Klamath

Object Details

Topic: Klamath language; Language and languages -- Documentation; Linguistics

Culture: Klamath; Indians of North America -- California; Indians of North America -- Oregon

See more items in: John Peabody Harrington papers; John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 2: Papers Relating to the Native American history, language and culture of northern and central California

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.

Existence and Location of Copies: Microfilm and digital surrogates of microfilm are available. See Volume 2, reel 1, which also contains materials from other subseries. Only original documents created by Harrington, his collaborators and field assistants, or notes given to him were microfilmed.

Scope and Contents: This subseries of the Northern and Central California series contains John P. Harrington's research on the Klamath language. His field notes constitute, for the most part, a rehearing of Albert S. Gatschet's substantial work, "The Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon." Harrington first considered certain grammatical features of the language and then compiled semantically arranged lists of vocabulary. He extracted lexical items from Gatschet, particularly from the dictionary portion of the work, marking them with the citation "G. e-kl" or "G. kl-e." These gleanings and a more limited number of terms from Jaime de Angulo and L.S. Freeland (labeled "A." or "de A. & F.") and C.F. Voegelin ("Kl. Voeg.") were used as a basis for eliciting vocabulary and a few brief sentences from Mr. and Mrs. Jesse L. Kirk. Not every entry was reheard. Some pages have no comments or are marked simply "N."-doesn't know. Interspersed with the Klamath terms are references of a comparative nature to Harrington's work on other languages such as Navajo, Mohave, Chumash, Miwok, Delaware, Abnaki, and Crow.