The Golla Papers include research notes, subject files, field notes, correspondence, copies of archival documents (photocopies; microfilm), audio recordings, 35 mm slides, and printed materials (including newspapers) on the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Vancouver Island, primarily the Hupacasath and Tseshaht.

The collection consists of linguistic elicitations of different aspects of Shawnee grammar and vocabulary, and conversation, anecdotes, discussion, and personal narratives relating to Shawnee customs and history. The linguistic material includes elicitation of passive, imperative, hortative verbs, and other verb forrms, vocabulary for times of the day and year, weather, gender and age, color terms, and miscellaneous adjectives and full sentences. The other material includes a narratives given in Shawnee on on traditional roles of men and women and the use of eagle feathers in doctoring, and English anecdotes and conversation relating to topics such as: different types of dances, the Shawnee Indian Agency, economic and agricultural conditions during the Depression, memories of farming and hunting during childhood, traditional medicine, the keeping of fire, how people and tribes were created and how they learned to make fire, the treatment of women in Shawnee society, little people, the passing down of knowledge through elders, doctoring, the use of tobacco and peyote, and personal stories. Recorded in Oklahoma in 1994.

Linguistic field recordings of the Quileute language made by Eric Hamp, based on Manuel J. Andrade's "Quileute Texts" (Columbia University Press, 1931.) The recordings consist of Hamp reading back from Andrade's transcription of Quileute texts to Beatrice Black, a Quileute-speaking consultant, who repeats them in the correct pronunciation, provides explanation, and suggests corrections. Includes occasional discussions in English, with some infrequent English translations of the text. Texts included are primarily Quileute legends and folklore. Also included are conversations and discussions about basket making, local history, family history, education, potlatches, and Quileute vocabulary relating to calculating age, digging clams, gender-specific forms of address, names of rivers, and other miscellaneous terms. Recorded at Taholah, Washington, in August 1969 and November 1970.

Primarily consists of autobiographical stories, creation stories, and medicine stories collected by Alfred W. Bowers in earlier decades. The stories are read in segments in Bowers' English translation to two native consultants, who then translate the material into both Mandan and Hidatsa, or occasionally into either Mandan or Hidatsa alone. A small number of stories are told in Mandan only. Also includes English discussions of the Mandan and Hidatsa domestic life, material culture, personal reminscences, and histories of the Crow-Flies-High Band and the Fort Buford and Fort Berthold settlements. Bowers' original table of contents also available. Recorded at Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, North Dakota, in 1969.

This collection consists of Ottawa songs, interviews, word lists, legends, Nanabojo stories, autobiographical stories, and information on Ottawa history. Some of the material is given in both Ottawa and English, some in Ottawa only. Recorded by Jane Ettawageshik in Michigan from 1947 to 1948.

Recorded by Anthony Wallace in 1948 and 1949 at the Tuscarora Reservation in Niagara County, New York. Contains folkloric stories, tribal histories (especially relating to the 18th and 19th centuries), autobiographical stories, reminiscences, word lists, and descriptions of tribal government, organizations, and customs. Almost all stories are given in both Tuscarora and English. Originally recorded on 16 wire spools, transfered to open reel tape in 1950.

For many years referred to as the "Franz Boas Collection of American Indian Linguistics," this collection consists of a large body of linguistic and ethnographic material gathered together by Boas and many of his colleagues and students primarily from the 1890s to the 1940s. It contains the bulk of Boas's own fieldwork material, with the main exception of most of his Inuit and earliest Northwest Coast fieldwork. It contains the majority of the work sponsored by American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages, which was directed by Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Alfred Kroeber, and other academic linguists from 1927-1937. The collection, however, also contains related kinds of fieldwork and derived secondary materials created outside the auspices of this Committee, both earlier and later. The first deposit of the material arrivied in 1945. Subsequently, additional related materials were donated and added, as noted in the listings. Additionally, the documentary materials produced by some of the early projects (1945 to circa 1955) of the APS Phillips Fund for Native American Research were added to this collection. The collection has grown to over 80 linear feet of material representing at least 166 languages and dialects from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The formats range from field notes and ethnographic texts to slip files, vocabularies, lexica, and grammars, and dozens of linguists and Native consultants are represented.