Provenance
Acquired by the Historical and Literary Committee of the APS from John G. E. Heckewelder, Peter Stephen Du Ponceau, Thomas Jefferson and others, 1816-1828.
Preferred citation
Cite as: American Indian Vocabulary Collection, American Philosophical Society.
Processing information
Recatalogued by rsc, 2002.
Other finding aids
The vocabularies are also described in the online Daythal Kendall Guide to Native American Collections at the American Philosophical Society.
Related material
Among several other Indian language collections at the APS, two are directly related to the Historical and Literary Committee Collection:
Thomas Jefferson's comparative vocabulary ( Call no. 497.3 J35), which includes Du Ponceau's Indian Vocabulary Collection ( Call no. 497.3 In2) includes information on 73 languages. The North American languages recorded by Du Ponceau provided the basis for Albert Gallatin's "A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes Within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America," Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society 2 (1836): 1-422.
Bibliography
Peter S. Du Ponceau, "Report of the Corresponding Secretary...," Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society 1 (1819): xvii-1.
Early American History Note
These three volumes contain APS's correspondence and records relating to Native American languages. MOLE contains a detailed inventory of the collection. The first volume contains extensive correspondence on Native American languages, some of which is addressed to Thomas Jefferson. Much of this material is from the early to mid nineteenth centutry. The second volume contains Thomas Jefferson's printed form that he sent out to individuals asking for Native American language information. The third volume contains photostats of a dictionary of the Miami language.