Background note
An expert in tropical botany with wide-ranging interests, Harley Harris Bartlett was born at Anaconda, Montana, on March 9,
1886. After studying chemistry at Harvard (A.B., 1908), Bartlett accepted a position as a chemical biologist with the Bureau
of Plant Industry, working on the genetics of Oenothera, and although he left government employment only a few years later, he often took part in government sponsored projects seeking
to exploit the resources of tropical forests.
In 1915, Bartlett moved to the faculty at the University of Michigan, eventually becoming full professor (1921), head of the
Botany Department (1922-1947) and Director of the Botanical Garden (1919-1955). He traveled widely during his years in Ann
Arbor, collecting plants from tropical regions in Asia and the Americas. His most ambitious schemes included two trips to
Asahan, in northeast Sumatra in 1918 and 1927, when he explored for the U.S. Rubber Company. During the Second World War,
he worked in the Office of Rubber Investigations of the Department of Agriculture, exploring for sources for rubber in Central
and South America. Bartlett collected elsewhere in the Caribbean and Asia, and spent the academic year 1934-1935 as an exchange
professor at the University of the Philippines.
Bartlett's travels and wide-ranging interests led to publications in a number of disparate fields. When he was awarded the
Merit Award of the Botanical Society of America at his retirement in 1956, he was cited "for his unflagging support and encouragement
of the whole field of botany and its students and for his diverse contributions to paleobotany, enthnobotany, ecology, and
systematics." His stay in Sumatra produced articles on Batak and Malay ethnography and linguistics, and he wrote works in
history and ethnohistory, as well. In 1929 Bartlett was elected to the APS. Bartlett remained in Ann Arbor after his retirement,
where he died of heart failure on February 21, 1960.
Scope and content
The Bartlett Batak Collection consists of over 600 bamboo "sticks" collected by Bartlett in 1918 and 1927. Written by informants
at Bartlett's request, the bamboo sections are inscribed in Batak, an Austronesian language written in a phonetic alphabet.
They include traditional writing- and reading-manuals, short poems, letters, and magical formulae and incantations.
Administrative information
Restrictions
None.
Provenance
Gift of Harley Harris Bartlett, 1960.
Preferred citation
Cite as: Harley Harris Bartlett Batak Collection, American Philosophical Society.
Processing information
Recatalogued by rsc, 2004.
Additional information
Related material
Bartlett's papers are available at the
Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
The University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology has bark books, bamboo manuscripts, paper manuscripts, brief texts carved
on bone, and carved human figures from Sumatra, all collected from 1918 to 1927.
Other ethnographic materials collected by Bartlett are housed at the Logan Museum of Beloit College, Wisconsin.
References
Bartlett, Harley Harris, "Color Nomenclature in Batak and Malay" Papers of the Michigan Academy of Arts, Sciences and Letters 10 (1929): 1-52. Call no. 506.73 M58p v.10.
Bartlett, Harley Harris, Fire in Relation to Primitive Agriculture and Grazing in the Tropics (Ann Arbor, 1955). Call no. 630 B28 v.2, pt.2.
Bartlett, Harley Harris, "The Grave-post (Anisan) of the Batak of Asahan" Papers of the Michigan Academy of Arts, Sciences and Letters 1 (1921): 1-58. Call no. 506.73 M58p v.1.
Bartlett, Harley Harris, The Harley Harris Bartlett diaries : (1926-1959), ed. Kenneth Lester Jones (Ann Arbor, 1975). Call no. B B285d.
Bartlett, Harley Harris, "The labors of the Datoe. Part I, An Annotated list of religious, magical and medical practices of
the Batal of Asahan" Papers of the Michigan Academy of Arts, Sciences and Letters 12 (1929): 1-75. Call no. 506.73 M58p v.12.
Bartlett, Harley Harris, "The Problem of negrito and "Vedda" elements in the population of Sumatra" Proceedings of the Pacific Science Congress, 5th (1934). Call no. 506 P192.5p v.4.
Bartlett, Harley Harris, "A Batak and Malay chant on rice cultivation, with introductory notes on bilingualism and acculturation
in Indonesia," APS Proceedings 96 (1952): 629-652 (includes transcriptions and translations of some Batak texts).
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