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of linguistic data, ethnobotany notes, ethnographic notes, texts, drafts and notes relating to primers, published and unpublished primers, unpublished and published papers, extracts from secondary sources, and miscellaneous notes.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.
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.
