John Peabody Harrington - Article in LA Times Long)
From: Joseph W. Murphy (jwmurphy700_at_mindspring.com)
Date: 07/12/04
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Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 01:51:03 GMT
I saw this in our local paper. Thought some here might be interested.
Packrat's Clutter Hid Linguistic Treasures
By Mike Anton
Los Angeles Times
Few understood the significance of John Peabody Harrington's work when
he died at 77. For 50 years, the linguist and anthropologist had
crisscrossed the West, finding the last speakers of ancient American
Indian tongues and writing down their words and customs.
Secretive and paranoid, Harrington stuffed his work into boxes and
crates. After his death in 1961, the papers turned up in warehouses,
attics, basements, (and) even chicken coops throughout the West. They
eventually made their way to his old employer, the Smithsonian
Institution.
"Six tons of material -- much of it worthless," recalled Catherine
Callaghan, now 72, a linguist who sorted through the papers. "There
was blank paper, dirty old shirts, half-eaten sandwiches...But mixed
in with all of that were these treasures."
Harrington's legacy now is regarded as a Rosetta stone that unlocks
dozens of all but forgotten California Indian languages.
Researchers at the University of California-Davis, backed by a
National Science Foundation grant, are transcribing his notes -- a
million pages of scibbled writing, much of it in code, Spanish or
phonetic script -- into electronic documents. The job is expected to
take 20 years.
"I very much doubt I will see the end of it," said project co-director
Victor Golla, 65, professor of linguistics at Humboldt State
University in Arcata, Calif. "Like Harrington's original project, you
do this for the future benefit of other people."
Harrington's work has been used by California's Indians trying to
establish federal tribal recognition, settle territorial claims, and
protect sacred sites.
It has also played a crucial role in reviving languages. The Muwekma
Ohlone tribe in the San Francisco Bay area, for instance, is using
Harrington's research to teach members the Chochenyo language, which
had been dead for 60 years.
"They've gone from knowing nothing to being able to carry on a short
conversation, sing songs, and play games," said University of
California-Berkeley, linguistics professor Juliette Blevins.
Scholars of Indian anthropology are drawn to Harrington's archive as
the definitive work of its kind. There's only one problem. His
handwritten notes are as comprehensible as Aramaic.
"It's impenetrable," said Martha Macri, director of the UC-Davis
Native American Language Center and co-director of the effort to
computerize Harrington's papers.
The significance of Harrington's work lies not in individual
discoveries, but in millions of words and customs.
He pumped his subjects -- often the last speakers of their languages
-- for everything they knew. His papers describe centuries-old
ceremonies. Medicinal traditions. Songs, dances and games. Family
histories. Even gossip.
Harrington, born in 1884 and raised in Santa Barbara, Calif., studied
classical languages and anthropology at Stanford University. he
turned down a Rhodes scholarship and studied anthropolgy and
linguistics at universities in Europe
Professors marveled at his flawless ear. He had the ability to write
down every word said to him.
He returned to California to teach languages at Santa Ana High School
and in 1915 landed a linguistics job for the Smithsonian's Bureau of
American Ethnology.
During the next 40 years his travels took him from the Southwest to
Canada and Alaska.
Harrington was a recluse who dressed in tattered clothing and slept on
the dirt floors of his interview subjects' homes.
"I thought he was a little nuts at times. But I never met anybody who
was so devoted to his work," said Jack Marr, 83, a retired engineer
who was an assistant to Harrington. "He preached it to me over and
over: 'If we didn't do this, nobody else will, and these languages
will be lost forever."
Joyce Stanfield Perry, a Juaneno tribal leader in Orange County,
Calif., discovered Harrington's legacy in 1994 as she and others
searched the Smithsonian for records to support federal recognition
for her tribe.
They found a box of recordings made in the 1930's. On them was the
voice of Anastacia de Majel, a tribal eleder then in her 70s and one
of the last speakers of the Juaneno language.
"We wept," Perry said. "It truly was like our ancestors were talking
directly to us."
Indiana Angle
John Peabody Harrington never came to Indiana to talk with the Miami
tribe, but he did research the tribe's language while visiting its
members in Oklahoma. And his research is being used to reconstruct
what one expert calls "the native language of Indiana."
"Before 1830, there were probably about a dozen primary languages
being spoken in Indiana," said linguist Daryl Baldwin, a member of the
Miami tribe of Oklahoma and an expert in the tribe's language. "But
as the tribes moved away, their languages weren't spoken here
anymore."
The last to go was the Miami language. "It ceased being spoking in
the 1960's," said Baldwin, who lives in Liberty, Indiana, and works at
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "What I'm doing, along with many
others, is trying to reclaim it."
Indpls. Star Staff Report
Joe Murphy
Boy Linguist
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