New from the Manuscript Division: Two Recently Digitized Collections Offer Native American Content

This is a guest post by Manuscript Division historian Barbara Bair.

The Library of Congress Manuscript Division has launched two new online collections featuring Native American voices. The papers of Indian agent and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864) include early nineteenth-century Anishinaabe language, literature, and cultural materials stemming from the Great Lakes region of Michigan Territory. The papers of naturalist and ethnographer C. Hart Merriam (1855-1942) document California Indian vocabularies collected from Indigenous language speakers during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Both collections provide heritage materials that can be studied comparatively with modern-day printed and online sources and used by educators and by tribal nations for language revitalization purposes.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers and Poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft

The Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers site features 4,500 select items highlighting the culture and literary work of the Ojibwe poet, editor, and translator Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Bamewawagezhikaquay) (1800-1842), who married Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in 1823, and of the Ojibwe members of her Johnston family of the Sault Ste. Marie community.

Jane’s mother Ozhaguscodaywayquay (Susan Johnston) was a member of a prominent Ojibwe (Chippewa) family of LaPointe (Adik or Caribou clan). She was the daughter of the leader, warrior, and storyteller Waubojeeg. She wed the Scottish-Irish immigrant fur trader John Johnston and worked with him to operate a family-run trading post on the St. Mary’s River in Michigan. She and her children—including daughters Jane, Eliza, and Charlotte, and sons William and George—were instrumental in providing English-Ojibwemowin translations and grammar information within their multilingual multicultural community. These included translations of Native American tales and songs into English, and English Christian devotional materials into Anishinaabemowin. They assembled versions of Chippewa stories originally conveyed through oral tradition across generations and transcribed them into written English. Some of this material, including draft writings, transcriptions, and Ojibwe grammar notes, were collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and utilized in his ethnographic publications and Indian tale anthologies.

The Schoolcraft collection also includes rare extant draft versions of the Muzzeniegun/Literary Voyager magazine created by Henry and Jane Johnston Schoolcraft in the winter of 1826-1827, which they shared in their community and with acquaintances in Detroit and on the Eastern seaboard.

Hart Merriam Papers and California Indian Languages

In the last decades of his life, naturalist C. Hart Merriam devoted much of his professional attention to gathering linguistic, religious/spiritual, material culture, and natural history information from Native American language speakers whom he interviewed in California and elsewhere in the West. The Merriam collection includes more than two hundred word lists documenting information he acquired through native voice interviews conducted between circa 1903 and 1936. The names or spellings he used for Native American groups and words were sometimes subjective and may differ from more modern renditions or from officially recognized terms and tribal designations used today. Modern identifiers have been added by archivist Katherine Madison to the folder headings in the C. Hart Merriam Papers finding aid, which contains links to the digital content.

In addition to vocabulary lists based on many different tribal nations, bands, and communities, mainly of California and its border regions, but also including materials from other areas, including Alaska, the Merriam collection includes over one hundred hand-colored and hand-labeled linguistic maps. These indicate the geographic locations of tribal nation language groups in California, Oregon, and Nevada. In mapping the areas where he gathered vocabularies, Merriam utilized existing printed maps of various kinds, including U.S. Forest Service, military, topographical, and geological maps, and added layers of color wash and labeling to indicate language-group information for further linguistic reference.

These newly digitized collections from the Library of Congress complement the California Language Archive (University of California, Berkeley), Ojibwe People’s Dictionary (University of Minnesota), and other bilingual and Native-language resources, as well as established heritage platforms such as Mukurtu Shared, developed by the University of Washington and used by tribal communities in partnership with the Library.

The Schoolcraft and Merriam online presentations from the Library of Congress provide resources for language revitalization and knowledge repatriation programs of tribal nations, tribal libraries, and cultural centers. Educators will find primary resources for curricula and for programs devoted to teaching Native American languages, literature, and heritage. And anyone interested in learning more about Native American history and culture will find much to explore on these new sites.

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