John Peabody Harrington

John P. Harrington
Harrington in 1924
Born	(1884-04-29)April 29, 1884 Waltham, Massachusetts
Died	October 21, 1961(1961-10-21) (aged 77) San Diego, California
Education	Stanford University, UC Berkeley, University of Leipzig, University of Berlin,
Occupation(s)	Linguist, Field ethnologist
Spouse	Carobeth Laird

John Peabody Harrington (April 29, 1884 – October 21, 1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which remains unpublished: the shelf space in the National Anthropological Archives dedicated to his work spans nearly 700 feet.^[1]

Born in Waltham, Massachusetts, Harrington moved to California as a child. From 1902 to 1905, Harrington studied anthropology and classical languages at Stanford University. While attending specialized classes at the University of California, Berkeley, he met anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber. Harrington became intensely interested in Native American languages and ethnography.

Rather than completing his doctorate at the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, Harrington became a high-school language teacher. For three years, he devoted his spare time to an intense examination of the few surviving Chumash people. His exhaustive work came to the attention of the Smithsonian Museum's Bureau of American Ethnology. Harrington became a permanent field ethnologist for the bureau in 1915. He was to hold this position for 40 years, collecting and compiling several massive caches of raw data on native peoples, including the Chumash, Mutsun, Rumsen, Chochenyo, Kiowa, Chimariko, Yokuts, Gabrielino, Salinan, Yuma, and Mojave, among many others. Harrington also extended his work into traditional culture, particularly mythology and geography. His field collections include information on placenames and thousands of photographs. The massive collections were disorganized in the extreme, and contained not only linguistic manuscripts and recordings, but also objects and realia of every stripe; a later cataloger described how opening each box of his legacy was "an adventure in itself."^[2] He published very little of his work; many of his notes appear to have been deliberately hidden from his colleagues. After his death, Smithsonian curators discovered over six tons of boxes stored in warehouses, garages and even chicken coops throughout the West.^[3]

Harrington is virtually the only recorder of some languages, such as Obispeño (Northern) Chumash, Kitanemuk, and Serrano. He gathered more than 1 million pages of phonetic notations on languages spoken by tribes from Alaska to South America. When the technology became available, he supplemented his written record with audio recordings - many recently digitized^[4] - first using wax cylinders, then aluminum discs.[1] He is credited with gathering some of the first recordings of native languages, rituals, and songs, and perfecting the phonetics of several different languages.^[5] Harrington's attention to detail, both linguistic and cultural, is well-illustrated in "Tobacco among the Karuk Indians of California," one of his relatively few formally published works.^[6]

Rumsen Cultural Bearer Isabel Meadows works with J.P. Harrington

In 1933, at age 87, Isabel Meadows was invited to Washington D.C., to assist Harrington with his research on the Rumsen life, language, and culture in the Carmel Valley, California and Big Sur regions. Isabel was last known speaker of their language.^[7] They worked together until the end of her life, on May 20, 1939, at age 94, in Washington D.C.^[8]

A more complete listing of the languages he documented includes:^[9]

Harrington was married to Carobeth Laird (née Tucker) from 1916 to 1923, a relationship that Laird later chronicled in her 1975 memoir Encounter with an Angry God. They had one daughter, Awona Harrington.^[10]

• Indigenous languages of California
• Traditional narratives (Native California)
• Native American history of California
• Native Americans in California
• Survey of California and Other Indian Languages

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Peabody Harrington.

• J.P. Harrington Database Project Archived 2015-06-10 at the Wayback Machine
• Daniel Golding (Producer/Director) (April 30, 2021). Chasing Voices: The Story of John P. Harrington (motion picture). Vision Maker Media, Hokan Media LLC.
• Victor Golla, California Indian Languages (UC Press, 2011)
• Bibliography
• John Peabody Harrington: the clue to lost Native American languages: Mike Anton LA Times Staff Writer ()
• Keepers of Indigenous Ways: J.P. Harrington Biography
• "Reconstituting the Chumash: A Review Essay," Peter Nabokov, American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4, Special Issue: The California Indians. (Autumn, 1989), pp. 535-543.
• A Harrington Chronology
• John P. Harrington Papers 1907-1959 (some earlier)
• Los Angeles Times article and video about Harrington's research amongst the Chumash
• The John Peabody Harrington Collection at the National Anthropological Archives
• [2]