This subseries of the Alaska/Northwest Coast series consists of materials pertaining to the area Alaska / Northwest Coast as a whole and those which are too limited in scope to constitute a full subseries in themselves. Included are writings by Harrington, notes from his conversations with others, notes from secondary sources, and field notes and writings he collected from others. Some items date as early as 1933; most are from the period 1938 to 1943.
The writings represent Harrington's attempt to synthesize the results of his years of work in the Northwest--particularly with regard to his Athapascan studies. There are several typed drafts of an untitled paper [former B.A.E. ms. 4360] dated April 4, 1943 on the tribal distribution along the Oregon coast. This work, accompanied by a map, describes tribal boundaries in detail and makes reference to the geographical and cultural setting. There follow notes, outlines, rough and final drafts of three papers of varying length relating to Harrington's theories on the origin and relationship of the Athapascan languages. Two of these were published (1940, 1943). Illustrations sent to the printer are also included here. The section of writings also contains several pages of notes and very rough drafts of short articles on the etymology of the term "Athapascan."
The notes from conversations vary in length and content. Information from Franz Boas consists of two undated pages concerning phonetics in Coast Salish and Chinook. From a March 1933 discussion with Joe Maloney, Harrington obtained data on tribes of southwestern Oregon, predominently on the Coos. W. O. Thorniley of the Puget Sound Navigation Company provided biographical and general information of the Olympic Peninsula, with special attention to the Ozette and Queets areas. Thomas Yallup spoke on Wishram, the tribal boundaries and practices of neighboring tribes, and possible informants.
Most significant are records of Harrington's meetings with Melville Jacobs in December 1939. Those discussions referred to Jacobs' own studies and included comments on the work of other linguists and anthropologists such as Jaime de Angulo, Leonard Bloomfield, Franz Boas, Leo J. Frachtenberg, Harry Hoijer, Verne F. Ray, Morris Swadesh, and C. F. Voegelin. The notes also reflect a mutual interest in orthographies, the relationship of Athapascan languages (particularly Kwalhioqua and Tlatskanai), and the theory of the Siberian origin and migration of the North American Indian. This section includes a few interspersed notes from Erna Gunther and Viola Garfield.
Notes from secondary sources consists of a few pages on each of several miscellaneous topics. The notes reflect Harrington's attempt to locate a speaker of Cayuse, and his interest in the early voyages to the Northwest Coast. Also included are comparative data on Athapascan languages compiled into a chart from a variety of manuscript and published sources.
Notes and writings from others include a small set of sketch maps and field data collected for Harrington by his assistant John Paul Marr. These notes were obtained while Harrington was in Washington, D.C. and unable to get to the field himself. There is also a section of original field notes on Puget Sound ethnogeography obtained from Thomas Talbot Waterman. They cover his collection of placename data in Clallam and in the Shoalwater Bay area in the period 1919-1921 and are supplemented by original notes from Ruth H. Greiner dated 1920-1921. Her records consist of lists of numbered placenames in a variety of Puget Sound Salish languages, with translations, etymologies, and brief commentaries. These field data were part of the basis for a manuscript Waterman prepared for the Bureau of American Ethnology (Waterman 1922) and are keyed to a number of large maps contained therein. Harrington also collected a short typed paper by his co-worker Robert W. Young dated 1938. This article, relevant to their study of Navaho, puts forward a theory on the origin and dispersion of a branch of Athapascan languages. It contains charts and numbered examples of linguistic features in Navaho, Carrier, Sekani, Chipewyan, Hare, and Hupa, among other languages.
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.
This set of files contains Harrington's Apache and Kiowa Apache research and writings. Most of the materials consist of notes and drafts for his and Robert W. Young's unpublished manuscripts on the life of Geronimo, as well as their project to translate the Chiricahua Apache chief's published autobiography into Apache. Harrington's Apache notes provide a useful block of placenames and names of persons, with random linguistic, ethnographic, biographical, and historical observations. The notes are arranged according to topic, each probably corresponding to a proposed chapter heading in Harrington's write-up. Entries from secondary souces and the related information supplied by rehearings in the field and in Washington were clipped together. Wherever possible these groups of notes are now pasted on a single sheet. Harrington apparently hoped to use the notes for additional monographs under such headings as "The Etymology of Geronimo's Name," "The Etymology of the Word Apache," and a review of Clum's Apache Agent. There are several incomplete typed or handwritten preliminary drafts, but neither Harrington or Young published the proposed papers. The numbered typewritten slips filed with the Apache notes may be responses to a questionnaire (not found in his papers) that Harrington sent to Young and William R. Hill. Also present are Harrington's correspondence with Father Berard Haile and other scholars involved in Athapascan studies, such as Harry Hoijer and Leonard Bloomfield.
While Harrington did not compile an Apache dictionary, his papers do contain vocabulary collected from the historical and ethnographic observations he made on the tribe. There is a rough beginning of a dictionary collected from Howard Soontay in 1944, and from Philip Cosen and Raymond Loco in 1945.
Biographical / Historical:
Harrington's study of Apache and Kiowa Apache spanned almost a decade. It began with an examination of secondary sources in 1936 and culminated in 1945 with the recording of brief vocabularies from native speakers. Speakers of several dialects were interviewed. Asa Deklugie and Raymond Loco provided Chiricahua data while Percy Bigmouth and Victor Dolan gave Mescalero terms. White Mountain Apache words were obtained from Philip Cosen and Kiowa Apache items from Howard Soontay. Related Navajo and Yavapai terms were given by Adolph Dodge Bitanny, Howard Gorman, and Mollie Starr. Deklugie, the son of Geronimo's sister, served as the principal source of primary data on Apache.
In collaboration with Robert W. Young, Harrington evidently planned a linguistic treatment of the life of Geronimo, the famous Chiricahua Apache chief, and, even more ambitiously, hoped to translate Geronimo's published autobiography into Apache. Harrington was in Washington, D.C., for all of 1936 and 1937 and, in fact, was hospitalized for six weeks in January and February 1937. He therefore accumulated his initial facts principally from secondary sources, using particularly S. M. Barrett's Life of Geronimo, identified in the field notes as "Autobiography," and W. Clum, Apache Agent. In most cases he gave page references for the material he copied.
Between June 1936 and June 1937, Harrington carried on a lively correspondence with William R. Hill, Engineer-in-Charge at the Mescalero Indian Reservation. Hill's father worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology and was Harrington's friend. Robert Young also collected data for him in the fall of 1936 through interviews with Asa Deklugie and Eugene Chihuahua. Young and Hill reheard the copied entries from the secondary sources, and Harrington attempted to synthesize the historic and ethnological information into a coherent text. He also tried to establish definitive etymologies and orthography for Apache placenames and personal names.
Harrington was in touch with Father Berard Haile, a linguist and Navajo lexicographer at the Franciscan Mission in St. Michaels, Arizona. A limited number of letters were exchanged with several other scholars involved in Athapascan studies, such as Harry Hoijer and Leonard Bloomfield.
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.
This subseries of the Notes and writings on special linguistic studies series contains materials resulting from Harrington's efforts to develop a phonetic alphabet for writing all languages.
There are four main groupings of notes relating to phonetics. A large set of uncategorized notes has been arranged in chronological order from 1910 through the 1950s. Most of the material dates from the period 1910 to 1915 and from 1921 to 1928; there are smaller amounts of data for the following three decades. The notes present alternate phonetic systems--sometimes referred to as "sonoscript"--in chart form with accompanying explanations of the rationale behind each proposed alphabet. There are also sample words and sentences written out phonetically. The notes from 1910 include a draft of a letter from Harrington to his mother and those from 1912 contain three large poster-sized charts. A second set of notes is arranged alphabetically by topic and includes subsections on alphabetic order, length, letters practical in handwriting, and pitch accent. A relatively large file labeled "phon[etic] letter forms" consists of various handwritten and typed letters as well as cut-and-pasted examples of letters from printed sources. There is also a clipping dated 1922 regarding an advocate of Esperanto with Harrington's own proposals for word forms in that language. In addition, the files contain a copy of an I.P.A. questionnaire and Harrington's comments on it. A third section of material consists of the notes which Harrington made during or immediately following interviews with about twenty linguists and anthropologists, among them Leonard Bloomfield, Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, Edward Sapir, Morris Swadesh (misspelled "Schwadesh"), Ruth Underhill, Carl F. Voegelin, T. T. Waterman, and B.A.E. colleagues Hewitt, Michelson, and Swanton. Not all of the notes are dated; those which are clearly labeled cover discussions from the 1920s to the 1940s. The last grouping, compiled around 1923 to 1926, contains brief notes on various alphabets. The alphabetically arranged files cover the proposed systems of Arden, Forchhammer, Jespersen, Murray, Olbrechts, Pierce, Powell, and Rouse.
This subseries also contains drafts for four papers by Harrington on phonetics as well as a brief one-page draft description of a "Seminar in General Phonetics" which Harrington was planning to offer at the University of Southern California in 1935 or 1936.
Biographical / Historical:
One aspect of the study of linguistics of special interest to John P. Harrington was the development of a practical phonetic alphabet for writing all languages. It was an effort to which he devoted a great amount of time from 1910 to 1915, from 1922 to 1928, and again intermittently in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
In 1912 Harrington drafted comments on a proposal for an international conference to devise a universal phonetic system, and on a sample questionnaire which was mailed to many linguists by the International Phonetic Association (I.P.A.). It is unclear whether or not he actually submitted them to the I.P.A.
Also in that year he was chosen to serve on a committee ofthe American Anthropological Association to "prepare a scheme of phonetic representation which [would] have the official sanction" of the organization. Fellow committee members were Franz Boas (chair), Edward Sapir, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Earl Pliny Goddard.
Although later notes indicate that he consulted a number of language specialists, it appears that most of Harrington's efforts at devising a workable alphabet were undertaken alone or with only the cooperation of his friend Paul Vogenitz.
In the mid-1930s he was invited to teach a seminar on "General Phonetics" at the University of Southern California. While correspondence with Dr. Frank C. Touton, vice president of the university, suggests that Harrington contemplated offering the course at various times between the spring of 1935 and the summer of 1936, this plan was abandoned because of more pressing interests. He did touch on phonetics during his course on language at the University of Washington during the summer of 1910
At various points in his career Harrington wrote preliminary descriptions of the phonetic system he favored at that time. None of the early drafts appeared in print and as late as the 1940s, while writing the treatise "Linguistics," Harrington was undecided whether to publish his system or "die keeping it hidden."
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
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.
Includes slips that have lexical materials from published (and perhaps some manuscript) sources on Virginia and Carolina Algonquian with some comparative materials from other Algonquian languages (especially Cree from Leonard Bloomfield). In two boxes: Box 1 Indian-English; Box 2 English-Indian and comparative materials.
Local Numbers:
NAA MS 7187
Citation:
Manuscript 7187, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Bloomfield was one of America's foremost scientific linguists, concerned with theoretical, descriptive, and applied aspects of his field. A teacher of German and an accomplished Indo-European scholar, he also carried out reserch on the languages of non-literated peoples on Algonquian languages.
Scope and Contents:
The collection concerns Bloomfield's work and the work of his students and colleagues--Charles Frederick Voegelin, Morris Swadesh, and Bernard Bloch--on Algonquian languages, particularly Menoninee, Chippewa, Shawnee, Delaware, Fox, Mahican, and Cree. Included are manuscript word lists, grammar notes, and texts together with some related printed and processed materials. In addition, the collection contains weekly summaries used in a Linguistic Institute course on (Oklahoma) Delaware, dated July-August, 1939. Voegelin was the linguist while the speaker was Willie Longbone. There are also a few letters of colleagues and informants (Ruth Landes, Joe Satterlee, Amos Striker, and Voegelin); an early draft of the 1946 publication Algonquian, Viking Fund Publications in Anthroplogy Number 6, pages 85-129; and other writings. Also included, sometimes as waste materials on the backs of newer manuscripts, are materials relating to Bloomfield's work on European languages and on Turkish.
Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
Related Materials:
The Yale University Library and the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library hold additional Leonard Bloomfield papers.
Restrictions:
The Leonard Bloomfield papers are open for research.
Access to the Leonard Bloomfield papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
Contact the repository for terms of use.
Topic:
Language and languages -- Documentation Search this
The dog's children : Anishinaabe texts / told by Angeline Williams ; edited and translated by Leonard Bloomfield ; newly edited and with a glossary by John D. Nichols
Weshki-Bmaadzijig ji-noondmowaad = 'That the young might hear' : the stories of Andrew Medler / as recorded by Leonard Bloomfield ; edited and annotated by Rand Valentine
