The organizers met in mid-January to discuss the overall structure of the Conference. We decided that the Conference will begin on Wednesday afternoon, June 24 (instead of Thursday morning, as previously announced) and that it will continue through midday Friday, June 26, with a possible evening session on Thursday, June 25. The morning session on Friday will also be the first session of the 1992 Hokan-Penutian Workshop. (Anyone who would like information about the Hokan-Penutian Workshop and is not yet on the mailing list should contact Marianne Mithun at the address on the masthead above.) There will be a meeting room available to us on Friday afternoon for informal post-Conference discussions, and we hope to have a joint Harrington/Hokan-Penutian party on Friday evening.
We decided to structure the Conference around sessions devoted to the following topics. The length and scheduling of these sessions will depend on the response from participants, but we anticipate devoting at least two hours to each topic.
1. HARRINGTON'S TRANSCRIPTIONAL CONVENTIONS.
As anyone who has worked with more than a small sample of JPH's data knows,
his phonetic transcription changed over time and sometimes varied from
language to language. He also used a number of abbreviations and
non-phonetic symbols, some of whose meanings are understood (cf. the lists
in Elaine Mills' Guides) but some of which require further elucidation. We
would like to devote a session to discussion of JPH's transcription and
symbols. Participants are invited to compile a list of the symbols JPH
used in the materials with which they are familiar, with special attention
to changes in usage through time, and are urged to bring about 50 copies of
this list to the Conference. In addition, we welcome one or more papers on
the general topic of Harrington's transcriptional practice.
2. COMPUTER DATABASES OF HARRINGTON MATERIALS.
Several people have expressed an interest in having a session devoted to
the computer storage of material in the Harrington collection. We invite
participants who have had experience in this area to give presentations,
and we encourage them to bring disks with software and (sample) files for a
workshop discussion.
3. HARRINGTON'S FIELD PROCEDURES.
Important for the understanding of Harrington's notes is some idea of how
he conducted his work: how he prepared for the field, how he interviewed
his consultants, how he organized his notes, how he made recordings, how he
used photography, etc. We would like to devote a session to a wide-ranging
discussion of Harrington's field procedures. We will be fortunate in
having at the Conference several people who either worked with Harrington
as his assistants or who were present during field interviews, and
participants may wish to prepare lists of questions that they would like to
put to these "eye witnesses". If there are participants who wish to make
more formal presentations, discussions of JPH's use of specific techniques
(e.g., photography, collection of plant specimens, placename
investigations, etc.) would be particularly welcome.
4. CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA TO THE MICROFILM EDITION.
We intend to devote all or part of a session to a discussion of how best to
report and disseminate corrections or additions to the Kraus Microfilm
edition of Harrington's papers. We expect that members of the NAA staff
will be present to participate in this discussion. Participants are urged
to compile lists of corrigenda and addenda, including indications of "lost"
segments of the notes.
5. REPORTS ON SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ON WORK IN PROGRESS.
Several people would like to make short presentations concerning
collections of Harrington papers and other materials that were not included
in the Kraus Microfilm edition. One of these presentations will describe
the Harrington materials stored at the Santa Barbara Natural History
Museum. We also anticipate a presentation on the aluminum disc recordings
stored at the NAA. Other presentations are solicited. In addition, many
participants are actively engaged in work on portions of the Harrington
corpus, and brief status reports on such work would be very welcome.
6. ASSESSMENT OF HARRINGTON'S PUBLISHED RESEARCH.
Ironically, Harrington is far better known for his unpublished field data
than he is for what he published during his lifetime. Nevertheless his
published work deserves some attention, particularly his more venturesome
forrays into historical/com-parative linguistics (speculations on the Hokan
relationship, attempts to define Athabaskan subgroups and identify routes
of migration, and classificatory work on Southwestern languages).
Critical assessments of his publications on Kiowa and Karok are also long
overdue. We welcome papers discussing any aspect of Harrington's published
work, and to stimulate such contributions a short bibliography of JPH's
major publications is printed below.
PLANNING SESSION.
In addition to the sessions outlined above, we need to devote some
time-probably late in the Conference-to setting a timetable for future
meetings and to make some decisions about implementing some of the projects
discussed during this Conference.
The Conference Schedule will be mailed around May 1 to all participants who return the attached "Call for Participation" (page 5). The Schedule will contain information about the Conference site, registration, parking, etc. A nominal registration fee (probably about $5) to cover miscellaneous costs will be collected at the Conference; no other fees will be charged. Since Santa Barbara is a major tourist destination, participants are urged to make lodging arrangements well in advance. A list of accommodations, and a map showing the location of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, is enclosed.
* James R. Glenn, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560 (1/9/92):
I am sorry I have been so delayed in responding to your inquiry about a conference on the J. P. Harrington Papers. That has not been a lack of interest but, rather, uncertainty about funds. We are still uncertain but have recently requested funds for one of the staff to travel to the conference; and, having been designated the NAA staff member most appropriate to attend, I certainly hope to be able to make it. I am particularly interested in discussing how we might help in view of some of the deficiencies in the microfilm, in learning more about Harrington material outside NAA, and in hearing ideas about what might be done about the aluminum discs.
I might add here that we are still hoping to reproduce the photographs in the Harrington collection on microfilm. We have received a small grant from the Institution to contract with Elaine Mills on a very part-time basis and also to contract with a woman trained to work with photographs [Gerri Schaad]. The aim is to get the material in shape so that it is ready for reproduction. At times in the past, Kraus-Thompson has indicated their willingness to go ahead with the photographs, which were originally to be part 10 of the entire publication. We have nothing firm from them, however, and we will have to approach them anew at some point in the future. We hope we can call upon those scholars interested in JPH to give us support in our request.
* Jack Marr, P. O. Box 10026, Fullerton, CA 92635 (11/21/91):
Referring to your last Harrington Conference Newsletter, I note that several people have commented on his Spanish. The idea of a glossary, as Anthony P. Grant suggests, would in my opinion be a very useful item for many who study his works.
Harrington had a habit of adopting local Spanish from the Indians he was working with, and I am sure many of these words have never been included in textbooks or dictionaries. I had taken high school Spanish, learned street Spanish growing up in Santa Ana, and in college I had a course in Castillian. Harrington told me in 1939 to forget the Castillian, as it was useless in communication with Indians and Mexicans in California. Instead, he encouraged me to adopt words spoken by my Mexican friends. Sometimes when I would speak these words to Ascensión [Solarsano] she would reprimand me for the bad language or words I was picking up: Malo, malo!
Also, not only did Harrington quickly learn the local colloquial type of Spanish from Indians wherever he was working here in California, but he sometimes got a little frivolous and made up his own jargon, or deliberately spoke a word wrongly for the fun of it. His communication with Ascensión was almost entirely in Spanish. Not that he was trying to keep secrets from me or my brothers, but she spoke fluent Spanish as well as her tribal language. My brother, Glenn Marr, drove Harrington and Ascensión back to Washington, DC, about 1936 and spent a year living with them there. Glenn has told me that they always spoke Spanish to each other, except sometimes in the evenings when Harrington was working with her writing down Indian words and sentences. (Incidentally, Glenn's employment as a chauffeur ended suddenly when Harrington wrote to my mother, telling of Glenn's smoking those "vile and poisonous" cigarettes. It's a classic Harrington letter.)
* Bruce Rigsby, Dept. of Anthropology & Sociology, Univ. of Queensland, Santa Lucia, 4067 Australia (11/25/91):
Although I won't be able to attend the Harrington Conference, I would like to raise the question of whether Harrington ever managed to collect materials in Cayuse (eastern Oregon) in the 1930s or so. I know that he tried to find Cayuse speakers on the Umatilla Reservation, and it's just possible that there are some Cayuse materials tucked away somewhere in the Harrington collection. . . . I've been trying to ascertain this since the mid-1960s (in desultory fashion). Elaine Mills found some correspondence that indicated clearly that he did take on the task at Umatilla, but no materials have yet turned up. . . . Henry Zenk has just found that Harrington made recordings of Molala, and has written off to Washington to get them.
The following list of Harrington's major scientific papers and monographs is based on the full bibliography of his published works that was prepared by Karlena Glemser and published in Jane MacLaren Walsh, John Peabody Harrington: The Man and his California Fieldnotes (Ballena Press Anthropological Papers No. 6, Ballena Press-Malki Museum, 1976), pp. 49-55.
I. Works authored by Harrington alone 1908 A Yuma account of Origins. Journal of American Folk-Lore 21:324-348. 1909 Notes on the Piro Language. American Anthropologist 11:563-594. 1910 An Introductory Paper on the Tiwa Language, Dialect of Taos, New Mexico. American Anthropologist 12: 11-48. On Phonetic and Lexic Resemblances Between Kiowan and Tanoan. American Anthropologist 12: 119-123. A Brief Description of the Tewa Language. American Anthropologist 12:497-504. The Language of the Tano Indians of New Mexico. Proceedings of the 17th Int. Congress of Americanists, 321-328. 1911 The Phonetic System of the Ute Language. University of Colorado Studies 8(3):199-222. 1912 Notes on Certain Usages Relating to Linguistic Work. American Anthropologist 14: 186-191. Tewa Relationship Terms. American Anthropologist 14:472-498. The Tewa Indian Game of "Cañute". American Anthropologist 14: 243-286. 1916 Ambiguity in the Taos Personal Pronoun. Holmes Anniversary Volume, 142-156. Ethnogeography of the Tewa Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report 29: 29-618. 1920 Old Indian Geographic Names Around Santa Fe, New Mexico. American Anthropologist 22: 341-359. 1928 Vocabulary of the Kiowa Language. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 84:1-255. Exploration of the Burton Mound at Santa Barbara, California. Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report 44: 23-168. 1930 Karuk Texts. International Journal of American Linguistics 6(2):121-161. 1932 Tobacco Among the Karuk Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 94. Karuk Indian Myths. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 107. 1934 A New Original Version of Boscana's Historical Account of the San Juan Capistrano Indians. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 92(4):1-62. 1939 Chainfern and Maidenhair, Adornment Materials of Northwestern California Basketry. So Live the Works of Men, ed. by D.D.Brand and F.E.Harvey, 159-162. [70th Anniversary Volume honoring Edgar Lee Hewett] Kiowa Memories of the Northland. So Live the Works of Men, ed. by D.D.Brand and F.E.Harvey, 162-176. 1940 Southern Peripheral Athapaskawan Origins, Divisions and Migrations. Essays in Historical Anthropology of North America. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 100:503-532. 1942 Culture Element Distributions: XIX Central California Coast. University of California, Anthropological Records 7: 1-46. 1943 Pacific Coast Athapascan Discovered to be Chilcotin. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 33: 203-213. 1944 Indian Words in Southwest Spanish, Exclusive of Proper Nouns. Plateau 17(2):27-40. Quechua Grammarlet. Revista del Museo Nacional (Lima) 13. Sobre Fonética Witoto. Anales del Inst. de Etnografía Americana, Univ. Nac. de Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina) 5: 12 ff. Ten Ways the Study of South American Languages Illuminates Linguistic Knowledge. Acta Americana 2(1-2): 104-108. The Origin of our State Names. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 34: 244-259. 1945 Yunka, Language of the Peruvian Coastal Culture. International Journal of American Linguistics 11(1): 24-30. Boas on the Science of Language. International Journal of American Linguistics 11(2): 97-99. La lengua Aymará, hermana mayor de la Quichua. Anales del Inst. de Etnologia Americana, Univ. Nac. de Cuyo 6: 95-101. Phonematic Daylight in Lhiinkit, Navajo of the North. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 35:1-6. The Southwest Indian Languages; and The Sounds and Structure of the Aztecan Language. Appendices in E.L.Hewett and B.P.Dutton, eds., The Pueblo Indian World: Studies on the Natural History of the Rio Grande Valley in Relation to Indian Culture. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico and the School of American Research. 1946 Three Kiowa Texts. International Journal of American Linguistics 12:237-242. 1947 Three Tewa Texts. International Journal of American Linguistics 13:112-116. Phonetics of Quechua. Revista del Museo Nacional (Lima) 16: 17-32. 1948 Matako of the Gran Chaco. International Journal of American Linguistics 14(1):25-28. 1955 Our State Names. Annual Report, 1954, of the Smithsonian Institution, 373-388. The Original Strachey Vocabulary of the Virginia Indian Language. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 157: 189-202. 1957 Valladolid Maya Enumeration. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 164:241-278.Jointly authored works or works edited by Harrington
Boscana, Gerónimo 1933 Chinigchinich (Chi-ñi'ch-ñich). A Revised and Annotated Version of Alfred Robinson's Translation of Father Geronimo Boscana's Historical Account of the Beliefs, Usages, Customs and Extravagancies of the Indians of the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, Called the Acagchemem Tribe. Annotation and bibliography by J. P. Harrington. Santa Ana: Fine Arts Press. Harrington, J. P. and Helen H. Roberts 1928 Picuris Children's Stories with Texts and Songs. Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report 43: 289-447. Harrington, J. P. and Luis E. Valcárcel 1941 Quechua Phonetics: a Shortcut to the Scientific Writing of the Language of the Incas of Peru. Revista del Museo Nacional (Lima) 10:(2):201-214. 1943 Hokan Discovered in South America. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 33: 334-344. Henderson, Junius and J. P. Harrington 1914 Ethnozoology of the Tewa Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 56: 1-76. Kroeber, A. L. and J. P. Harrington 1914 Phonetic Elements of the Diegueño Language. University of California, Publ. in American Archaeology and Ethnology11(2): 177-188. McKenzie, Parker and J. P. Harrington 1948 Popular Account of the Kiowa Indian Language. Monographs of the School of American Research 12. Robbins, Wilfred W., J. P. Harrington and Barbara Freire-Marreco 1916 Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 55: 1-118.
The organizers would like to hear from all of you who intend to participate in the J. P. Harrington Conference, and would like to have a brief statement from you concerning your plans for a presentation, if any. Please return this form at your earliest convenience, if possible no later than April 15, 1992.
Name: _____________________________________________ Which days can you be at the Conference? (check) Mailing Address: __________________________________ _____ Wednesday, June 24 ___________________________________________________ _____ Thursday, June 25 ___________________________________________________ _____ Friday, June 26 Telephone(s): _____________________________________ Will you attend the Hokan-Penutian Workshop? ______
Participants will not be required to take a structured part in any session, but those with special interests in particular topics are encouraged to prepare a presentation. Depending on the topic this may be a brief report, an informal talk, or a formal paper. Please indicate below the session or sessions (if any) in which you would like to give a presentation:
___1. HARRINGTON'S TRANSCRIPTIONAL CONVENTIONS. ___2. COMPUTER DATABASES OF HARRINGTON MATERIALS. ___3. HARRINGTON'S FIELD PROCEDURES. ___4. CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA TO THE MICROFILM EDITION. ___5. REPORTS ON SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ON WORK IN PROGRESS. ___6. ASSESSMENT OF HARRINGTON'S PUBLISHED RESEARCH.
If you are interested in chairing one of these sessions, indicate which one: ________________
In the space below please give a brief (75-100 word) summary of the presentation you would like to make. If you would like to make more than one presentation, please provide a summary for each. Use the reverse side if necessary.
Return this page to: Victor Golla, Dept. of Ethnic Studies, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521