Guide to the Indigenous Materials at the American Philosophical Society

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Ojibwe materials, Alfred Irving Hallowell Papers

Culture:

Ojibwe includes: Ojibwa, Chippewa, Ojibway

Anishinaabe includes: Anishinaabeg, Anishinabe, Nishnaabe, Anishinabek

Language:English | Chippewa | Ojibwa, Northwestern

Date:1932-1949

Type:Text | Cartographic | Still Image

Description: The Ojibwe materials in the A. Irving Hallowell Papers are extensive. Hallowell focused on three regions of Ojibwe territory: Berens River in north, central Canada (Pikangikum, Pauingassi, Poplar River; Little Grand Rapids First Nations) and Lac du Flambeau in Wisconsin. Hallowell was particularly interested in psychological anthropology. Both the Berens River and Lac du Flambeau materials in Series V, for example, includes ethnographic information on taboos, incest regulations, Rorschach tests, dreams, and acculturation. Hallowell's interests in traditional knowledge are represented by descriptions of the practice of the Midewiwin religion; traditional stories about Wisakedjak and Tcakabec/Chakabesh, Memegwesiug, Windigos, and Thunderbirds. Of particular interest in the Lac du Flambeau materials are hundred of pages of family biographies in Series V and photographs with the names of community members in Series VI, Subseries B. Of particular interest in the Berens River materials are maps of traditional hunting grounds, a diagram of Ojibwe cosmology, an autobiography by Hallowell's collaborator Chief William Berens, 29 folders of "Saulteaux Indians--Myths and Tales" all in Series V. There are hundreds of photographs from the region, with many community members identified, and all digitized, in Series VI, Subseries A. The correspondence, in Series I, includes Robert Ritzenhaler's description of a shaking tent ceremony by Ojibwe in Wisconsin; a detailed account of Joseph Fiddler's trial for murdering a windigo in the folder labled Royal Canadian Mounted Police; papers sent by Morton Teicher detailing incidents of windigo in Canada (50+ pages); a letter from Frances Densmore describing a shaking tent ceremony; and several letters from Chief William Berens providing information about Ojibwe people in the photographs in Series VI.

Collection:Alfred Irving Hallowell Papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.26)

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Ojibwe materials, Paul Radin papers

Culture:

Ojibwe includes: Ojibwa, Chippewa, Ojibway

Odawa includes: Ottawa

Anishinaabe includes: Anishinaabeg, Anishinabe, Nishnaabe, Anishinabek

Language:English | Chippewa

Date:Undated

Contributor:Radin, Paul, 1883-1959 | Pontiac, Jim

Type:Text

Genre:Essays | Interviews | Stories

Extent:3 items

Description: Materials relating to Radin's study of Ojibwe culture and history. Includes a discussion of the origin and spread of the medicine dance; notes from informants and excerpted from published sources: clan names and religion, ceremonial organization, magical rites, magic and witchcraft, war customs, migration tale of the Mississauga, naming and names, lists of personal names with 4 pages, outline of monograph; two outlines for works on Odawa culture and a comparative and contrastive discussion of "The Two Boys" and "Twin Myth"; text of an interview with Jim Pontiac including the description of thirty-two Ojibwe villages of the Upper Peninsula in English or French and Ojibwe; etc.

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

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Okanagan Stories

Culture:

Secwépemc includes: Shuswap

Syilx includes: Okanagan, Okanogan

Nlaka'pamux includes: Nlakapamuk, Nłeʔkepmx, Ntlakyapamuk, Thompson

Language:English | Okanagan (nsyilxcən)

Date:1980-1981

Contributor:Robinson, Harry | Wickwire, Wendy

Subject:British Columbia--History | Folklore | Medicine | Music | Washington (State)--History

Type:Sound recording

Genre:Autobiographies | Songs | Stories

Extent:16 hr., 46 min. : DIGITIZED

Description: Audio recordings of traditional and autobiographical Okanagan stories, recorded by Wendy C. Wickwire in Hedley and Merritt, British Columbia in 1980-1981. May contain occasional Nsyilxcən words. Otherwise predominantly in English. Access to these recordings is currently restricted, as of November 2020, while they are reviewed for which materials can be made available for general research access.

Collection:Okanagan Stories (Mss.Rec.116)

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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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Quileute materials, ACLS collection

Culture:

Quileute

Language:English | Quileute

Date:1908-1933

Contributor:Andrade, Manuel José, 1885-1941 | Frachtenberg, Leo Joachim, 1883-1930 | Howeattle, Arthur | George, Hallie B. | Reagan, Albert B., 1871-1936

Type:Still Image | Text

Extent:817 loose pages; 21 notebooks; approx. 4,800 word slips; 1 map

Description: The Quileute collection in the ACLS collection consists of a large body of materials located primarily in the "Quileute" section of the finding aid. These materials were recorded primarily by Albert Reagan, Leo Frachtenberg, and Manuel Andrade. Reagan was an Indian agent and teacher at the Quileute Day School. His materials (item W3a.10, "Quileute ethnology"), dated from 1908-1913, primarily include drawing made by students at the Quileute Day School. These images include pencil and ink sketches, color crayon drawings, watercolors, and gelatin silver prints of utensils, canoes, drums, rattles, toys, arrows, masks, totems, and decorative patterns. Frachtenberg's materials date from roughly 1915 to 1922 and contain detailed ethnographic and linguistic information, split up into several different listed items. Andrade's work followed shortly after Frachtenberg and concerns primarily linguistic information and additional stories. Arthur Howeattle is a prominent Quileute consultant for some of these items. Some additional materials comparing the Quileute and Chemakum languages can be found in the "Chimakum" section of the finding aid (items W3b.1, W3b.2, and W3b.4), as well as comparisons of Quileute and Nuu-chah-nulth in the "Nootka" section of the finding aid (item W2a.13).

Collection:ACLS Collection (American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages, American Philosophical Society) (Mss.497.3.B63c)

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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, George S. Snyderman Papers

Culture:

Seneca includes: Onöndowága

Seneca-Cayuga

Haudenosaunee includes: Iroquois, Onkwehonwe

Cayuga includes: Gayogohó:no

Language:English

Date:1798; 1940-1980

Type:Still Image | Text

Genre:Notes | Reports | Photographs | Stories

Description: The Seneca materials in the Snyderman Papers include information about the Kinzua Dam in Series III (the construction of which displaced 600 Seneca from the lands along the Allegheny River). A report on the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma is in Series IV. The photographs in Series V include images of Longhouses in Allegany and Cold Springs as well as images of Seneca people with whom Synderman worked including Clara and Sherman Redeye, Henry Redeye, with over one hundred black and white silver gelatin prints, postcards, and color Polaroid of the Allegany Senecas and St. Lawrence Mohawks of New York, taken by William N. Fenton, Frank Speck, and Snyderman. See also the entry in this guide for general "Haudenosaunee materials, George S. Snyderman Papers".

Collection:George S. Snyderman Papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.51)

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Upper Chehalis (Salish) language material

Culture:

Chehalis includes: Tsihalis

Language:Chehalis, Upper | Cowlitz | English

Date:1960

Contributor:Heck, Silas | Kinkade, M. Dale (Marvin Dale), 1933-2004

Subject:Folklore | Linguistics | Medicine | Washington (State)--History

Type:Sound recording

Genre:Elicitation sessions | Stories | Vocabularies

Extent:5 sound tape reels (9 hr., 58 min.) : DIGITIZED

Description: Vocabularies and grammatical eliciting; folkloric stories and narratives pertaining to Chehalis Quinault medicine-man text; and four Lower Cowlitz words. Recorded at Grand Mound, Washington, in July 1960. (NOTE: This material has been digitized and can be accessed online for free by users not physically at the APS Library through a login and password. Please see our Audio Access Page for information on how to request these materials.)

Collection:Upper Chehalis (Salish) language material (Mss.Rec.37)

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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)