Guide to the Indigenous Materials at the American Philosophical Society

Description: This entry concerns materials relating to Speck's general study of Native American peoples, languages, and cultures east of the Mississippi, as well as to his activities as a consulted expert in the field. Includes Speck's miscellaneous notes on the southeast; notes on "tribal remnants" in the southeast; notes on shamanism in the northeast; notes on the 1941 symposium Man in Northeastern America; offprints, drafts, and synopses of the work of others, sometimes with Speck's notes, including several that were printed in Frederick Johnson's 1946 volume based on the symposium, Man in Northeastern North America; archaeological reports on southeastern pottery, mound sites, and the Georgia coast; a student's master's thesis on mound-builders; and letters from various correspondents regarding eastern Indian baskets, museum specimens, the sale of Indian art and specimens, the ethnohistory of the southeast, Indian place names, archaeological sites in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, scapulimancy, copies of Indian treaties from a museum in Nova Scotia, and other topics.

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

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Miscellaneous materials, Frank G. Speck Papers

Culture:

Yuchi includes: Euchee

Wolastoqiyik includes: Wəlastəkwewiyik, Malecite, Maliseet

Wabanaki includes: Wabenaki, Wobanaki

Tunica

Tsimshian includes: Ts'msyan, Ts'msyen, Zimshian

Seneca includes: Onöndowága

Navajo includes: Diné, Navaho

Maya

Nanticoke

Mi'kmaq includes: Micmac

Naskapi includes: ᓇᔅᑲᐱ, Iyiyiw, Skoffie

Kwakwaka'wakw includes: Kwakiutl

Klamath

Haudenosaunee includes: Iroquois, Onkwehonwe

Innu includes: Montagnais, Mountaineer

Inuit includes: Inuk, Eskimo (pej.), ᐃᓄᐃᑦ

Cayuga includes: Gayogohó:no

Cheyenne

Cherokee

Creek

Choctaw includes: Chahta

Catawba includes: Iswa

Dakota includes: Dakȟóta

Chinook

Chitimacha

Catawba includes: Iswa

Chickahominy

Language:English | German

Date:1904-1950

Type:Text

Extent:46 folders

Description: Materials relating to Speck's research and other professional activities. Items include Speck's notes taken during graduate work at Columbia University under Franz Boas, and utilized for his own anthropology courses at the University of Pennsylvania; Speck's miscellaneous notes comprising circa 500 bibliographic cards and reading notes sorted out by tribe and/or language, dealing with tribes and countries in which Speck did no field work [other entries of this type are to be found among the various groups of materials in the Speck collection, according to tribe]; correspondence concerning exhibits and specimens for the Chicago World's Fair and for the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts in New York City; two letters from Boas regarding the work of the Committee on Research in Native American Languages; correspondence regarding topics such as the double-curve motif, family hunting areas, indigenous foods and cooking methods, wampum, silverwork, birch-bark technique, baskets, Speck's research and publications, the research and publications of others, obtaining indigenous material cultural specimens for Speck, purchases of indigenous material culture specimens (baskets, masks, etc.) from Speck, Speck's identification of items in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University, Speck's bibliography, and Speck's obituary; letters requesting copies of Speck's publications, or acknowledging the transmission of publications between Speck and others; copies and/or drafts of several of Speck's presentations and publications, including "Lectures on Primitive Religion," "Land Ownership Among Hunting Peoples in Primitive America and the World's Marginal Areas," "Review of Lowie's Introduction to Cultural Anthropology," and "The Double-Curve Motive in Northeastern Algonquian Art"; a bibliography of Speck's publications through 1942; rough drafts of miscellaneous papers, 1928-1948; Speck's notes on topics such as crane posture; Birket-Smith's 1946 "Plan for Circumpolar Research"; ten distribution maps for circumpolar culture traits, colored in with crayon to show distribution of traits including divination and miracle shamanism, sweat bath, turtle Atlas myth and world-tree concept, bone divination, bear veneration, curative power of mystic words and formulae, dog-ancestor myth, dog as soul leader, curvilinear patterns, and confession to cure taboo violation; and a prepublication manuscript of Hallowell's "The nature and function of property as a human institution" with additions and corrections.

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