Indians of North America -- California Search this
Type:
Archival materials
Field notes
Dictionaries
Vocabulary
Songs
Narratives
Place:
California -- History
Date:
1921-1939
Scope and Contents:
This subseries of the Northern and Central California series contains Harrington's research on Costanoan (Ohlone) languages, particularly Chocheno, Mutsun, and Rumsen. Materials include linguistic, ethnographic, and historical notes.
Harrington obtained a large amount of vocabulary during his fieldwork. Harrington organized the Mutsun vocabulary into a dictionary of sorts, and also compiled a rudimentary Rumsen dictionary. The bulk of the subseries, however, consist of his notes from rehearings of vocabulary recorded by Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta, C. Hart Merriam, Henry W. Henshaw, Alfred Kroeber, Alexander S. Taylor, Alphonse Pinart, R.G. Latham, Adam John (an Indian agent), Reverend Professor Gregory Mengarini, Eugene Duflot de Mofras, Father Juan Comelias, and Horatio Hale. Harrington reviewed their data, some of which include ethnographic material, with various Costanoan speakers. He also reviewed with them some Esselen, Chumash, and Yokut vocabulary to elicit Costanoan equivalences. In addition, Harrington conducted rehearings of the records of San Juan Bautista Mission, Carmel Mission, and Santa Barbara Mission.
Harrington also collected Costanoan tribenames and placenames. There is a list of ranches and, in some cases, brief notes on the location and approximate number of Indian residents. There are also diaries of placename trips which Harrington made with Isabelle Meadows in 1932 and his travel from Berkeley to San Juan Capistrano with Henry Cervantes and Marta Herrera in 1932. The notes include sketch maps, records of mileage, and notes on photographs taken. In addition, Harrington formulated a questionnaire on Rumsen tribenames and placenames.
Another portion of the subseries consists of Harrington's notes for a proposed monograph on the native people brought together at Mission San Juan Bautista from various parts of San Benito County and the adjacent region. There are ethnographic, historical, and biographical notes from Ascencion Solosano and others as well as excerpts from a letter written by C. Hart Merriam, mission records, and notes from placename trips. The sections on Indian and Spanish cooking and on clothing are particularly extensive, as are the files on historical anecdotes and the mission itself.
Other materials in the subseries include notes on Chocheno and Mutsun song texts; information from Ascencion Solorsano regarding the use of herbs and native wild plants in the treatment of various diseases; myths and songs, anecdotes and historical accounts, and translations; and a miscellany of notes from interviews with various Costanoan speakers. Among his miscellaneous notes are comments on photographs taken by Harrington and information about his sound recordings.
Biographical / Historical:
John P. Harrington recorded three Costanoan dialects in three separate, primary periods: Chocheno (1921), Mutsun (mostly 1929), and Rumsen (mostly 1932-1939).
During the month of August 1921, prompted, no doubt, by suggestions from C. Hart Merriam, Harrington worked in the area of Pleasanton, California, gathering data on Chocheno, which he sometimes referred to as "the Nepeno language." His principal informant in the work was Maria de los Angeles Colas, usually called "Angela." A man named José, presumably Angela's husband José Guzmán, also provided information.
In January 1922 Harrington had his first opportunity to record basic vocabularies of the Mutsun and Rumsen dialects of Costanoan. Early in the month he worked briefly with an eighty-seven year-old Mutsun speaker, Ascencion Solorsano of Gilroy. Seven years later Harrington reestablished contact with Solorsano. He found Solorsano to be an excellent source of linguistic information. Much of his work with her was devoted to reviewing all historical and contemporary recordings of Mutsun. Although Solorsano was not a speaker of any other Costanoan dialect, Harrington felt that her Mutsun data were fundamental to his understanding of the other languages. For this reason he asked her to rehear a number of vocabularies in Rumsen, Santa Cruz, and Soledad. Harrington deemed as "astonishing" Solorsano's knowledge of Mutsun material culture, myths, native plants, ceremonies, customs, and life at the mission. She had intimate personal knowledge of missionary influences and a secondhand knowledge dating from pre-mission days. She had also lived with her parents on a ranch near the Pinnacles, where she learned the practice of herbal medicine.
During the period 1929-1930, Harrington also resumed fieldwork on Chocheno and Rumsen. In March 1930 he interviewed and recorded Chocheno songs from Jose Guzman. Another person involved in the later "San Jose mission" work was Susana Nicolas. Harrington evidently read various Chocheno forms to her but she responded in Rumsen. Laura Ramirez (nee Escobar), the older sister of Tomasa Cantua, was his major source of Rumsen informantion. She gave him a sizable vocabulary as well as a significant amount of ethnographic data.
On March 28, 1932, Harrington returned to Monterey to work with Isabelle Meadows, who learned Rumsen as a child from an elderly Wacharon woman, Maria Omesia. Throughout the spring of 1932, Harrington roomed with Solorsano's family in New Monterey and drove to Meadows' house in Carmel each day. By utilizing his earlier field notes as well as various primary and secondary sources, Harrington began to elicit a "big, thorough vocabulary of the Carmel-Monterey language." During automobile and walking trips, which took them as far as Salinas, he recorded some Indian names of sites as well as many old Spanish placenames. He scheduled other trips for collecting flowering plants with Claudia Corona.
In the summer of 1932, Harrington's interest turned to the study of Uto-Aztecan languages (Gabrielino, Luiseno, and Juaneno) and the annotation of Geronimo Boscana's writings. Meadows accompanied him to the San Juan Capistrano area to pursue this fieldwork. In 1933 she also traveled with him to Santa Ana, where he worked out the details for the publication of Chinigchinich. Harrington brought her back with him to Washington for several months in 1934. The following year they again returned to the capital, where she continued working intermittently with him until her death in 1939. During this later phase, their interviews consisted of repetitive reviews of all of the Costanoan notes which Harrington had compiled to date. He was attempting to refine his orthography and to check on detailed points of Rumsen grammar. Simultaneously he amassed voluminous notes of ethnographic and biographical interest and recorded a wealth of data relating to California Spanish.
Local Numbers:
Accession #1976-95
Local Note:
This subseries was broken up into three catalog records to facilitate viewing of digital surrogates. See the catalog record for John Peabody Harrington papers: Costanoan (part 2) and (part 3) to view surrogates for the rest of Harrington's Costanoan 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.
