At the first working conference on the linguistic and ethnographic papers of John P. Harrington, held in Santa Barbara in June 1992, plans were made for further meetings and projects, as well as for maintaining and expanding the network of Harrington scholars. The Newsletter of the J. P. Harrington Conference serves as the vehicle for communicating information about these and other Harrington-related activities. The Newsletter is published at irregular intervals and is distributed free to anyone interested. To be placed on the mailing list contact the editor: Victor Golla, Dept. of Ethnic Studies, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521. Telephone: (707) 826-4324 or 677-3361. Fax: (707) 826-4418. E-mail: gollav@axe.humboldt.edu or golla@calstate.bitnet.
Space has been reserved in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Thursday afternoon, July 6 and Friday, July 7, for a short conference on the Harrington Papers. This meeting will be held on the campus of the University of New Mexico as part of a series of conferences connected to the 1995 Linguistic Institute. As in previous JPH conferences, any presentation relevant to Harrington's work and papers will be welcome, ranging from linguistic analyses of data he collected, to commentaries on his field procedures, to considerations of Harrington's place in the history of Americanist work.
Prospective participants should send a title and a brief abstract to Victor Golla, at the address on the masthead of this Newsletter. A tentative schedule will be prepared in mid-May, so any submission received after May 15 cannot be guaranteed a place on the program.
The Linguistic Institute has reserved short-term space in UNM dormitories for conference participants. The daily rate for a single room is $16, for a double room $12.50 per person. Reservations must be made as soon as possible and prepaid. Requests (with checks made out to "Dept. of Linguistics, UNM") should be sent to: Linguistic Institute Housing, Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1196 (505/277-2032; fax: 505/277-6355; e-mail: linginst@unm.edu). Special Linguistic Institute rates have been arranged at the following motels: Plaza Inn, 900 Medical Arts NE, Albuquerque, NM 87102 (505/243-5693; fax: 505/843-6229): $45/night, single or double. Holiday Inn Midtown, 2020 Mewnaul Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87107 (505/884-2511; fax: 505/884-5720): $64/night, single or double, $74/night, triple or quad.
Arrangements are being made for the 1996 JPH Conference to be held at UC-Davis.
James R. Glenn, Senior Archivist at the National Anthropological Archives, sends us this update on the NAA's Harrington collection:
* We have mailed out announcements for the microfilm of the JPH photographs [see "JPH Photograph Collection" below], which the NAA is distributing on its own rather than through Kraus International. The microfilm came to ten reels. The full set costs $500 for a diazo copy and $750 for a silver copy. Individual reels are $50 and $75. We are sending WordPerfect 5.1 catalogs of the material on diskette with each order-or an unbound hard copy, if people want that.
* Last summer the NAA applied for and received a Smithsonian internal grant of approximately $24,000 to transfer to tape all of Harrington's aluminum disk sound recordings. The grant started in October but we have only recently started sending disks to the Cutting Corporation (the Washington recording company that will do the actual transfers). We plan to do 250 during the first fiscal year. We haven't yet prepared a list of the disks that are being transferred. Our plan is to dub copies for John Johnson at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, who will try to identify the languages and speakers, or verify the identifications.
* Most of the original Harrington Papers are now in storage at the Smithsonian's satellite facility in Silver Hill, Maryland. It gets a little complicated to explain what part of the collection is where, but basically what we've kept here in D.C. are the photographs and all the textual material not included on the Kraus microfilm. These are available to researchers on the usual basis. People who want to see the originals of the microfilmed material should be prepared for a delay. First, they should get in touch with us and explain why they need to see the original manuscripts. The lead time should be about a month, since we will have to decide where the material will be viewed. Although right now we do not have anyone working in the Maryland facility on a regular basis, chances are that the viewing will be in Maryland. (Shuttle service from the Mall is regular and free.) We want to assure people that if they have a good reason to view the original material we will definitely help set them up to do it.
The National Anthropological Archives has recently made available a 10-reel microfilm edition of Harrington's photographic collection, edited by Gerrianne Schaad. The reels are available either with diazo or with silver-based film at $50/reel or $500 for the full set (diazo) and $75/reel or $750 for the full set (silver-based). The reels and their general subject contents are:
1. Alaska/Northwest Coast (Aleut, Tlingit, General Alaska, General Northwest Coast, Salish); Northern and Central California (Wiyot, Pomo, Yurok/Hupa, Nisenan/Miwok, Karok).
2. Northern and Central California (Karok, Konomihu, Chimariko, Hupa, Achomawi/Atsugewi/Wintu/Yana, Costanoan)
3. Northern and Central California (Salinan, Tejon [= largely Yawelmani Yokuts])
4. Northern and Central California (Tejon, unidentified); Southern California/Basin (Chumash)
5. Southern California/Basin (Chumash)
6. Southern California/Basin (Tubatulabal, Gabrielino, Cahuilla, Luiseño, Luiseño/Juaneño, Juaneño, Cupeño, Chemehuevi, Southern California Miscellaneous, Mojave, Walapai/Yavapai, Quechan, Diegueño)
7. Southern California/Basin (Diegueño [Baja], Diegueño [U.S.])
8. Southern California/Basin (Luiseño/Diegueño, Paiute); Southwest (Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Taos, Tewa, Cocopa, Unidentified Southwest); Plains (Kiowa, Blackfeet); Northeast/Southeast (Stockbridge, Cherokee, Ojibwa, Sauk & Fox, Osage)
9. Mexico/Central America/South America (Pima/Papago, Papago/Pima, Seri, Nahuatl, Quiché, Yucatec, Cuna, Miscellaneous); Unidentified Images (all geographic areas); Correspondence (photographs attached to letters)
10. Personal Photographs; Friends and Colleagues; Miscellaneous; Special Linguistic Studies (photographs related to Arabic, origins of Spanish words); Records Relating to Personal Names; Records Relating to State and Province Names; Miscellaneous Linguistic Studies.
Prepayment is required before shipment can be made. Payment should be made by check or money order payable in U.S. dollars to the Smithsonian Institution. Each order will be accompanied by a catalogue, available either in hard copy (loose 81/2 x 11" sheets) or on diskette in WordPerfect 5.1. When ordering, specify your wishes concerning the format.
Order from the National Anthropological Archives, MRC 152 NHB, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560.
Your Editor is joining forces with Martha Macri and others to lay plans for a Harrington Studies Center at the University of California at Davis. It would be part of a larger research project, now in its formative stages at UCD, focused on the study and teaching of, and archiving data on, California Indian languages. One of our first goals is to locate funding to purchase the full set of JPH microfilm. We envision a user-friendly study center, with reading, copying, and other support facilities, which could also be a locus for conferences and workshops, and serve as a clearinghouse for information on research. -- More about all this in the next JPH Newsletter.
* Myra L. Anderson, University Library, UC-Riverside, P.O. Box 5900, Riverside, CA 92517 (myra.anderson@ucr.edu) (3/95):
The UC-Riverside Library has recently acquired the papers of Carobeth Laird, including the manuscripts of all of her published and unpublished work. The donation (which came to us from Harry Lawton) has not yet been inventoried, and it may be several years before this can be done, owing to lack of funds.
* Arlene Benson, P.O. Box 1632, Tonopah, NV 89049 (8/26/94):
I'd like to call your attention to Joe Mazzini (P.O. Box 330, Montgomery Creek, California 96065). Joe grew up in the house owned by Alfretta Moody, where JPH stayed when he was working in Northern California. Joe is quite a Harrington scholar, although he is not an anthropologist. He is a gold mine of information about Harrington, and could contribute significantly to a future JPH Conference. For example, Joe says that Harrington used to start his odometer at Alfretta's house-an important piece of information for anyone trying to read Harrington's maps of the Montgomery Creek area.
Joe has lived in the area all his life and knows the Madessi people and the area intimately. Joe is the person who informed me that there was a Madessi man named Hulsey Bill, and another with the name William ("Bill") Hulsey. One of them was the Madessi informant who told both Harrington and C. Hart Merriam the Madessi creation story.
* Lynne E. Christenson, Dept. of Anthropology, San Diego State Univ., San Diego, CA 92182 (lchriste@mail.sdsu.edu) (3/2/95):
We have some items from Harrington at San Diego State University and we are in the process of performing an inventory. I'd be interested in getting in contact with other institutions that have Harrington collections, and with people who are interested in the materials we have.
* Kevin Groark, 44650 11th St. E., Lancaster, CA 93535 (groark@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu) (3/7/95):
I've been working with the Kitanemuk notes for the past two years, and am in the process of completing a monograph based on this research. It will be a synthetic "ethnographic reconstruction" of the Kitanemuk, much in the spirit of Travis Hudson's work (The Eye of the Flute and The Breath of the Sun). I've attempted to retain the flavor and nuance of the original texts, while synthesizing and annotating them for greater clarity. A draft should be ready in the next month or so.
I'm also beginning to delve into the vast Yokuts fieldnotes. Right now I'm just exploring them a bit. I'm particularly interested in some of the data on shamanism-I used a bit of it in a paper I've just completed on the ritual and therapeutic use of red ants in native south-central California. Where I go from here is anyone's guess!
I'm very interested in networking with other people who are working with the notes (and who can share the particular joys and frustrations that come with such an undertaking!).
A little bit about me: I'm a graduate student at UCLA, focusing on Amazonian ethnography (particularly medical ethnobotany and shamanism). In a previous incarnation I was an archaeologist, and worked extensively in the western Mojave Desert. While studying archaeology at Berkeley I became interested in Harrington, as my fascination with California was becoming increasingly oriented towards ethnography and ethnohistory. I eventually shifted to Latin America, but have retained a keen interest in California ethnography.
* Kathryn Klar, 710 Courtland, Richmond, CA 94805 (kkestrel@garnet.berkeley.edu) (2/95):
Some tidbits from my research on JPH's family, education, and early career:
- On August 27, 1915, Harrington wrote to E. W. Gifford at Berkeley ("Hello, Gifford!"-looks like they were on good terms) about his bout with typhoid. He also asked when Sapir was expected to arrive in California for his work with Ishi. There's a postscript: "My regards to Ishi. Ask him if he remembers Hawwington."
- I have had a letter from a cousin of JPH's, Donald Harrington, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in New York City. Donald tells me that he has two children, a son David, who lives in Santa Fe, and a daughter, known to many of us in a very different context: Loni Hancock, the former mayor of Berkeley, California, now an official in the Clinton Administration.
* Stephen O'Neil, P.O. Box 4911, Irvine, CA 92716 (8/15/94):
Many thanks for the San Juan Capistrano conference. It was certainly nice to have a Harrington meeting here in my area - not only for the convenience, but so that others could see what I think is such an interesting, historic, and beautiful part of California (even if you do have to look under the corners of urban expansion to see it). The folks down here are unanimous in thinking everyone had a great time. Anthropologists and Native Americasn-everyone was talking, eating, and enjoying the festivities together.
* Jane M. Walsh, Dept. of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560 (6/27/94):
I've just finished a short sketch of Harrington's life for the American National Biography which is being published by Oxford University Press. In re-reading a lot of Harrington's correspondence I came across references to two JPH publications that have not previously been noted. (At least they were not in the Glemser bibliography attached to Mathew Stirling's obituary of JPH in the American Anthropologist 65:370-381, 1963.)
1936. Foreword. George M. Lamsa, Gospel Light: Comments on the Teachings of Jesus, From Aramaic and Unchanged Eastern Customs. Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Co. Pp. xi-xiii. [On the remarkable survival of Aramaic-"the language of Christ"- into the 20th century.]
1944. (with Robert W. Young). "Earliest Navajo and Quechua." Acta Americana 2(4): 315-319. [Young and Harrington note that the earliest published vocabulary of Navajo (1812) uses accents, presumably to mark tonal phenomena. They also discuss the extant 16th century recordings of Quechua.]
There was a clue about the Foreword in a letter to George Lamsa (Dec. 18, 1936) in which JPH requested that a copy of Gospel Light be sent as a Christmas present to the daughter of a high school flame. Also, a letter from his daughter Awona (August 22, 1936) begins: "The reading of your splendid foreword to Mr. Lamsa's Gospel Light rekindled my desire to get in touch with you. I should so love to see and know you."
I was led to the article in Acta Americana in some other correspondence. I wonder how many other JPH publications in obscure and not-so-obscure journals have somehow slipped between the cracks!
The December 1993 issue of the Griffith Observer, the monthly publication of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, displayed a photograph of the Luiseño "Milky Way Rock" on its front cover. An accompanying note from the editor of the magazine, Dr. E. C. Krupp, explained that he had come across an account of this rock, the Wanawut, in the fieldnotes of "John Peabody Harrington, an indefatigable American ethnologist." Krupp contacted Dr. Bruce Love, an archaeologist, who was able to identify the location of the rock (near the old mission town of Pala) from the information JPH provided in his notes, transcribed below. The passage is vintage JPH, complete with odometer readings:
[Vol. 3, reel 117, frame 50b] Trip with Joe Albañas, El Potrero to Arlington, July 31, 1932 655 left Pala. 660 past mezquite tree on rt. of rd. The wá.nawoT rock has a white streak on it. It is on the old Pala-Timecula rd. Near it is the 'áswot rock. Somebody knockt the head of the eagle rock off. If any man throws at this eagle rock and hits it, his wife will bear him twins. We passed this rock at about 683. We past it about 683. [Vol. 3, reel 117, frame 51a] Wi. says there is a rock with a wá.nawUT and other things painted on it in Pala Canyon. The wá:nawuT looks like a long streak in the rock. Wi. thinks the wá.nawUT is a thing like a pìwí.c worn like a belt around the waist. The rock is betw. the new (present) rd., which is to the w., and the old road (which is to the east). Mr. Thurman Smith's ranch & cabin are downslope of this rock. Jeoz n. name of the rock, they call the band on the rock wá.nawuT. & cd. describe the rock as tó.ta wá.naw mawIc (ch., use). Do not prefix pU- to last word, for that wd. sound as if the wd. nawUt belonged to the rock.
Krupp and Love visited the site on July 7, 1993, accompanied by two Luiseño singers, Raymond Basquez and Mark Macarro. The rock has a seam of natural white quartz that looks like it has been drawn on the rock "with engineering precision." Like the Milky Way, the band in the rock rises from one side of the boulder, climbs over the top, and descends to the ground on the other side. Macarro noted that in Luiseño songs the Milky Way is said to be "rooted" in the earth.
Love gave a presentation on the Wanawut at the San Juan Capistrano conference last August, citing it as an example of the continuing importance of JPH's data in locating cultural heritage sites.
Gamble, Geoffrey (editor). 1994. Yokuts Texts. Mouton de Gruyter, Native American Texts Series (new series), number 1. 108 pp. $14.95. [Sixteen narrative texts from eight of the Yokuts dialects. The texts come from four sources, spanning 60 years (1922-1982). The earliest three (all from the Yawelmani dialect) were collected by Harrington in 1922: "The Beginning of the World"; "Visit to the Land of the Dead"; and "The Story of Mikitti." Each is accompanied by another version of the same story as collected by Stanley Newman in 1930-31; the parallel texts provide an instructive view of the workings of a narrative tradition. Gamble has edited the texts to a standard format, with a regularized phonemic orthography, interlinear glosses, free translations, and notes. The second and third of the JPH texts are taken from a manuscript of a BAE Bulletin that was never published, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Mission Indians of California (ms. 1927); see JPH microfilm, volume 2, reel 100. - Order from: Mouton de Gruyter, 200 Saw Mill River Road, Hawthorne, NY 10532 (tel: 914/747-0110; fax: 914/747-1326).]