Virginia materials, Frank G. Speck Papers
Language: English
Date: 1920-1947
Contributor: Speck, Frank G. (Frank Gouldsmith), 1881-1950 | Carse, Mary, 1919- | Solenberger, R. R. (Robert R.) | Gilliam, Charles Edgar | Hassrick, Royal B. | Carpenter, Edmund, 1922-2011 | Stern, Theodore, 1917- | Müller, Werner, 1907-1990 | Kremens, Jack | Mook, Maurice A. (Maurice Allison), 1904-1973
Subject: Anthropology | Ethnography | Social life and customs | Virginia--History | Hunting | Religion | Warfare | Politics and government | Agriculture | Medicine | Folklore | Kinship | Clans | Virginia--History | Botany | Zoology | World War, 1939-1945
Type: Text | Three-dimensional object | Still Image
Genre: Correspondence | Notes | Field notes | Notebooks | Newspaper clippings | Essays | Specimens | Photographs
Extent: 40 folders
Description: Materials relating to Speck's interest in the various Virginia- or Chesapeake-area peoples sometimes collectively lumped as Powhatans, including the Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Nansemond, Pamunkey, and Rappahannock peoples, from the early contact period into the mid-twentieth century. The Cherokees, Seminoles, Tuscaroras, and Penobscots are also mentioned. Correspondence includes Speck's correspondence with Chickahominy consultants like Chief George L. Nelson, Mrs. S. P. Nelson, Chief James H. Nelson, and E. P. Bradby; Pamunkey consultants like Paul L. Miles and Chief O. W. Adkins; Charles Edgar Gilliam, a Petersburg, Virginia, attorney and amateur historian, etymologist, and ethnologist; and a letter from Werner Müller in Berlin to the University of Pennsylvania inquiring whether Speck's book on the Nansamond and Chickahominy Indians was published and mentioniong Speck's publications on the Rappahannock and Powhatan. Other materials, largely arranged by topic, were compiled by Speck as well as by some his students, particularly those who participated in a field research group between 1939 and 1942, such as Mary Rowell Carse, Edmund Carpenter, Royal Hassrick, John "Jack" Kremens, Maurice A. Mook, Robert Solenberger, and Theodore Stern. Of particular interest might be a folder of 1941-1946 correspondence (42 letters) and copies of various documents relating to the efforts of Speck, James R. Coates, and others to overcome the practice of Virginia draft boards to classify indigenous peoples as "Negroes" for Selective Service. Other materials include a folder on Chickahominy efforts to gain recognition, including chartering the tribe as an incorporation; two of Speck's field notebooks on the Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Rappahannock, Cherokee, and Chickahominy; Speck's reading notes on topics like gourds and the bow and arrow in early contact days; a description of "Pamunkey Town" in 1759, based on Andrew Burnaby, Travels (1760); a 1940 newspaper article titled "Virginia Indians Past and Present"; notes on Virginia Indian populations in 1668, based on figures obtained from a regulation requiring certain numbers of wolves be killed by various Indian groups; Charles Edgar Gilliam's "Historical sketch of Appomatoc Indians, 1607-1723"; and Gilliam on Powhatan Algonquian birds, etc., in colonial times. Other folders are devoted to topics such as Pamunkey hunting and fishing, Pamunkey games and amusements, Pamunkey celestial and meteorological phenomena, Pamunkey contemporary technology, Pamunkey emergency foods, Pamunkey fish, amphibians, shellfish, and reptiles, Pamunkey reptiles, Pamunkey animals, Pamunkey birds, Pamunkey mensuration, Pamunkey miscellaneous notes and correspondence, Pamunkey social organization, Pamunkey pottery, Pamunkey plants and agriculture, Pamunkey foods, Pamunkey medicines and poisons, Pamunkey folklore and language, Rappahannock field notes, Rappahannock contemporary technology, Rappahanock taking devices, Rappahannock miscellaneous notes and correspondence, Mattaponi miscellaneous notes and correspondence, Chickahominy miscellaneous notes and correspondence, field notes on Western Chickahominy, Nansemond miscellaneous notes and correspondence, and miscellaneous notes and correspondence on Virgina Indians.
Collection: Frank G. Speck Papers Mss.Ms.Coll.126