Massachusett

Object Details

Topic: Wampanoag language; Language and languages -- Documentation; Linguistics; Names, Geographical; Indians of North America -- Northeast

See more items in: John Peabody Harrington papers; John Peabody Harrington papers / Series 6: Native American History, Language, and Culture of the Northeast & Southeast

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 6, reel 9. Only original documents created by Harrington, his collaborators and field assistants, or notes given to him were microfilmed.

Scope and Contents: This small subseries of the Northeast/Southeast series contains John P. Harrington's Massachusett research. The section of writings (former B.A.E. ms. 6018pt.) is based principally on the works of the seventeenth-century missionary John Eliot. An article titled "Two Massachusetts Texts with Interlinear Translation" was intended for submission to the International Journal of American Linguistics but was not published. The material includes a typescript and two preliminary drafts with related notes. It covers biographical information on Eliot and lists his writings according to those containing translations and those without translations. The texts Harrington chose for the paper are the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer from the Gospel of St. Matthew. Much of the biographical and historical information comes from James C. Pilling's Bibliography ofthe Algonquian Languages (1891). Also consulted was James Trumbull's "Natick Dictionary" (1903). Harrington provided C. E. Lauterbach of Pasadena with an interlinear translation of Eliot's version of the 23rd Psalm. This subseries also contains a copy of Massachusett language placenames excerpted from the Dictionary of American-Indian Place and Proper Names in New England (1909) by R. A. Douglas-Lithgow (D.-L.). There are no linguistic annotations. (Former B.A.E. ms. 6029pt.).