Module 12: J.P. Harrington

            John Peabody Harrington was born April 29^th of 1884 in Waltham, Massachusetts. His parents Elliott A. Harrington and Mary L. Peabody moved the family to Santa Barbara, California when John was still a young child. While growing up and moving through middle school and high school he showed a profound curiosity in languages and the local Mission Indians. By 1902, Harrington had attended Stanford University and began to excel instantly. He had focused academics in languages and anthropology and the fraternity Phi Beta Kappa had elected him as a member. In 1903, Harrington had attended Summer School at the University of California at Berkeley for 3 months where he became interested in California Indian languages. Throughout College Harrington earned money by using his skills “translating German for the Immigration Service in San Francisco and tutoring students in French and German” (Stirling 2009). Back at Stanford University, Professor H. R. Fairclough who was head of the Latin Department of the time was one of the greatest influences on Harrington’s career. At Stanford University, he graduated top of his class in 1905 and traveled to Europe that summer to study at the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin.

While continuing to study both Linguistics and anthropology, he is described by teachers as “a completely dedicated student with an exceptionally brilliant mind” (Stirling 2009). Instead of completing his doctorate at the universities, he decided to return to the United states in 1906. Harrington became a high school language teacher in Santa Ana, California. Along with teaching at the high school level, he also spent his time away from work documenting nearby languages including Mohave, Yuma, and Diegueño. He also dedicated spare time to deeply examine the surviving Chumash people. By 1909, Harrington devoted full time to anthropological work and took the position of ethnologist under Edgar L. Hewitt. This took place at the School of American Archeology of the Archeological Institute of America in Santa Fe. Around time Harrington gave lectures about Indians in the southwest in various schools throughout Colorado as well as Seattle. By 1915, Harrington received the position of Research Ethnologist at the Bureau of American Ethnology.

At this time, Research Ethnologist was one of the most wanted positions in American linguistic anthropology. With this job “Harrington had virtually unbounded freedom to wander the North American continent carrying out his mission of linguistic and cultural documentation” (Golla 1994). He compiled massive data on Chumash, Mutsun, Rumsen, Chochenyo, Kiowa, Chimariko, Yokuts, Gabrielino, Salinan, Yuman, Mojave, and many other languages. Harrington was the only person to record languages such as Obispeño Chumash, Kitanemuk, and Serrano. His field work aided the continuation of various language studies. “The value of the documentation was especially great for languages like Chimariko, Costanoan, Salinan, and Chumash, considered lost by some scholars as early as the turn of the century, but for which the intrepid Harrington had discovered several aged speakers” (Golla 1994). All of John Peabody Harrington’s documentation can be found on the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History website here:

http://anthropology.si.edu/naa/harrington/manuscripts_microfilm.html

References:        

Golla, Victor. 1994. John P. Harrington and his legacy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University.

Stirling, M. W. (1963). John Peabody Harrington, 1884-1961. American Anthropologist, 65(2), 370-381. doi:10.1525/aa.1963.65.2.02a00110