Pliny Earle Goddard American Indian notebooks, 1901-1929

Creator:: Goddard, Pliny Earle, 1869-1928 and Sapir, Edward, 1884-1939
Extent:: 2 linear feet (33 notebooks in 4 half-manuscript boxes)
Language:: English , Navajo; Navaho , Athapascan languages .
Scope and content:: Thirty-three notebooks containing transcriptions of Native American texts by Pliny Earle Goddard, and some English translations. While some of the material is of a primarily linguistic nature, much is folkloric in nature. The collection contains eleven notebooks of Mescalero Apache texts; three notebooks of Pomo, Maple Creek, and Mad River tribes and four of the Coquille, Chasta Costa, and Tututni languages (Native American tribes from the Pacific Coast); five notebooks of Navajo texts; and ten notebooks of Sarsi texts. It also includes 23 pages of notes on Chasta Costa attributed to Edward Sapir.
Biographical / historical:: Anthropologist. Goddard held several curatorial positions with the American Museum of Natural History from 1909 to 1928. In 1914 he became Curator of Ethnology and from 1915 to 1928 he was a Lecturer in Anthropology at Columbia University. A remembrance in the American Anthropologist (https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1929.31.1.02a00020, Vol. 31, No. 1, January-March 1929) includes a bibliography.

Acquisition information:

Accession number--M-59.

Processing information:

Cataloged Christina Hilton Fenn 06/--/89.

Notebooks were individually housed in four-flap enclosures by conservation. The collection was rehoused into four half-manuscript boxes. kws 2022-08-12

Numbers and series were assigned based on information written on the notebook covers by Kevin Schlottmann in August 2022. This information may be subject to change based on future expert review of the notebooks.

Arrangement:

Arranged.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Related material:

Additional field notebooks from Goddard are found in the Melville Jacobs papers at the University of Washington (https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv95437#dscID), specifically three Galice Athabaskan notebooks and four Lassik Athabaskan notebooks.

Additional field notebooks from Goddard are found in the American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages at the American Philosophical Society: https://search.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.497.3.B63c-ead.xml

Alternative form available:

Materials have been digitized. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.

Access and use

Restrictions:: This collection is located on-site.
Terms of access:: Reproductions may be made for research purposes. The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.

Preferred citation:: Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Pliny Earle Goddard American Indian notebooks; Box and Folder; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.

Location of this collection:: Rare Book & Manuscript Library

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Collection