This collection includes field notes and reports, diaries of expeditions, texts, grammars, dictionaries of Indian languages, theses and research papers collected by members of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago in connection with the Carnegie Institution of Washington Middle American Research Program as well as various Middle American governmental agencies. A microfilm publication of the University of Chicago, 1946-1957. Table of contents available.

Alfred Irving ("Pete") Hallowell was an anthropologist best known for his studies of Ojibwa culture and world-view, and the innovative use of the Rorschach Test in his studies of the psychological interrelations of individuals and their culture. Early in his career, Hallowell worked as a social case worker for Family Service, and even after moving on to study anthropology in 1920 (M.A.), he carried with him an interest in ethnic and racial culture, developing additional interests in psychological testing. Except for the years 1944-1947, when he taught at Northwestern University, Hallowell spent his entire career at the University of Pennsylvania where he was professor of anthropology, professor of anthropological psychiatry in the Medical School, and curator of social anthropology at the University Museum. A cultural anthropologist, Hallowell's use of clinical psychological methods, especially Rorschach tests, was both innovative and controversial in his discipline. In his research, he concentrated on the Algonkian Indians, especially the Abenaki and Ojibwa Indians of Canada and Wisconsin (Berens River, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin areas), and the Saulteaux of Berens River. The Alfred Irving Hallowell Papers (1892-1981) contain correspondence, subject files, manuscripts of published and unpublished works by Hallowell, papers by colleagues and students, research notes kept by Hallowell, with a special emphasis on social organization, personality, behavior, psychology, religion, and folklore. The collection of several hundred photographs provides rich graphic documentation of Hallowell's work among the Ojibwa and Abnaki Indians during the 1930s.

The Mary Rosamond Haas papers are extensive, including correspondence, research notes, field notes, texts, lexical slip files, audio recordings, photographs, reprints and more, covering more than 100 languages of North America and Southeast Asia. Of particular value are notes and audio recordings from fieldwork from the 1930s on Ditidaht, Tunica, Natchez and Muscogee, work toward pedagogical materials for Thai, and groundbreaking comparative studies of several language families of North America.

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.