Wishram notebooks from summer, 1905.

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).

As s student of Edward Sapir at the University of Chicago, Fanggui (Fang-Kuei) Li spent two months during the summer of 1928 in northern Alberta studying Chipewyan and went on to a career that included pioneering work in other Dene ("Athapascan") languages (including Mattole, Hupa, and Wailaki), Thai, and Chinese. A longtime member of the Academia Sinica, Li was for many years a professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington and, at the end of his career, at the University of Hawaii. The Li Collection is comprised of ten volumes containing stories in Denesuline ("Chipewyan") collected in northern Alberta in 1928 by the Chinese-American linguist, Fanggui Li, along with an extensive Denesuline slip file. The texts contain phonetic transcriptions of stories elicited from François Mandeville and Baptiste Ferrier with interlinear English translations. These were edited and published Fanggui as Li and Ronald Scollon, Chipewyan Texts (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1976). The collection also includes two cassettes containing an oral history interview with Li conducted in November 1982 by M. Terry Thompson and Laurence Thompson.

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.

A Yale-educated ethnographer, William Fenton devoted most of his career to study of the Haudenosaunee. Receiving his doctorate in 1937, Fenton worked with the Bureau of American Ethnology for a number of years before becoming Director of the New York State Museum and professor at SUNY Albany. The Fenton Papers covers all aspects of William Fenton's professional life, documenting his varied positions as community worker for the New York Agency of the U.S. Indian Service, 1935-1937 (accounts, reports, correspondence); associate anthropologist and senior ethnologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1939-1951 (includes notebooks, letters from the field); Executive Secretary of Anthropology and Psychology, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1952-1954; and Assistant Commissioner, New York State Museum and Science Service, 1954-1968.

Elsie Clews Parsons (1875-1941) was trained as a sociologist at Columbia University, but made her greatest achievements in the fields of anthropology and folklore. Parsons' early works in the field of sociology dealt primarily with gender roles, conventions of society, and the effect of society's pressures on the individual. After a trip to the American Southwest with her husband in 1910, Parsons' interests turned to anthropology. She began making field trips to Arizona and New Mexico and, under the influence of her friend Franz Boas, Parsons recorded in meticulous detail data on social organization, religious practices, and folklore of the Southwest Indians. Concurrently, Parsons conducted research in folklore, concentrating on folk tales of Afro-Americans and Caribbean peoples. She was active in a number of professional associations and was the associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore from 1918 until her death. The Parsons Papers were acquired as two separate accessions and remains organized in two distinct subcollections. Subcollection I (572 P35), acquired in 1949, contains approximately 12 linear feet of materials focused on Parsons' career in anthropology. Subcollection II, acquired in 1985, consists of 26.25 linear feet of materials divided into ten series, covering a larger scope of Parsons' life, including family and personal correspondence.