Chief Tecumseh (Tecumtha/Tekamthi/Shooting Star/Tekoomse/The One Who Passes Across Intervening Space from One Point to Another), Shawnee, 1768-1813 Search this
Chief American Horse (Wasechun-tashunka/Washi-ta-tonga), Oglala Lakota (Oglala Sioux), 1840-1908 Search this
Chief Billy Bowlegs (Holata Micco/Oh-Lochta-Mico/Oh lachta mico/Oh-loch-ta Mi-co/Och-Lochta Micco/O-loc-to-mi-co), Seminole, ca. 1810-1859 Search this
Chief Satanta (Set Ta Inte/Sa-Tant-Ta/Chief White Bear), Kiowa Search this
This subseries of the Notes and writings on special linguistic studies series contains material that supplement Harrington's Northeast/Southeast field notes.
The file on Algonquian includes three slips of Fox, Cree, Ojibwa, and Massachusett (labeled "Natick") vocabulary in the hand of Truman Michelson; typed copies of the above; notes on Cree and Ojibwa from secondary sources; information on the growing of wild rice by the Menominee; and miscellaneous notes on placenames and tribenames regarding the Cree, Ojibwa, Conoy, Nanticoke, and Narraganset.
The Shawnee/Peoria section consists of six pages of notes on Shawnee tribal divisions.
Among the miscellaneous material on the Abnaki languages is a page of Penobscot vocabulary obtained from Frank Siebert in April 1940. The remaining material was compiled during fieldwork on Western Abnaki at St. Francis in 1949. There are four pages on possible informants from Charles Nolet and a page of vocabulary from "Am"; bibliographic references; and lexical and grammatical notes excerpted from the works of Joseph Laurent and Masta.
For Massachusett there are three pages of miscellaneous notes with references to Trumbull's Natick Dictionary.
The bulk of the file on Iroquoian consists of a typed copy of an unidentified historical text from the 1880s. It discusses the relations of the Iroquois with the Spanish, French, and English settlers in the New World. Special mention is made of Gy-ant-va-chia (Cornplanter), chief of the Seneca. The spacing of the lines of text suggests that Harrington was planning to add a translation or annotations of some kind. There are also three pages of miscellaneous notes in his hand.
Most of the file on Delaware consists of information on placenames and tribenames obtained from Frank Siebert, Carl F. Voegelin, and a number of Oklahoma residents in 1940. Siebert gave both Delaware and Penobscot terms, and Unami words were given by Roy Longbone, Salley Fallleaf, and Jake Parks. Munsee forms were obtained from Josiah Montour and Jane Pattice of the Six-Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada. Also included are a carbon copy of a typed list of possible informants and several pages of miscellaneous notes from the works of Brinton, Strachey, and Zeisberger.
The section on Creek/Seminole/Alabama/Koasati/Choctaw contains twenty-one pages of vocabulary (mostly on tribenames) which Harrington obtained in an interview with James Feagin Sylestine, a speaker of the Alabama language, on April 25, 1940. The informant's home was in Livingston, Texas, although he was at the Shawnee Sanatorium at the time Harrington worked with him. The remaining miscellaneous notes were excerpted from various published and manuscript sources. They include references to Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Alabama, and Choctaw.
Miscellaneous material relating to the East consists of brief notes which Harrington copied from a number of secondary sources. There are mentions of the Huron, Wyandot, Powhatan, and Cherokee tribes, among others. Three of the pages consist of a partial typed list (alphabetically arranged K to M) of "Carolina and Virginia Algonquian" words. This list is based on that given in the commentary on the map of Raleigh's Virginia, pages 852 to 872 of The Roanoke Voyages, which was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1955.
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 North America -- Southern states Search this
Genre/Form:
Field 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.
The Frank Gouldsmith Speck photograph collection includes portraits of individuals and families, as well as scenic shots and landscape views made between 1909 and 1937. Speck was an anthropologist and ethnographer, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked on behalf of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation collecting ethnographic materials across the Eastern United States and Canada. His collection of photographs includes materials from native communities ranging from Newfoundland to Ontario in Canada and from Maine to South Carolina in the United States.
Scope and Contents:
The Frank Gouldsmith Speck photograph collection includes negatives and a small amount of prints made by Speck throughout the course of his career as an anthropologist and ethnographer. The majority of the photographs in this collection were made while Speck conducted field trips on behalf of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation between 1924 and 1932, though there are photographs from before and after this time. This collection has been arranged into Series by geographical location and then into subseries by culture group or community. Series 1: Newfoundland and Labrador: Innu, Mushuaunnuat, 1916-1935; Series 2: Quebec: Innu, Mistassini Cree, Lorette Huron, Wawenock, Mohawk, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, 1910-1937; Series 3: New Brunswick and Nova Scotia: Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, 1909-1917; Series 4: Ontario: Six Nations/Grand River (Naticoke, Mohawk, Cayuga, Mahican, Tutelo), Oneida Nation, 1914-1937; Series 5: Maine and New Hampshire: Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, 1910-1924; Series 6: Massachussets and Rhode Island: Wampanoag, Nauset, 1914-1931; Series 7: Connecticut: Mohegan, Niantic, Schaghticoke, Pequot, 1912-1931; Series 8: Delaware: Nanticoke and Rappahanock, 1911-1925; Series 9: Virginia and Maryland: Rappahanock, Chickahominy, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Nansemond, Potomac, Accomac, Powhatan, 1915-1924; Series 10: North Carolina and South Carolina: Catawba, Eastern Band of Cherokee, 1915-1930.
Many of Frank Speck's photographs are individual and family portraits of community members, many identified, posed outdoors in front of homes and community buildings. There are also landscape views as well as photographs taken during community events. There are a small amount of photographs that have now been restricted due to cultural sensitivity though for the most part Speck did not photograph culturally sensitive activities.
Arrangement:
The collection is intellectually arranged in 10 Series by geographic region and within each series by culture group. The negatives are physically arranged by catalog number.
Biographical / Historical:
Frank Gouldsmith Speck was born on November 8, 1881 in Brooklyn, New York. He studied under the prominent linguist John Dyneley Prince and anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University, receiving his BA in 1904 and MA in 1905. He received his Ph.D. in 1908 from the University of Pennsylvania. His doctoral dissertation on the ethnography of the Yuchi became a basis for an article which later appeared in the Handbook of American Indians. That same year Speck became an assistant in the University of Pennsylvania Museum and an instructor in anthropology at the University. He was made assistant professor in 1911, and professor and chairperson of the department in 1925, a position which he held until his death in 1950. Speck was the founder of the Philadelphia Anthropological Society, and was vice-president of the American Anthropological Association from 1945-46. Speck's research concentration was on the Algonkian speaking peoples. Speck studied every aspect of a culture: language, ethnobiology, technology, decorative art, myths, religion, ceremonialism, social organization, and music. Collecting material culture was also an integral part of Speck's fieldwork. His collections can be found in museums around the world, one of which is the National Museum of the American Indian. He is the author of numerous books and articles. Frank G. Speck died February 6, 1950. (A. Irving Hallowell, American Anthropologist, Vol. 53, No. 1, 1951)
Related Materials:
The Frank G. Speck Papers can be found at the American Philosophical Society (Mss.Ms.Coll.126) along with additional photographic materials by Speck.
Frank Speck published extensively in the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation publications; "Indian Notes" and "Indian Notes and Monographs." These publications are avialable through the Smithsonian Institution Libraries or online on the Internet Archive.
Separated Materials:
A small amount of notes from Speck's field work can be found in the Museum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation records (NMAI.AC.001) in Box 273, Folder 18 through Box 274 Folder 2.
Close to 4000 ethnographic and archeological items were collected by Speck for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation (MAI) and are now in the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) collection. For more information about these objects contact the NMAI Collections Department.
Provenance:
The majority of the negatives were gifted to the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation (MAI) by Frank Speck in 1927. The group of Nanticoke photographs were purchased by the MAI in 1915 and smaller amounts of photographs were gifted and purchased by the MAI between 1923 and 1942.
Restrictions:
Access to NMAI Archive Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiphotos@si.edu. For personal or classroom use, users are invited to download, print, photocopy, and distribute the images that are available online without prior written permission, provided that the files are not modified in any way, the Smithsonian Institution copyright notice (where applicable) is included, and the source of the image is identified as the National Museum of the American Indian. For more information please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use and NMAI Archive Center's Digital Image request website.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Frank Speck photograph collection, Photo Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
This subseries of the Northeast/Southeast series contains Harrington's Western Abenaki, Eastern Abenaki, and Passamaquoddy research. The bulk of the notes consists of Maine placenames culled from numerous secondary sources ranging from seventeenth-century documents to publications of the 1940s, and also including little known local histories, old maps and atlases, highway and forestry maps, and unidentified newspaper clippings. Located here also are lesser numbers of placenames of other states in the Northeast and the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. Most of the material was reheard by St. Francis, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy speakers, with an occasional Malecite, Micmac, and Menomini comparison.
The Western Abenaki (St. Francis) section contains vocabulary entries semantically arranged in about a dozen categories. The most extensive section (former B.A.E. MS 6029pt.) is that of Maine placenames copied from secondary sources. The most frequently cited sources were Joseph Laurent's New Familiar Abenakis and English Dialogues (1884), and Henry Lorne Masta's Abenaki Indian Legends, Grammar and Place Names (1932). This section also contains placenames of the New England States, New York, and the provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick, along with a few Penobscot and Passamaquoddy equivalences. The notes on tribenames include names found in the texts and maps of seventeenth-century voyages of discovery and in early histories of New England and Canada. Old and New World names and ethnic and race designations are also found in this category. The files also include a typed draft, with related notes (former B.A.E. ms. 6029pt.), dated 1950, titled "The Abnakis and Their Language." According to Harrington's introduction, the dialect is that of St. Francis and is based on terms from Laurent and Masta. There are notes covering phonetics and morphology, the latter arranged according to grammatical word form. Extensive hIstorIcal background material was sent to Harrington by T .R.L. MacInnes, secretary of the Indian Affairs Branch of the Department of MInes and Resources in Ottawa. A Mr. A. E. St. Louis did the actual research of the department's records and included some Huron data.
The Eastern Abenaki (Penobscot) vocabulary is semantically arranged in about ten categories, with occasional Passamaquoddy comparisons and a few Malecite terms. Ethnographic data sometimes accompany the linguistics. Harrington also etymologized certain phenomenal and geographic terms from the placename appendix of Joseph Nicolar published by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (cited in the notes as "Eckst.") in Indian Place-names of the Penobscot Valley and the Maine Coast (1941). Some of the tribenames were formerly part of B.A.E. manuscript 4463. He also consulted other published sources.
Eastern Abenaki grammatical notes include phonetics and morphology, with great emphasis on the former. Some St. Francis and Passamaquoddy comparisons culled from Harrington's notes are interfiled. There is also a small assortment of random historical and ethnographical reading notes culled from various secondary sources, most of which are identified in a related bibliographical section. A few bits of historical information come from Dana and Watso. There are no linguistic elaborations.
Materials relating to Penobscot and Passamaquoddy placenames primarily center around a proposed paper titled "The Indian Placenames of Maine" (former B.A.E. mss. 4463pt. and 6029pt.). A short introductory draft is followed by a linguistic study of placenames of Maine organized according to its sixteen counties. One brief section organized by regions and trails probably represents a discarded plan of procedure, and there is one group of miscellaneous names. Many terms bear the identification "Pen." for Penobscot and "Pass." for Passamaquoddy. If not identified, they are usually in the Penobscot dialect and given by Dana. There are a few Malecite and Micmac equivalences and one or two Menomini names. Two segments on Maine sites contain no linguistic elaborations. One list, organized by county and generally entered one item to a page, parallels the section described above. It comes from the same secondary sources and evidently was accumulated as a guide to the later rehearings. The second group, collected from various sources, provides historical information only (former B.A.E. ms. 6029 pt.). Placenames from other states and provinces include rehearings on the placename Massachusetts, New Brunswick placenames, and a miscellaneous group of unsorted and discarded notes. There is also linguistic treatment of "Pomole" and "Glooscap" texts, with an emphasis on Maine placenames (former B.A.E. MS 4463 pt.), as well as a typescript titled "A Short History of the Passamaquoddy Indians" in English.
Among Harrington's files are also notes for three proposed papers. One paper is on the name "Tarentine" as applied to native Americans of the East Coast. Harrington found evidence of its use among the records and histories of early voyagers to America. The second paper was to be a commentary on the Abenaki vocabulary compiled in 1605 by James Rosier, a member of the expedition under Captain George Waymouth (Weymouth). Harrington made a copy of the Waymouth terms while in New York City in November 1949. Both sets of notes contain occasional references to Laurent and Masta, but no linguistic data. A third paper was called "Bashaba and Bessabes Are Two Different Words." From numerous accounts of the earliest recorded voyages to the New World, Harrington accumulated reading notes to prove that Bashaba was a general name for a chief and that Bessabes was the personal name of a particular chief. Again there are no linguistic etymologies.
Biographical / Historical:
John P. Harrington accumulated information on these languages between April 24 and October 24, 1949. Most of his time was spent in Old Town, Maine, although he worked also in Bangor, at the State House Library in Augusta, at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, and in Eastport, Maine. He secured linguistic information from St. Francis speakers of Odanak near Pierreville, Quebec, and from a colony of Abenakis in Albany, New York. In November and December of 1949 while on trips between New York City and Washington for other reasons, he carried the notes with him for further sorting and rearranging. Reports indicate that in 1952 he was in the process of assembling an extensive study on the Abenaki, possibly incorporating data on the vocabulary, grammar, history, and ethnography of both Abenaki languages.
The principal St. Francis speakers that he worked with were Oliver Obomsawin (Ol.) and Alfred Miller (Am., AI.) of Odanak, and George Dennis (Geo., Den.) and John Watso of Albany. Watso introduced Harrington to Edwin E. Nagazoa (Ed., Nag., N.) and Maude Benedict Nagazoa, the former described as a perfect Abenaki speaker. Others that he worked with include Thomas Sadoquin, Mrs. Daylight (Mrs. D., D.), Antoine Medzalabolet, Chief Charles Nolet, and Dominico Berni. Berni's role is somewhat uncertain. He may have translated a letter of inquiry to the Bureau of American Ethnology which Harrington was assigned to handle, and which may have had nothing to do with Abenaki. Andrew E. Dana (And.), Frank and Mary Mitchell, and Charles John Saulis provided Penobscot and Passamaquoddy material, yielding extensive placename etymologies. Penobscot and a few Malecite (spelled "Malacite" throughout Harrington's notes) terms came from Harry Francis whose mother, Mary Jean Francis, was a Malecite Indian. Others that he worked with were Lena Mitchell, Laura, and Mr. and Mrs. William Neptune of Pleasant Point, near Eastport, Maine. William Neptune was a Passamaquoddy but Harrington credited him with Wawenock data.
Field notes and correspondence indicate that Harrington consulted with Dr. Frank T. Siebert,Jr., in person and by mail.
Arthur E. Edgerley at the State Highway Commission office in Augusta provided bits of history surrounding the sites as well as names of some of the people who formerly inhabited them.
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.