surrogates for the rest of Harrington's Navajo files.

Restrictions:

No restrictions on access.

Rights:

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Topic:

Navajo language  Search this

Kiowa language  Search this

Tewa language  Search this

Carrier language  Search this

Athapascan languages  Search this

Language and languages -- Documentation  Search this

Linguistics  Search this

Ethnology  Search this

Ethnobotany  Search this

Names, Geographical  Search this

Zoology -- nomenclature  Search this

Genre/Form:

Field notes

Dictionaries

Vocabulary

Manuscripts

Collection Citation:

John Peabody Harrington papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The preferred citation for the Harrington Papers will reference the actual location within the collection, i.e. Box 172, Alaska/Northwest Coast, Papers of John Peabody Harrington, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as the NAA understands the need to cite phrases or vocabulary on specific pages, a citation referencing the microfilmed papers is acceptable. Please note that the page numbering of the PDF version of the Harrington microfilm does not directly correlate to the analog microfilm frame numbers. If it is necessary to cite the microfilmed papers, please refer to the specific page number of the PDF version, as in: Papers of John Peabody Harrington, Microfilm: MF 7, R34 page 42.

See more items in:

John Peabody Harrington papers

John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 4: Native American History, Language, and Culture of the Southwest / 4.2: Navajo

Archival Repository:

National Anthropological Archives

GUID:

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/nw3a20de076-50c6-4ba1-a37d-c9dbdce60655

EDAN-URL:

ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref17243