Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Rare Book & Manuscript Library

6th Floor East Butler Library
535 West 114th Street
New York, NY 10027, USA
rbml@library.columbia.edu
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is Columbia University’s principal repository for special collections. We collect, preserve, describe, promote, and provide access to the material evidence of diverse individuals and activities in alignment with the University’s research and teaching mission. We build and steward deep collections in select subject areas and connect them to a global audience through reference, teaching, exhibitions, publications, and public programs.
Start Over "Ethnology--North America" Repository Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Rare Book & Manuscript Library

William Beynon Tsimshian manuscripts, 1930s

5 Linear Feet
William Beynon (1888–1958) was a Tsimshian chief and ethnographer. From 1932 to 1939, Beynon sent the anthropologist Franz Boas approximately 250 transcribed narratives, compiled from interviews with tribal elders. These are known as the Beynon Manuscripts. The texts are mostly interlinear Sm'algyax and English, i.e. each line of Sm'algyax is followed by a line of literal English translation. The entire corpus is about 8,000 pages.
No additional results
Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Bernhard Joseph Stern papers, 1859-1959

2 boxes

Typescripts made by Stern of Lewis Henry Morgan's INDIAN JOURNALS, 1859-1862 (Ann Arbor, 1959), and of Morgan's correspondence with missionaries, traders, etc., pertaining to behavior in various primitive societies. This correspondence assisted Morgan in the preparation of his book ANCIENT SOCIETY (New York, 1871). The material was used by Stern in his publications, LEWIS HENRY MORGAN, SOCIAL EVOLUTIONIST (Chicago, 1931); THE FAMILY, PAST AND PRESENT (New York, 1938); and "Lewis Henry Morgan, American Ethnologist" and Lewis Henry Morgan: An Appraisal of His Scientific Contributions" in Part III of HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY (New York, 1959). Also, photographs pertaining to Stern's THE LUMMI INDIANS OF NORTHWEST WASHINGTON (New York, 1934); typescripts made by Stern of the correspondence of Morgan with Lorimer Fison (1832-1907) and Alfred William Howitt (1830-1908) for the period 1870-1881. Fison and Howitt were prominent Australian ethnographers and used the correspondence in their work on Australian Aborigine kinship systems. There is also some evidence that the correspondence influenced a later edition of Morgan's ANCIENT SOCIETY. Stern selected and edited some of the letters for the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST (vol. 32, nos. 2-3, April-Sept., 1930).

No additional results
Rare Book & Manuscript Library

George Hunt Kwak'wala ethnographic manuscripts, 1890s-1930s

30 Volumes
The George Hunt Kwak'wala ethnographic manuscripts consist of 30 volumes (about 8,500 pages) of linguistic and ethnographic notes made about the Kwakwaka'wakw by George Hunt in Fort Rupert between about 1898 and about 1931, at the request of and in collaboration with Franz Boas. The texts, which contain a wide array of stories and cultural information, were written by Hunt in Kwakʼwala with interlinear English translations. The material also includes two of the published volumes that resulted, with Boas's annotations correlating the printed texts to the manuscripts.
No additional results