Object Details
- Local Numbers
- Accession #1976-95
- Creator
- Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961
- Collection Creator
- Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961
- Topic
- Mandan language
- Hidatsa language
- Crow language
- Oto language
- Shawnee language
- Arikara language
- Dakota language
- Language and languages -- Documentation
- Linguistics
- Grammar, Comparative and general
- Ethnology
- Mythology
- Ethnobotany
- Names, Ethnological
- Toponymy
- Coracles
- Creator
- Harrington, John Peabody, 1884-1961
- Culture
- Numakiki (Mandan)
- Minitari (Hidatsa)
- Apsáalooke (Crow/Absaroke)
- Indians of North America -- Great Plains
- See more items in
- John Peabody Harrington papers
- John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 5: Papers relating to the Native American History, Language and Culture of the Plains
- Biographical / Historical
- Between July and December 1950, John P. Harrington spent time at the Crow Indian reservation in southern Montana and at Fort Berthold in North Dakota. He returned to Washington on December 19 and spent from then until March 9, 1951, reporting on his fieldwork. The bulk of information was elicited from Carl R. Sylvester, a Hidatsa Indian, and from Mark Mahto, a Mandan. He interviewed Mahto's ninety-four-year-old father-in-law, Crowsheart, on September 26, 1950, after which he drafted a proposed article on Mandan coracles, or bullboats. In 1951 he tried unsuccessfully to secure Bureau of American Ethnology backing for the construction of a coracle, under Crowsheart's direction, for display in the National Museum.
- Extent
- 5 Boxes
- Date
- 1950-1951
- Archival Repository
- National Anthropological Archives
- Identifier
- NAA.1976-95, Subseries 5.2
- Type
- Archival materials
- Field notes
- Manuscripts
- 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.
- Rights
- Contact the repository for terms of use.
- Existence and Location of Copies
- Microfilm and digital surrogates of microfilm are available. See Volume 5, reels 14-15. Only original documents created by Harrington, his collaborators and field assistants, or notes given to him were microfilmed.
- Genre/Form
- Field notes
- Manuscripts
- Scope and Contents
- This subseries of the Plains series contains Harrington's Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow research. The materials primarily consist of comparative vocabulary, comparative grammar, ethnographic notes, texts, and grammar. Small selections of Oto, Quapaw, Shawnee, Arikara, and Sioux terms are interspersed among the vocabulary and grammatical notes. The vocabulary section (former B.A.E. ms. 6009pt.) is semantically arranged and covers eighteen categories. Carl R. Sylvester (abbreviated "Syl.") provided the Hidatsa terms and the Mandan came from Mark Mahto. There are comparatively few Crow terms. The material contains substantial linguistic elaborations; some ethnographic observations are also included, particularly in the plant vocabulary. While in Billings, Montana, Harrington evidently planned to rehear a Crow clan and relationship vocabulary copied from Robert H. Lowie's Notes on the Social Organization and Customs of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow Indians (1917). Few expressions, however, were reheard (former B.A.E. ms. 6003). Hidatsa material is sometimes identified by the term "Hir." Presumably Harrington was using Hira'tsa, an orthography variously applied in his notes to the language, people, or "ancient" village of Hidatsa. This interchange of "d" and "r" occurs elsewhere in the field notes--Chiwe-dhe for Chiwere, for example. The etymology of the name Hidatsa is apparently vague; there are some pertinent references to this subject among the mythology and tradition notes. As with the vocabulary notes, there is more information on Hidatsa and Mandan than on Crow in Harrington's grammatical material. Phonetics and morphology are covered, with subcategories labeled by Harrington. This series was formerly catalogued as part of B.A.E. ms. 6009. Also among Harrington's files is an article titled "New Materials in the Coracle of the Mandan Indians," which he submitted for publication in the American Anthropologist. He obtained most of the information from Crowsheart on September 26, 1950, and from Crowsheart's daughter, Annie Eagle, both of whom lived on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. The content of the final draft is almost entirely ethnographic. The notes, however, indicate an attempt to provide a linguistic treatment of the subject, with Hidatsa and Crow comparisons from Sylvester and Mahto. This article (former B.A.E. ms. 6008) was not published.The route of Harrington's trip to Crowsheart's home and a bus trip from Brunswick to Kansas City are described in detail. There is a brief section on mythology and traditions (former B.A.E. ms. 6009pt.). There is also a small set of reading notes from Washington Matthews' Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa Indians (1877) that deals mainly with the name "Missouri River." Additional information covers names of persons, a bibliography, and a few unsorted notes (former B.A.E. ms. 6009pt.). Other miscellaneous material was labeled "Rejects" by Harrington, including an interview in Bismark with a Mrs. Rubia, who had a Hidatsa mother and a Mandan father.
- Restrictions
- No restrictions on access.
- Record ID
- ebl-1626971434170-1626971435015-1
Related Content
Hidatsa/Mandan/Crow
