Guide to the Indigenous Materials at the American Philosophical Society

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Ottawa materials, Paul Radin papers

Culture:

Ojibwe includes: Ojibwa, Chippewa, Ojibway

Odawa includes: Ottawa

Anishinaabe includes: Anishinaabeg, Anishinabe, Nishnaabe, Anishinabek

Language:English | Ottawa

Date:1926 and undated

Contributor:Radin, Paul, 1883-1959 | Shomin, Joe | Miskwanda | Pontiac, Jim

Type:Still Image | Text

Description: Materials relating to Radin's study of Odawa culture and history, with some Ojibwe material as well. Several items are headed "Ojibwa-Ottawa notes," though it is unclear from the descriptions provided what might be Odawa and what might be Ojibwe. Topics include Midewewin, religion, war and warfare, medicine and magic, death and burial, life cycle, games, ceremonialism, social organization, disease, dreams, and material culture. Items include a Nanabojo text concerning White Feather; ethnographic notes from published sources; 23 pages of male and female names; photographs (1926) with explanatory notes; typed slips and field notes on slips, most of them later transcribed for typed slips; and a 1-page letter signed Ake Sulkrantz and dated Stockholm, December 2, 1950. Two items are of particular note: 1) an unfinished manuscript relating 20 dreams of Miskwanda and 10 of Jim Pontiac, together with analysis. Chapters on legend and fact in the history of L'Arbre Croche and an ethnohistoric account based on the Jesuit Relations. Not included is a proposed account of "The culture of L'Arbre Croche as illustrated by Miskwanda's drawings." Interesting narrative of Radin's field work and methods and 2) 154 original drawings by Miskwanda--traced, arranged and commented on by Radin--intended to illustrate culture of L'Arbre Croche.

Collection:Paul Radin papers (Mss.497.3.R114)

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Pawnee materials, Susan Golla Papers

Culture:

Pawnee includes: Chaticks si Chaticks, Chatiks si Chatiks

Caddo

Language:English

Date:1970s

Contributor:Golla, Susan | Murie, James R.

Type:Text

Genre:Dissertations | Genealogies | Essays | Notes

Extent:0.5 linear feet

Description: The Pawnee materials in the Susan Golla papers relate to her master's thesis based on secondary sources at Georgetown University, titled "Skidi Pawnee Religion: A Structural Analysis", found in Series III, alongside notes in the next folder on various publications, including lists of towns and genealogies of Chief Big Eagle. The notes also briefly mention Caddo people. In Series IV is a photocopy of a large working manuscript by James R. Murie titled "Ceremonies of the Pawnee", with Golla's marginalia and table of contents, which was eventually edited and published by Douglas R. Parks.

Collection:Susan Golla papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.89)

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Ponca materials, Phillips Fund Collection

Culture:

Ponca

Language:English

Date:1976

Contributor:Merrill, William Lewis | Roark-Calnek, Sue N., 1936-

Subject:Dance | Botany | Medicine | Music | Oklahoma--History

Type:Text

Genre:Correspondence | Essays | Reports

Extent:150 pages

Description: The Ponca materials in the Phillips Fund collection consist of 2 items. Materials in this collection are listed alphabetically by last name of author. See materials listed under Merrill and Roark-Calnek.

Collection:Phillips Fund for Native American Research Collection (Mss.497.3.Am4)

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Religious Customs of Modern Michigan Algonquians

Culture:

Ojibwe includes: Ojibwa, Chippewa, Ojibway

Odawa includes: Ottawa

Anishinaabe includes: Anishinaabeg, Anishinabe, Nishnaabe, Anishinabek

Language:English

Date:1955

Contributor:Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch

Type:Text

Genre:Musical scores | Essays | Songs

Extent:1 volume

Description: The draft of an unpublished book. Includes pictures and musical scores. Attempts, by detailed analysis and description of present-day customs in historical perspective to evaluate powwows, feasts, and camp meetings in Ottawa culture. Twelve chapters give brief history, biographies, and locations; describe festivals and dances in detail; analyze native songs (scores); describe a Chippewa Methodist camp meeting and hymns, with analysis of hymn texts and tunes. Also, presnnts Ottawa superstitions (bear walking, medicines, herbs), 42 Ottawa myths (see also #2642), material on natural-history usage. Attempts to reconstruct function of ritual, with historical references.

Collection:Religious Customs of Modern Michigan Algonquians (Mss.497.3.K965a)

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Seneca materials, Frank G. Speck Papers

Culture:

Seneca includes: Onöndowága

Haudenosaunee includes: Iroquois, Onkwehonwe

Language:English | Seneca

Date:1921-1949

Type:Still Image | Text

Extent:16 folders

Description: Materials relating to Speck's interest in Seneca language, history, and culture. Several folders contain correspondence, including one with six letters from Jesse Cornplanter to Speck and others on topics such as his religious beliefs and changes in the way of life; praising Speck; pay for Native consultants; sending Christmas greetings; and husk faces. Other correspondence includes letters from Charles E. Congdon concerning Coldspring Longhouse ceremonies, use of stick and post in dance, Tonawanda and Cattaraugus medicines, congratulating Speck on his Iroquois (1945), describing Alleghany ceremonials, and giving a sketch of the arrangement of participants; from James M. Luongo concerning Seneca and other specimens; from Clara Redeye transmitting a 1941 picture of four generations and sending dolls; from Spencer F. William, a Seneca writer seeking work; from Evangeline Clark sending thanks for reprints, which she had sent to Suffolk University; from Merle H. Deardorff concerning consultant Clayton White, Pennsylvania place names, Speck (1942), and a lengthy discussion of the practices of Handsome Lake adherents; and from Speck to Deardorff concerning an Iroquois conference at Allegany. Other folders contain William N. Fenton's Seneca ceremonial calendar from Coldspring, 131 pages of organized, detailed field notes on ceremonies; Congdon's 4-page essay comparing the religion of Handsome Lake with Judaism and Greco-Roman spirits; Clayton White's description of the one-year death feast; Clayton White's description of a False Face Dance at Coldspring Long House, taken for Deardorff; Speck's miscellaneous notes containing words and two letters from Sherman Redeye to Speck concerning corn-husk masks; Speck's notes on the Oklahoma Seneca with an outline of ceremonials and a chart, with special attention to dances and funerary practices; and Ferdinand Isserman's student paper "Mythology of Seneca Indians." Some of these materials may be restricted due to cultural sensitivity.

Collection:Frank G. Speck Papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.126)

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Seneca materials, William N. Fenton papers

Culture:

Seneca includes: Onöndowága

Haudenosaunee includes: Iroquois, Onkwehonwe

Language:English | Seneca

Date:Bulk 1930s-1990s

Type:Text | Still Image | Sound recording

Extent:15+ linear feet

Description: Seneca materials make up the majority of the Fenton papers and can be found throughout all sections of the collection. Series I contains correspondence with numerous people on Seneca matters. Noteworthy Seneca correspondents include Simeon Gibson, Clara Redeye, Sherman Redeye, and other individuals such as those listed above. The largest body of material is in Series V, which includes Fenton's notebooks and other documentation from field work at Allegany, Cattaraugus, Tonawanda, and Grand River, beginning in the 1930s through late in his career. This section also includes extensive card files on "Materia Medica" or ethnobotanical information, and Seneca place names. Series VI consists of over 1000 photographs, the majority of which are from Seneca communities in the 1930s-1950s. Series VII contains one audio recording of Seneca songs. Series VIII includes additional field notes and other materials derived mainly from his 1930s fieldwork. Significant portions of these materials may be restricted due to cultural sensitivity, as Fenton's materials frequently pertain to areas of sacred traditional knowledge.

Collection:William N. Fenton papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.20)

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Tzeltal materials, Floyd G. Lounsbury Papers

Culture:

Tzeltal includes: Winik Atel, Batzil’op

Maya

Language:French | English

Date:1959-1962

Contributor:Robles Uribe, Carlos | Romney, A. Kimball | Lounsbury, Floyd Glenn

Subject:Orthography and spelling | Antiquities | Kinship | Medicine

Type:Text

Genre:Essays | Notes

Description: The Tzeltal materials in the Lounsbury Papers are fairly brief, limited to work done by other scholars interested in linguistics, history, and medicine, all found in Series II.

Collection:Floyd G. Lounsbury Papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.95)

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Virginia materials, Frank G. Speck Papers

Culture:

Tuscarora includes: Ska:rù:rę'

Seminole includes: Yat'siminoli

Language:English

Date:1920-1947

Type:Text | Three-dimensional object | Still Image

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)

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Wuikinuxv materials, Phillips Fund Collection

Culture:

Wuikinuxv includes: Ooweekeno, Northern Kwakiutl

Language:English | Heiltsuk-Oowekyala | Latin

Date:1989-1990, 1993-1994

Contributor:Compton, Brian D.

Subject:Botany | Medicine

Type:Text

Genre:Correspondence | Essays | Field notes | Reports | Vocabularies

Extent:690 pages

Description: The Wuikinuxv materials in the Phillips Fund collection consist of 4 items. Materials in this collection are listed alphabetically by last name of author. See materials listed under Compton, of which 3 of the 5 partially concern Wuikinuxv botanical knowledge.

Collection:Phillips Fund for Native American Research Collection (Mss.497.3.Am4)