J. P. Harrington Database Project: Project Summary
The goal of the J. P. Harrington Project is to increase access to the linguistic and ethnographic notes on American Indian languages collected by J. P. Harrington during the first half of the twentieth century. The men and women he interviewed were often among the last remaining speakers of their languages. Harrington's notes have proved to be a treasure of indigenous knowledge that otherwise would have been lost. This is especially true for the native peoples of California, who, by the end of the nineteenth century, had literally been decimated. Well over half of an estimated 500,000 pages of notes are on California Indian languages, and it is with these papers that this project has begun.
The initial focus is on the material on California Indian languages that are available in the microfilm edition of the Harrington papers. The text (each word and symbol) is transcribed and then coded for a number of linguistic and ethnographic categories in order to maximize its availability and usefulness to linguists, biologists, geographers, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and, perhaps most importantly, to Native American community scholars.
Native California languages are among the most endangered languages in the world. Most of the California languages Harrington recorded are no longer spoken, or have only a few elderly speakers. The language and ethnographic material in his notes are cherished by Native communities for language and cultural revitalization. They are no less valuable to the scholarly community at large.
The resultant database is searchable to enable the printing of a continuous text, as well as providing lists of lexical items with glosses (dictionaries). As the database is compiled, guides to the materials on each language will be produced that will include:
- dates and location of the fieldwork, with a list of all place names mentioned
- a full explanation of the orthography and symbols used for each language
- biographical information on consultants and field assistants
- cross-references to associated sound recordings, photographs, notes, and correspondence
- references to relevant linguistic and ethnographic publications.
This project directly impacts two groups: the native people of California and the West and students of these communities. The language and ethnographic material in HarringtonŐs notes are cherished by native communities for their value to language and cultural revitalization. The project includes a program of training and involving native community members in the task of transcribing these notes.
Graduate students are given a rare opportunity to work intensively with primary source materials, and to interact directly with the native communities from which the material was originally drawn. The J. P. Harrington Database Project is an invaluable tool in the outreach of UC Davis to indigenous peoples throughout California, involving them in mutually productive relationships with the academic community.
Webpage design by Martha Macri
Last updated July 1, 2003.