These minutes record the business of, and actions taken by, the Provincial Council.

Interviews and discussions with the Seneca artist Ernest Smith on his paintings of Seneca customs, stories, ceremonies, crafts, food preparation, and other traditional ways. Smith was a Seneca from the Tonawanda Reservation in New York state. The paintings were done in the 1930s and are presently in the Rochester Museum and Science Center in Rochester, New York. The recordings were made by William N. Fenton and his student, Jeanette Collamer, in 1973 at the museum in Rochester. The paintings are referred to on the recordings by the museum's catalog numbers for the paintings. Some of the paintings do not have assigned titles. Sound quality is fair overall, with severe distortion and prominent background noise on the final tape.

Trained as an anthropologist under Frank Speck at the University of Pennsylvania, the ethnohistorian George Snyderman (1908- ) spent his career studying Seneca Indian religion, history, and culture. Snyderman edited the previously unpublished diaries of Halliday Jackson and John Phillips, Quaker missionaries to the Senecas in the late 18th and early 19th century. The Snyderman Papers includes a small volume of correspondence, along with manuscripts of works by Snyderman and colleagues, and copies of primary source materials pertaining to Seneca history. Of particular interest is his correspondence with anthropologists William N. Fenton, Merle Deardorff, and Frank Speck and with his Seneca consultant Clara Redeye and her daughter, Helen Harris, and photographs of the Allegany Senecas taken by Fenton and Speck.

Recorded in 1950 with consultants Lucenda George and Pat Johnson. Contains numerous autobiographical stories, descriptions of contemporary life on the Onondaga Reservation, and descriptions of tribal customs, foods, history, and governmental. There are 54 texts altogether given in Onondaga only--13 told by Pat Johnson, 41 by Lucenda George. Of these texts, 35 are translated into English by Lucenda George as the earlier recordings are played back to her in short segments. There are no transcripts or other documentation accompanying these recordings.

The papers contain correspondence, research and teaching notes, data (card and slip) files, published and unpublished manuscripts by Lounsbury and others, books and reprints, sound recordings, and computer programs and files. Correspondents include: William N. Fenton, Mary R. Haas, William C. Sturtevant, Morris Swadesh, and Carl F. Voegelin. Roughly one-quarter of the collection relates to Iroquoian languages and includes much WPA Oneida Project material. Research into the Cherokee language, South American languages, and kinship structures is also well represented. Floyd Lounsbury's wife, Masako Yokoyama Lounsbury, is represented by a smaller amount of material relating to linguistic research in Shanghai and research on Quechua.