These materials were compiled by various anthropologists: Edward Sapir, Franz Boas, Alex Thomas, and Frank Williams. Sapir (ca. 1920) collected and annotated a series of Nootka ethnographic and legendary texts (600 pages of materials), initially intended as a third volume of Sapir and Swadesh, Nootka Texts (1939). Boas (ca. 1900-1913) contributed Nootka vocabularies and grammatical notes (100 slips and 100 pages). Thomas obtained Nootka texts for the collection (ca. 1910-1920).

The collection includes material relating to government, history, festivals, customs, games, etc. of the Ojibwe people. Also includes comments on the language; vocabulary, some items with English glosses; lists of bands and locations; and photographs of people, activities, dwellings, canoes, etc.

These papers include materials on the Onondaga, Tuscarora, Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida Indians, collected during the years 1928-1930 under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies' Committee on Native American Languages. Included are field notes, grammars, dictionaries, studies of Handsome Lake religion, medical prescriptions, comparative linguistics, and correspondence with Franz Boas. Contains data on consultants, texts, translations, paradigms, grammatical studies, and lexical files.

This small but important collection of correspondence relates to the formation of the Committee on Research in the Native American Languages, its grants, and its publications. Presented by Waldo G. Leland, 1956.

During the half century leading up to the Second World War, Franz Boas helped to define academic anthropology in the United States. Trained as a geographer at the University of Heidelberg, Boas worked initially on the Inuit of Baffin Island and subsequently on the cultures of the Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, becoming a leading figure in American anthropology by the first decade of the twentieth century. As Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Boas made significant theoretical contributions to ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology, helping to ingrain the four fields approach in his discipline and introducing the concept of cultural relativism into wide currency. He was, as well, a committed Socialist and an ardent opponent of both racism and fascism. This collection includes correspondence that Boas carried on with his colleagues in anthropology, as well as with those in the other social sciences and sciences. This correspondence is rich as a source for twentieth-century historians interested in "radical" social causes, since Boas was a socialist and an outspoken voice for progressive social causes.

The Franz Boas Personal and Professional Papers contain a diverse assemblage of professional correspondence, family letters, and diaries, with a valuable series of essays and lectures by Boas on both professional and political topics (democracy, race, etc.). (NOTE: This collection is not to be confused with the much larger Franz Boas Papers collection (Mss.B.B61), which contains the vast majority of Boas's professional correspondence and was referred to as the "Professional Papers" in earlier decades.) During the half century leading up to the Second World War, Franz Boas helped to define academic anthropology in the United States. Trained as a geographer at the University of Heidelberg, Boas worked initially on the Inuit of Baffin Island and subsequently on the cultures of the Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, becoming a leading figure in American anthropology by the first decade of the twentieth century. As Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Boas made significant theoretical contributions to ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology, helping to ingrain the four fields approach in his discipline and introducing the concept of cultural relativism into wide currency. He was, as well, a committed Socialist and an ardent opponent of both racism and fascism.

An archaeological anthropologist and linguist, John Alden Mason spent the majority of his career at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his undergraduate degree at Penn in 1907, Mason received a doctorate at Berkeley (1911) for his ethnographic work on the Salinan Indians of California, but his diverse interests in later years ran the gamut from Puerto Rican folklore to Piman languages and cultures (including Pima, Papago, Pima Bajo, Northern and Southern Tepehuan, and Tepecano), Mayan, Aztec, and Incan archaeology, and the languages of South American Indians. Mason was curator of the University Museum at Penn from 1926 until his retirement in 1958. The Mason Papers include both in-coming and outgoing correspondence, linguistic material, notes, and photographs relating to Mason's work in the southwestern U.S., northern Mexico, and South America. Centered on the years after Mason's return to Philadelphia in 1926, the collection covers all aspects of Mason's professional life, from reports on field work to answering casual questions referred to him through the University Museum to data and analyses on Piman and other languages. The collection also contains voluminous files relating to the Mason's editorship of the American Anthropologist (bulk: 1945-1948). Of special note are a series of class notes (1908-1910) kept by Mason for course work in ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania under Edward Sapir and Frank Speck.