Inventory to the Archival Collection

Coll. 268

Edited by
David G. Lewis, M.A.

Cover Illustration by
Deana Dartt, B.A.

(this inventory is intended for use in education and research purposes only, publication and sales of the content in whole or in part is strictly forbidden. permission for publication of parts of the inventory must be requested of David Lewis)

Editor: David G. Lewis
Cover Illustration: Deana Dartt
Cover Graphics: George Beltrane
Linguistics Section Editor: Gordon Bettles

Copyright David Lewis, 2001

Original publication date 2001

 

David Lewis is of Santiam Kalapuya, Takelma, and Chinook ancestry and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. David obtained his Master’s of Arts in Anthropology in December 2000 and currently is in the Ph.D. program in the Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon.

Deana Dartt is a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation of California. Deana will receive her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology in June 2001, and will continue her graduate studies in the Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon in Fall 2001.

Gordon Bettles is a member of the Klamath Tribes of Oregon and is in an inter-disciplinary graduate studies program in Anthropology, Indigenous Cultural Survival and Linguistics at the University of Oregon.

Introduction 9
History of the Southwest Oregon Research Project Collection 12
Southwest Oregon Research Project I 12
Coquille Indian Tribe/University of Oregon Potlatch 1997 14
Southwest Oregon Research Project II 15
SWORP Reorganization 16
SWORP Research Process 17
Future Research Projects 18
General Description of the Collection 18
Scope and Contents of the Records 20
Guide to the Inventory Index Lists 20

Series 1: National Anthropological Archives 24
Series 2: National Archives Records Administration 37
Series 3: Potlatch 62
Series 4: Microfilm 63
Series 5: Audiotapes 67
Series 6: Photographs 69
Series 7: Maps 72
Series 8: Oversize 75
Linguistic Families and Dialects 79
Tribal Name Variations, Box and Folder List 83
Correspondence Reports and Indian Letters 92
Bibliography 112
Acknowledgements 114

In more than two hundred years of contact with an alien civilization... the true story of the Indians... has not been told. Whenever studies have been done, generally by anthropologists or historians, seldom if ever, have the Indian people themselves been consulted as to their experiences, their perceptions... (Costo and Costo 1987:131).

...there is a tendency when non-Indians write “Indian history” which has long bothered me.... I refer to the implicit “up from the darkness” strain of thought in these writings, the view of the inevitability of “enlightenment” or “progress.” In anthropology this is the evolutionary school of thought, a school which was especially prominent in this century during the last decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th.
The result of this kind of thinking in anthropology has been a legacy of age-area and culture studies characterized by a laundry-list approach to the collection of data. This kind of thinking is unfortunate, and I admit that it exists as much in anthropology as in history.
I have yet to encounter a tribal tradition in which there is anything remotely resembling a notion of progress. It is a distortion, when people deify a notion like progress, and regard it as inevitable, write about Indian people with the assumption that they too, are caught up in and with the notion of progress. Historians and anthropologists who write in this vein treat Indian tribal peoples as if they were also grinding, inevitably, inexorably, up the stepladder of progressive enlightenment and toward greater complexity. To insist on perceiving something that is not there is to distort the true experience of these people.
Clearly we have to get beyond the inherent dangers these attributes pose and return to a recognition of more modest notions that perhaps we Indian people who survived with the essences of our cultures intact really want to make contributions first and foremost to the continued survival and perpetuation of these cultures, rather than to something called “civilization,” which is, after all, alien to our traditional cultures, and usually antagonistic to them as well (Dr. Alfonso Ortiz 1974; in Costo and Costo 1987:25-26).

   Native peoples of greater Oregon have undergone a history of genocide, discrimination and federal termination by the United States government in the past 200 years. This same history has been relatively unknown and concealed in far ranging archives and federal research institutions. Coquille tribal elder George Wasson Jr. noticed this problem years ago and has coined the phrase "A Cultural Black Hole," (Wasson 1994) in reference to how little is known about the Native cultures and peoples of southwest Oregon despite the fact that there are large collections of materials on Native people in institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Wasson subsequently initiated the Southwest Oregon Research Project (SWORP) with this commanding sentiment “Why can't we take all of that information, those manuscripts, and bring them here so that Indian people can work with them and they would be easy to get to! SWORP implements that idea, liberating materials from their imprisonment within national archives and repatriating them to the Native American Tribes. The archive and continuing project allows Native American and university scholars to continue to research and rewrite the histories of colonization that have been imposed upon Native peoples. This effort is happening through the agency of Native Americans themselves.

   Historically, non-native historians, anthropologists and ethnographers have defined the parameters of the field of American Indian and Native American history (Fixico in Mihesuah 1998:86). Some academic researchers sought to exploit Native peoples by mining their languages, artworks, and culture as part of the "dying culture" theory. The early efforts of research on Native peoples have mainly benefitted those in academic disciplines, while Tribal governments and peoples have not equally benefitted from this unbalanced relationship. In addition, Native cultures have been studied by researchers who had a European cultural bias, and such a cultural filter does not usually recognize a Native cultural worldview when interpreting Native culture and society. Donald Fixico writes "Historians who study Indian history must think in terms of culture, community, environment, and metaphysics" (in Mihesuah 1998:87).

SWORP is the first known project of its type to be undertaken for a Native American Nation in cooperation with a major university. The SWORP process, of utilizing research teams with a combination of Native and non-native researchers, breaks through models of anthropological research upon Native peoples by academic institutions. As well, the sharing of these materials through the potlatch by the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Oregon and the Coquille Indian Tribe creates a unique “gift of history” where all of the regional tribes are receiving portions of the SWORP collection relevant to their cultural context.
In addition, part of the SWORP collection contains letters and petitions from Native people struggling to survive within the reservation system. Through the use of these letters, and other correspondence from United States Indian Agents, teachers at Day and Boarding schools, physicians, and the ethnographic documents of this same period, we can now reconstruct an informed history of the early Grand Ronde and Siletz Reservations.

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn has observed "the greatest body of acceptable telling of the Indian story is still in the hands of non-natives..."(Mihesuah 1998:13). SWORP contains information long thought lost to generations of Native peoples, and ignored by generations of American history and anthropology scholars. The local availability of SWORP collection changes this dynamic and empowers researchers at the Tribes and university to easily access this vital information.
SWORP is a unique and important collection because it is completely composed of copies of primary manuscripts from different archives brought together in a single collection, while in California collections are housed in statewide archives widely dispersed from each other.. Of an earlier process from California, Rupert Costo (Cahuilla) writes,

  "Indian historians, working with scholars and historical scientists such as anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnologists and academic historians, have helped to develop a huge body of knowledge about the founders and settlers of California. Such works as those by Kroeber, Heizer, Lowie, DuBois, Rogers, Bancroft, Bolton, Cook, Barrows, Phillips, Lawton and Bean, Forbes, and a host of other distinguished scholars, have produced a body of information that should long ago have exposed the myth and corrected the history" (Costo and Costo 1987:2).

   SWORP holdings are a compilation of materials from different archives, assembled at the University of Oregon and Tribal offices. The collection includes manuscripts by such noted anthropologists as Waterman, Gatschet, Drucker, Boas, Frachtenberg, Dorsey and many others who conducted field research on Native peoples of Oregon, California and Washington. More than half of the collection is from government sources like the Office of Indian Affairs and the War Department. In its scope, SWORP replicates or rivals that of the manuscript collection on Native Americans assembled at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

As yet, SWORP does not exhaust the material that exists about Oregon Native peoples in world-wide collections. SWORP represents a continuing effort to recover and uncover our collective histories, histories that are significant not only to the Native peoples but also to people of the State of Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and the United States. In the future, SWORP researchers will reach out to other archives to bring back additional manuscripts of longer and wider historical importance. This finding aid and reorganization of the collection is an effort to establish a benchmark in the SWORP collection process, a foundation that future projects will build upon.

History of the Southwest Oregon Research Project Collection

  The Southwest Oregon Research Project was conceived more than 20 years ago. George Wasson Jr. recalls that his father, George Wasson Sr., worked strenuously for Native America rights and took many trips to Washington, D.C. for this purpose. George Wasson Jr. (hereafter Wasson) began his time at the University of Oregon in the 1950s and today is finishing a dissertation on cultural anthropology at the same institution. During this long career at the University, Wasson spent time in Washington, D.C., doing research at the Smithsonian Institution. He recalls conceiving of a project like SWORP in the 1970s while doing research.

His vision of recovering the archived information about Oregon Indians stored in far-away institutions has been the commanding vision of the SWORP researchers and organizers during the past 6 or 7 years. SWORP has begun to answer the problem of the "Cultural Black Hole" identified by Wasson in the 1990s. The collecting of archival materials has taken place over several stages, which are here enumerated.

Southwest Oregon Research Project I

The first effort, SWORP I, was carried out in 1995 under the direction of University of Oregon graduate students and Coquille Tribal members George Wasson and Jason Younker. At the University of Oregon, Dr. Jon Erlandson, then an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, served as faculty advisor and helped raise and administer the funds and provided liaison and logistical support. The SWORP I research team combined Coquille tribal members with University of Oregon graduate students. Team members included R. Scott Byram (University of Oregon), Dennis Griffin (University of Oregon), Mark Tveskov (University of Oregon), Shirod Younker (Coquille/University of Oregon), Denise Mitchell (Hockema) (Coquille/University of Oregon), Jeff Weidemann (University of Oregon), Jason Younker (Coquille/University of Oregon), and George Wasson (Coquille/University of Oregon). SWORP I was co-funded by the Coquille Economic Development Corporation (CEDCO), the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History's American Indian Program and the University of Oregon Graduate School (Younker 1997:24). The field research team spent 10 weeks working under the direction of Dr. JoAllyn Archambault at the National Anthropology Archives and the National Archives in Washington, D.C. During that time thousands of documents significant to the history and cultures of the Indian people of southwestern Oregon were scanned and ordered. The copied records were sent to the University of Oregon, where they were accessioned into Special Collections at the Knight Library. An additional copy of all records was archived at the Coquille Tribal offices. The collection contained approximately 60,000 pages of microfilm, manuscript, and map materials having ethnographic, linguistic, and historical importance. These were stored in eight Hollinger acid-free archival boxes.

Coquille Indian Tribe/University of Oregon Potlatch 1997

In the spirit of the original efforts to create the SWORP collection, the Coquille Indian Tribe and the University of Oregon initiated a potlatch or giveaway, the first of such events in a century for the tribe. The purpose of the Potlatch was to disseminate copies of the entire SWORP collection to five federally recognized tribes of western Oregon and northwest California: the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; the Confederated Tribes of Siletz; the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw; the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians; and Smith River Rancheria. Subsequently a copy of the archived materials was given to Elk Valley Rancheria of northern California. The Potlatch was jointly sponsored and funded by the Coquille Indian Tribe and the University of Oregon "to honor and celebrate the memory of the indigenous people who lived through the holocaust-like conditions of the early settlement period of Oregon" (Younker 1997:23). Organized primarily by Jason Younker, George Wasson, and Jon Erlandson of the Anthropology Department, and Lisa Manotti of the Knight Library, the Potlatch was held on May 17, 1997, at the University of Oregon's Willamette Hall Atrium and had nearly 350 attendees. Don Ivy, Director of the Cultural Department of the Coquille Tribe, was Master of Ceremonies for the Potlatch. During this same week at the University of Oregon the Native American Student Union held its Annual Spring Pow Wow, the Humanities Center had the Native American Literature Conference, the Linguistics Department held a Native American Linguistics Conference, and the Native Wordcraft Writers Circle had its annual conference. While at the Potlatch, George Wasson honored the women of the Coquille Tribe for carrying on the tribal traditions despite the history of discrimination and termination against the Native people of Oregon. Also honored were all of the participants and organizers of the SWORP I project. Distinguished visitors from other Native American Nations were also honored, including Dr. JoAllyn Archambault, Director of the American Indian Program at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, Ed Edmo, traditional storyteller, and Dr. N. Scott Momaday, traditional storyteller and writer. Loren Bommelyn of Smith River Rancheria and Bud Lane of the Siletz Tribe brought their two groups of Feather Dancers for the Potlatch presentation and commemoration and presented traditional Tolowa/Tututni songs and dances of
blessing for the occasion.

As a result of the Potlatch, Jason Younker wrote a Master's thesis, "Revival of a Potlatch Tradition: Coquille Giveaway," which was completed December 12, 1997, and the following year a videotape commemorating the Potlatch was also completed. Both the Master's thesis and videotape are in the SWORP Collection in Special Collections of the Knight Library.

Southwest Oregon Research Project II

After the Potlatch, planning began for a second trip to Washington, D.C. to gather additional archival materials. The SWORP II indigenous regional focus was expanded to include northern California and southwestern Washington, as the records from these areas were likely to hold important information for the western Oregon tribes. Additionally, the project team looked for more records from within western Oregon. SWORP II was carried out in the summer of 1998 under the direction of Mark Tveskov and Jason Younker, with Jon Erlandson again serving as faculty facilitator and liaison. Field researchers Denise Mitchell and Amanda Mitchell of the Coquille Indian Tribe, Patty Whereat, Director of the Culture Department of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw, Robert Kentta, Director of the Cultural Department of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, David Lewis of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community, and Mark Tveskov from the Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon spent eight weeks in Washington, D.C., scanning through the National Anthropology Archives and the National Archives.While at the National Archives the team focused on Record Group 75, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and primarily on the correspondence received from the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations. By the end of the two months in Washington, D.C., the team had succeeded in covering the correspondence for 1881 to 1893. In the last two weeks, several researchers spent time at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, looking through the extensive map and photographic collections there.

As in SWORP I, Dr. JoAllyn Archambault acted as sponsor for the SWORP II team at the National Anthropological Archives. The field research was co-funded by the Coquille Tribe, the University of Oregon Graduate School, and the Smithsonian Institution's Native American Internship Program. SWORP II was sent to the Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, where Mark Tveskov, then spent nine months organizing and indexing the collection at Southern Oregon University with the help of students in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology there. The SWORP II collection was accessioned into Special Collections of the Knight Library in June 1999 and stored in 12 Hollinger acid-free archival boxes, containing approximately 50,000 pages of information and 12 linear feet of paper copies of manuscripts (Tveskov and Younker 1999:7).

SWORP Reorganization

The reorganization project for SWORP began in August 1999 when David Lewis, graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, began indexing and describing SWORP I and SWORP II. At this time both SWORP collections, housed in 20 Hollinger archival boxes, were in need of preservation and a better organization. In consultation with Special Collections staff at the Knight Library, it was decided that for the protection of the collections, a full rearrangement into smaller acid-free folders and boxes was required. The reorganization of the two archives would approximate the original organization of the materials from the National Archives and the National Anthropological Archives, which was necessary since neither of the SWORP collections had preserved the original order of the manuscript collections.

Indexing of the two original collections took place between September 1999 and May 2000. The effort was supported by a graduate teaching fellowship from the Graduate School of the University of Oregon and was supervised by Dr. Jon Erlandson of the Department of Anthropology, and Linda Long, Manuscripts Archivist, in the Knight Library, University of Oregon. Physical amalgamation of the SWORP I, and SWORP II collections began in spring 2000 and was completed in summer 2000 by David Lewis under the direction of Linda Long.

Following the reorganization of SWORP, David Lewis and Dr. Jon Erlandson undertook a project to create a finding aid or inventory. This fall 2000 project included an effort to train two Native American Anthropology undergraduate students in the organization and description procedures of the SWORP Collection. Deana Dartt (Coastal Chumash, CA) and Don Day (Grand Ronde, OR) received training in the policies and procedures of Special Collections by Linda Long, SWORP history presentations by George Wasson, Jason Younker, Scott Byram, and seminar-type classes organized by David Lewis. David Lewis, Deana Dartt, and Don Day utilized the Microsoft Access program to describe the SWORP Collection. In this work they received help from nearly the entire staff of Special Collections. Additional Native student assistants, including Gordon Bettles (Klamath), Kainoa Sandberg (Coquille) and Bryan Hudson (Shoshone) helped finish the collection inventory in May 2001, as well as two other assistants, Mark Leasor and Shannon Barlow.

The SWORP archival creation proved to be a learning experience for all of the field researchers. The researchers not only gained a familiarity with the Smithsonian Institution, a valuable experience for any serious researcher, but also learned about the protocols and organization of archives. Most of these researchers have used the SWORP collection for their thesis, dissertation, and professional papers. SWORP also helped the researchers understand the scope of the "Black Hole" problem. They came to appreciate the need to develop studies of Native history and culture in Oregon. Additionally, many of the researchers for SWORP were archaeologists, a discipline not well known for using archival ethnographic documents in its investigation and analysis. SWORP contains enough early documentation of Indian villages, other sites, and technologies, that the archaeologists were able to incorporate the historic ethnographic information into their research.

SWORP Research Process

Washington D.C., was chosen because of the wealth of records pertaining to Native American peoples contained in its archival repositories. The National Anthropological Archive of the Natural History Museum contains original manuscripts from nearly all of the Smithsonian agencies, such as the Bureau of American Ethnology, that collected information about Native Americans. The National Archives contains Record Group 75, Indian Affairs, which includes more than 11,000 cubic feet of documents collected since 1824. There are many other record groups that contain tens of thousands of documents relative to Native Americans. Additionally, the National Archives has a branch repository at College Park, Maryland that contains most of the maps and photographic records.
Research in Washington, D.C., has proven to be a multilayered learning process for all researchers. First, Washington, D.C., is an imposing and spectacular city that takes some time to understand. The Metro system is a wonderful way to get around and can take anyone to the many different archives, museums, and other places of interest. The cities around Washington, D.C., are also historically significant and easily accessed through public transportation. The SWORP researchers had to master the Metro system.

They also had to master the policies and procedures of the archives. The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) requires advance appointments and research supervision to handle the necessary paperwork and any other bureaucratic necessity. The SWORP researchers needed an official Smithsonian Institution identification for access to sensitive areas of the Museum of Natural History. A special identification is also required at the National Archives (NA), but this repository is publically accessed by thousands of researchers, and the process is much easier.

The reading room of the NAA is very small and can only accommodate about six researchers. Ordering of manuscripts can be a difficult task, even with the help of the NAA archivists, but the NAA has many indexes and finding aids to help researchers access its collections. Many of the NAA's manuscripts have been lost or misplaced since the collection began 150 years ago, and policies for using materials have changed over time. In the early history of the NAA, the primary repository and administrative center would send field researchers original manuscripts through the postal system. This early history of the NAA is preserved in the correspondence by researchers like Franz Boas and Albert Gatschet, much of which is in the SWORP collection.

The NA has a large facility with multiple reading and viewing rooms. The microfilm room is usually filled with people looking into Civil War and genealogical records. The manuscript reading room is for people researching manuscripts from the various government record groups. Here the SWORP researchers received hundreds of boxes of correspondence and other records from Record Group 75 (Office of Indian Affairs), and Record Group 46 (Records of the US Senate). In this room, manuscripts were duplicated on the two copiers on an individual basis. Later, the National Archives allowed the SWORP researchers to flag complete carts of boxes, usually about 24 boxes, for mass copying in another copy room down the hall. The National Archives allows only 2 carts on hold for each researcher, and there are only about 4 pull times throughout the day. Therefore it is necessary to plan well when records are to be pulled so the researchers are always busy. Understanding the policies and procedures of the National Archives takes about two weeks. This process usually means befriending one or more of the NA archivists, who can be most generous with their time and knowledge.

Future Research Projects

The SWORP projects have inspired a number of University of Oregon and tribal people to think about the potential for additional projects to recover the primary manuscripts from other significant collections. Within the United States, archives like The Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley, the American Philological Association from Philadelphia, and the University of Washington Library in Seattle may well contain vast primary manuscripts with significant ethnographic information about Oregon Native peoples. Internationally, the Hudson Bay Archives in Ottawa, Canada, St. Petersburg Archives in Russia, and archives yet to be explored in Spain, Britain, France, and Germany are likely to contain substantial amounts of ethnographic information related to the days of European exploration of the "New World", the Pacific Northwest Coast, and the "Oregon Territory."

There are plans being made to visit the National Archives in Seattle, Washington and in San Bruno, California for the next field project. The research teams will also access the ethnographic collections at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University Library, and the University of Washington Library.

General Description of the Collection

Title: Southwest Oregon Research Project Collection (SWORP), 1850-1950
Collection Number: Coll. 268
Extant: 34.25 linear feet
Access restrictions: None
Publication rights: Property rights of the original manuscripts reside with the National Archives Records Administration and National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution. Copyright resides with the creators of the manuscripts, the National Archives Records Administration and National Anthropological Archives. Publishing or quoting from the manuscripts must recognize the appropriate archive and creator of a manuscript.
Provenance: Gift of the Coquille Indian Tribe of Oregon.
Preferred citation: [record identification], Southwest Oregon Research Project Collection, Coll. 268, Division of Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon, Eugene; [either] National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., [or] National Archives Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Processed by: David Lewis – SWORP GTF
Date completed: 5/31/2001

The Southwest Oregon Research Project Collection (SWORP) is housed in the Special Collections division of the Knight Library at the University of Oregon. Previous descriptions of the collection were written by George Wasson (1996), Jason Younker (1997), Mark Tveskov and Jason Younker (1999), David Lewis (2000a, 2000b), and Don Macnaughtan (1997). The previous descriptions were created from one of the two original components, either SWORP I (1995), or SWORP II (1998), except for Lewis (2000a, 2000b), where these encompass the complete collection. Three of the indexes (Macnaughtan 1997, and Lewis 2000a, 2000b) are on the Internet (http://lanecc.edu/library/sworp.htm,and http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~coyotez).

SWORP consists of 32.25 linear feet of material arranged in 49 acid free archival quality vertical and horizontal boxes. The paper manuscripts are photocopies of primary documents while the other media, microfilm, photographs, and audiocassettes, are copies of originals from the same archives. The collection is currently divided into eight parts or series, series 1 is copies of manuscripts from the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution; series 2 is copies of manuscripts collected at the National Archives in Washington D.C.; series 3 is documents concerning the 1997 Coquille Tribe/University of Oregon Potlatch; series 4 contains microfilm positives and negatives from the National Archives and National Anthropological Archives; series 5 contains copies of the Harrington audiotapes; series 6 contains copies of photographs from different collections; series 7 contains maps from the National Archives and National Anthropological Archives; and series 8 contains oversize manuscripts of series 1 and 2.

Individual manuscript file names have preserved the original manuscript or file identifiers from both archives. Series 1 contains file names such as AGatschet 3436," which is the author name {Gatschet} followed by the number {3436} of the original manuscript in the National Anthropological Archives. Some manuscripts have been divided according to how many pages can comfortably fit in a folder and whether there were legal and oversize pages in the same file. These determinations were made to better preserve the copied manuscripts for long-term use. Series 2 contains file names that refer to the entry, box and government department record group from the National Archives. The series numbers and sub-numbers of individual media types are listed below.

Scope and Contents of the Records

In general, the collection dates primarily from the 1850s to1920, though a few documents are from as recent as the 1950s. Over this 100-year period, there was a great amount of interest in collecting information on the Native peoples of western Oregon. This is also the period in which the United States implemented its philosophy of acculturating all Native peoples through the use of boarding schools, missionaries, privatization of Indian lands, and terminations, making the ethnographic materials from this period especially important.

Series 1 contains primarily linguistic and ethnographic manuscripts collected from the Native peoples of western Oregon, northern California, and southwestern Washington. Because of the worldly and multi-national nature of many anthropologists and linguists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of the manuscripts contain information about Native peoples throughout the Americas and even from China (Series 1, Box 8, File 13, Gatschet 3436). The linguistic materials cover more than 60 distinct tribes. Also contained in the collection is correspondence from anthropologists and linguists who worked in this area; this correspondence includes information about the circumstances and results of their research.

Series 2 contains correspondence, reports, data sheets, affidavits, etc., from the Department of the Interior and Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) or National Archives Record Group 75. There are also reports and transfer documents to the United States Senate, National Archives Record Group 46, which come from various government offices from 1851-1865. Many of the manuscripts copied from Record Group 46 are published in the Congressional Serial Set. Record Group 75, Indian Affairs, are divided into various entries, like education (boarding/day schools), sanitation (medical/health), correspondence received, land allotment applications, and others. The bulk of Series 2 is the OIA Letters Received from 1881-1896 and land allotment documents. A complete description of Record Group 75 can be found in Guide to Records in the National Archives of the United States Relating to American Indians (Hill 1981).

Guide to the Inventory Index Lists

The eight series indexes in the Inventory are individually arranged according to the outstanding features of the materials in each series. Much of the database information about each record will not be included in this Inventory but is available in Special Collections at the Knight Library. Basic information about each manuscript in the general indexes was selected to enable researchers in discovering the ethnographer, tribe, language, place and date of the information in each manuscript. Some of this basic level of information is not available for many of the manuscripts in the SWORP Collection. The subject indexes, Correspondence Reports and Linguistics, were chosen so that researchers could gain a sense of what is in series 1 and 2 of the collection. These indexes should be of particular interest to Tribal researchers.

Of the linguistics subject indexes, attention was given to providing information that would help researchers in finding a particular language or family of languages in the collection. Some of the Tribal name variations do not match those provided in The Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians: Languages (Goddard 1996), but are included anyway as they predate the Smithsonian Handbook of North American Indians series. Spaces in the index indicate that indeterminate information was available to the indexing staff, that may or may not be reveiled by researchers looking deeper into the manuscripts. Additional information about the manuscripts likely would be available to researchers using biographies and additional repositories of manuscripts of any of the original ethnographers.

The Correspondence Reports and Indian Letters index is provided so that researchers would be able to find the valuable reports on the people, culture and climate of Siletz Agency and Grand Ronde Agency. Some reports from other reservations and institutions, like Hoopa Valley, Genoa and Chemawa are also included. The reports mainly consist of sanitation (health), monthly (agency affairs), school (statistics and affairs), agricultural (farming information), special (from outside agencies and inspectors), miscellaneous (other one-time affairs) and police (hirings and information). There are, as well, other reports in the collection which were not as informative as the 566 recorded in the index. Some of the information under the ‘number’ and ‘date’ categories are approximated as this information was either not included in the report or was not copied during the field collection. Some reports appear to have been removed from the original collection at the National Archives at an earlier date. These reports and the information from them may be represented by other manuscripts oin the SWORP Collection related to school and agency statistics (see Series 8: Oversize Manuscripts).

Additional information about the SWORP Collection is available at the Knight Library, where they will maintain a comprehensive Microsoft Access index database for the entire collection. The Library is planning to create an online searchable index for the collection similar to what is available at the University of California Library System, Berkeley Sunsite, where individual ethnographic and photographic collections are available to the public on the Internet, and are word and subject searchable. Additionally, the Department of Anthropology is planning to create a webpage on the SWORP collection and project.