The linguist Harvey Pitkin has worked on several of the indigenous languages of Northern California, with a particular interest in Wintu, Patwin, and Yuki. A student of A. L. Kroeber, Pitkin was a member of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at Columbia University before his retirement in the late 1980s. The Pitkin Papers contain materials recorded or accumuluted by Harvey Pitkin during the course of his study of American Indian languages, including not only his own fieldnotes and research on Wintu and Yuki, but originals and copies of notes, notebooks, and slipfiles by A. L. Kroeber, A. M. Halpern, John P. Harrington, John Alden Mason, Paul Radin, Hans Uldall, Donald Ultan, T. T. Waterman, and others. These include important information on Atsugewi, Kwakiutl, Luiseno, Pomo, Wappo, Yahi, and Yana, and include some data on the consultants Ralph Moore (Yuki) and Ishi (Yahi).

THIS COLLECTION IS CURRENTLY BEING PROCESSED. THE INVENTORY OF CONTENTS IS IN PROCESS, AS IS THE ORGANIZATION OF THE COLLECTION. There are notes, transcriptions, essays, etc., on the language and customs of several Indian tribes. There are numerous vocabularies, dictionaries, and grammatical notes on the Ho-Chunk, Patwin, and Huave tribes, and some items on the Fox, Tukudh, Pomo, Wappo, and Wintu; 79 notebooks, in English and Ho-Chunk, on myths, legends, stories, customs, dances, religious observances, costume, etc., of the Ho-Chunk, with some on the Ottawa and Ojibwa; notes on Ho-Chunk history; 2 boxes of Ho-Chunk phonetic texts; and significant material on Mexican Indians (Zapotec). Some of the items are typed copies of Radin's published studies.