Indians of North America -- California Search this
Type:
Archival materials
Field notes
Vocabulary
Manuscripts
Place:
California -- Languages
Date:
1913-circa 1957
Scope and Contents:
This subseries of the Northern and Central California series contains Harrington's research on Esselen. Materials include drafts of a paper on Esselen; copies of primary and secondary sources; file slips containing Esselen vocabulary, cognates, and equivalent terms; notes on rehearings of Esselen vocabulary; and notes on a comparison of Esselen and Southern Pomo vocabulary. The drafts are for a paper on sources of Esselen, with notes on phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary. The section of primary and secondary sources contains notes from 1916 to 1953 and include handwritten and typed copies of manuscripts and published versions of the various Esselen vocabularies. The file contains fairly extensive notes from a conversation with Henshaw regarding his fieldwork, dated August 31, 1920, and notes on the chapter entitled "The Esselen and Salinans" from Kroeber's "Handbook of the Indians of California." There are also several pages of notes on Esselen which were sent to Harrington by C. Hart Merriam. The slipfiles are organized under broad semantic headings: nature, material culture, bodyparts, animals, plants, kinship, tribenames, and placenames. The remainder of the slips were filed under such grammatical headings as nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, reduplication, and phonetics. The sources of Esselen vocabulary from which he extracted the data were de Lamanon, Alcala Galiano, Arroyo de la Cuesta, Pinart, Henshaw, Merriam, and Kroeber. For comparative purposes, he also copied lexical items in other languages. Notes from rehearings of Esselen vocabulary are from his work with Ascencion Solorsano and Isabelle Meadows, both Costanoan speakers. The files on the comparison of Esselen and Southern Pomo contains Pomo vocabulary that Harrington recorded from Manuel C. Cordova along with Harrington's notes on the similarity of certain terms to Esselen.
A number of abbreviations were utilized by Harrington throughout the work to refer to the various reference works which he consulted. "Man." and "Per." refer to the vocabulary collected by de Lamanon and published by Laperouse. "Suen." and "Gal." allude to the vocabulary obtained by Lasuen and often credited to the explorer Dionicio Alcala Galiano.) Harrington also refers to this work as "Esp." for Espinosa y Tello. "Pi." and "Pin." stand for Alphonse Pinart and "Hen." for Henry W. Henshaw. The code "Mof." was utilized for Eugene Duflot de Mofras and "Cues." or "Arr." for Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta. Harrington employed the abbreviations "Mer." and "Kr." for the writings of his contemporaries C. Hart Merriam and Alfred L. Kroeber.
Biographical / Historical:
Harrington began a study of Esselen relatively early in his career and maintained a continuing interest in relating it to a recognized language family. Because the language became extinct in the early 1900s, he himself was not actually able to conduct any fieldwork with a native speaker. He did undertake research among the existing primary and secondary sources and attempted to learn what he could from various Native Americans who he thought might have some knowledge of the language.
As early as 1913 Harrington began compiling notes on the historical accounts of Esselen. It is known that he presented a paper on the subject at the meeting of the San Francisco Society of the Archaeological Institute of America at Berkeley in November of that year. An undated manuscript titled "The Excelen Language" presumably dates from that period.
As his research continued, Harrington was pleased to locate a "new source," the vocabulary recorded by Alphonse Pinart, at the Bancroft Library. This manuscript had been unavailable to Alfred Kroeber when he published his summary of Esselen in 1904. The discovery may have led Harrington to present a paper titled "Notes on Esselen" at the joint session of the San Francisco Society of the A.I.A. and the Anthropological Section of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Berkeley on December 1 and 2, 1916.
Harrington continued revising his notes on secondary sources in the 1920s, producing two additional drafts of his earlier summary in 1921 and 1927. In addition, he compiled slipfiles and various handwritten and typed lists of lexical items which were culled from the available sources on Esselen and some neighboring languages.
In the mid-1930s Harrington reviewed his files with Rumsen speaker Isabelle Meadows in hopes that she might recognize or help him reconstruct various Esselen words. At the end of their work he concluded that she knew only eleven words of the language.
In February 1947 Harrington reheard Esselen vocabulary items with his Southern Pomo consultant, Manuel C. Cordova, in an attempt to find similarities between the two languages. A number of years later he began another draft write-up. This remains in a sketchy, outline form.
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.
