This collection primarily contains Chitimacha material, with some additional Nootka material, originally recorded on 23 wax cylinders by Morris Swadesh in 1933 and 1934. The recordings were transferred circa 1951 to 2 sound tape reels. Due to the poor condition of the original cylinders, the sound quality of the recordings is generally poor. Tape 1 contains elicited sentences, folklore, and autobiographical stories told in Chitimacha by Benjamin Paul, chief from 1903 to 1934, and Delphine Ducloux, the last known speaker of Chitimacha. Recorded in Louisiana in 1933 on 22 wax cylinders. Tape 2 contains elicited sentences, unidentified narrative, and some singing in Nootka by Alex Thomas. Recorded at Port Alberni, British Columbia, on 1 wax cylinder in 1934.

Okanagan Salish stories with English translations; free conversation on dialectical variations in Okanagan and borrowing from French and English; elicitation sessions covering animal names, fish names, body parts, and words containing fricatives; Catholic hymns in Okanagan and Chinook. Recorded in Penticton, Spectacle Lake, and head of Okanagan Lake, British Columbia, in 1961, 1966, and 1971.

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.