Indians of North America -- California Search this
Type:
Archival materials
Field notes
Vocabulary
Songs
Maps
Place:
California -- History
Date:
1914-circa 1957
Scope and Contents:
This subseries of the Northern and Central California series contains Harrington's research on the Yokuts.
Notes from his fieldwork in 1914 include references to residents who he thought might be able to assist him in his research, detailed descriptions of house construction and the fabrication of sleeping mats, and small sketches of pictographs which Harrington had seen in the region. Amidst the miscellaneous notes are lists of baskets which he purchased, notes on photographs he took and bibliographic references from C. Hart Merriam. Harrington also copied extracts of his field notes onto slipfiles, which he filed under a variety of subject headings. The Tachi file contains ethnographic notes from Roberto Bautista and Agnes Light as well as a few Tachi lexical items. The file labeled "Tule" consists of mixed linguistic and ethnographic data from Jim Alto and Mr. Edmundson at the Tule River Reservation and notes on the Tachi dialect recorded from Pacifico Archuleta.
The section of linguistic, ethnographic, historical, and biographical notes consists of raw field data collected by Harrington and Carobeth from twenty residents of Yokuts territory during the period 1916-1917. Topics include vocabulary, placenames, tribenames, myths, ceremonial regalia and dances, songs, and religion. The notes from Josefa Damian, marked "Jos. Mar.," feature extensive data on relationship terms, age and sex terms, and moieties in Chunut, Tachi, Tejonefio, and Wowol. The most extensive notes were recorded from Francisca Lola. The notes contain voluminous amounts of linguistic data (vocabulary and paradigms) in Koyeti, Yawdanchi, Choynok, and Tachi as well as equivalent forms in "R. C." (Rio Chiquito). The material is also rich in ethnographic detail, providing information on uses of plants (Tejon ranch specimens), ceremonies, fiestas, dances, and material culture accompanied by diagrams and sketches. In addition, there are biographical notes on informants, myths, and texts of songs.
A year after collecting his field data on Yokuts, Harrington made copies of his notes and arranged them into several sizable slipfiles. One major file was created for the Chunut and Tachi languages, and another for the Yawelmani, Koyeti, Yawdanchi, and Wikchamni languages. There are also small slipfiles for Choynok and Palewyami. The slipfiles are organized semantically; headings included are cosmography, plants, animals, "artifacts" (material culture), sociology, religion, tribenames, and placenames. They include information regarding plant speciments collected by Harrington at the Tejon Ranch.
An additional step that Harrington took in the analysis of his Yokuts field data was the development of an outline grammar of the Yawelmani dialect. He extracted vocabulary and linguistic notes from the semantically arranged slipfiles, marking the slips which he copied with a check mark or the notation "gr." The data which he extracted are largely Yawelmani, although vocabulary and sentences from Koyeti, Yawdanchi, Chunut, and Tachi are included for comparative purposes. Harrington also submitted multiple manuscripts of his Yawelmani grammar to the Bureau of American Ethnology (former B.A.E. Mss. 2973, 3041, 3047, 3048, and 3054).
Harrington's files relating to the Tejon Ranch Case contain correspondence dating from 1921 to 1924, legal documents, a copy of a census taken at the ranch, and documentary evidence from a variety of secondary sources including military records, newspaper accounts, and Senate documents. The major portion of the records consists of notes from interviews with about twenty Tejon residents. The content is primarily biographical, with placename references. In many cases the notes were taken down in the form of depositions. Harrington simultaneously recorded lengthy Yokuts myth texts as well as stories in English and Spanish. Information from a number of the informants was formerly cataloged as B. A. E. ms. 3046. There is also a carbon copy of a "Report on Tejon Indians, Kern County, California" submitted by Herbert V. Clotts, Acting Superintendent of Irrigation, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on January 15, 1918.
Records relating to sound recordings pertain to songs performed by five Yokuts speakers and two Kitanemuks. The songs were recorded on wax by Harrington in Yokuts territory during the periods 1916-1917. The cylinders were sent to ethnomusicologist Helen H. Roberts in 1921 to review. The bulk of this section contains her lengthy notes on the texts of songs, accompanied by musical transcriptions.
The final section of this subseries consists of miscellaneous notes. There are notes from interviews and correspondence with information on boat construction, a sketch map received in a 1925 letter, notes relative to a conversation with J.N.B. Hewitt in 1926, notes from an interview with Angel Sanchez and Bill Skinner, and information from Roberts on song text. There are also copies of Harrington's own field notes and notes on secondary sources.
Biographical / Historical:
John P. Harrington worked on the Yokuts language a number of times during his forty years of fieldwork in California. This study certainly matches the breadth of the data for Karok and Salinan and is surpassed in volume only by his output for Costanoan and Chumash.
Harrington's first contact with the so-called "Tulareno" people occurred in late September to early October 1914 on a two-week trip to the San Joaquin Valley. At that time he made short visits to the Santa Rosa rancheria near Lemoore, to the Tule Indian Reservation near Porterville, and to Bakersfield as part of a dialect survey. A limited amount of additional data was obtained in 1914 and 1915 during the course of his work on Salinan and Chumash. Migueleno speaker Pacifico Archuleta, whose wife, Suncion, was Yokuts, gave a limited Tachi vocabulary, and Rosario Cooper, an Obispeno speaker, also provided several words.
In November 1916 Harrington traveled to the Tejon region, ostensibly to work with Jose Juan Olivas, an inland Chumash speaker. It appears, in addition, that for a virtually uninterrupted period from that time until September 1917, Harrington (assisted by his wife, Carobeth) made an in-depth study of a number of Southern Valley and Foothills Yokuts dialects, obtaining extensive vocabularies and texts, as well as a considerable amount of ethnographic and historical data. This work took them to the valley near the Santa Rosa rancheria and to the Tule River Reservation. Harrington also made trips with informants to obtain placename data and to collect, identify, and describe botanical specimens. The observance of ceremonial rituals during that winter afforded him the opportunity of recording on wax cylinders and in writing a significant number of songs.
The flare-up of the Tejon Ranch case, which threatened to disinherit many Indians of their tribal lands, brought Harrington back to the area in February 1922. As a special temporary appointee to the Department of the Interior, he was responsible for obtaining depositions from the elderly residents of the Tejon. He simultaneously elicited additional biographical, historical, and linguistic data for his own work. The case was argued before the Supreme Court on February 28, 1924. In June of that year the court held that the Indians had abandoned the land. The decision was based on the Indians' failure to present their claim to the commission appointed under the act of March 1851 to ascertain and adjust private land claims in territory ceded by Mexico to the United States.
In the fall of 1923, he took a number of Yokuts to the Ventura County Fair to perform dances, to demonstrate house and boat building techniques, and to exhibit their crafts. He also made trips to Yokuts territory in the early 1930s and again in January 1942. These were possibly side trips made during the course of other work to follow upon the Tejon Ranch case.
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.
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).
Collection Rights:
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish or broadcast materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiarchives@si.edu.
Collection Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Edward S. Curtis photogravure plates and proofs for The North American Indian, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
This collection was processed with funding from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
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).
Collection Rights:
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish or broadcast materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiarchives@si.edu.
Collection Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Edward S. Curtis photogravure plates and proofs for The North American Indian, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
This collection was processed with funding from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
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).
Collection Rights:
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish or broadcast materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiarchives@si.edu.
Collection Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Edward S. Curtis photogravure plates and proofs for The North American Indian, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
This collection was processed with funding from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
Viewing of the photographic negatives and transparencies requires advance notice and the permission of the Photo Archivist.
Access to the Edward S. Curtis papers and photographs requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
Contact the repository for terms of use.
Sponsor:
Processing and digitization of parts of this collection was supported by funding from the Smithsonian Women's Committee and the Small Research Grants program of the National Museum of Natural History.
