Harrington, John Peabody

Harrington, John Peabody (1884–1961) linguist, anthropologist; born in Waltham, Mass. His interest in the languages of Native Americans began while an undergraduate at Stanford University (B.A. 1905). From 1909–15 he studied Indian languages as an ethnologist at the School of American Archaeology in Santa Fe, N.M., and in 1915 he joined the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology, from which he retired in 1954. His respect for the American Indian's knowledge of their world lent credence and support to the study of that knowledge. He is especially remembered for the accurate, voluminous, and valuable notes he took on more than 90 languages, mostly Native Americans.