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.
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.
