It includes field notes, correspondence, writings, drawings, cartographic material, photographs, administrative records, collections of personal papers, and many other types of documents. The file originally existed to control the Bureau of American Ethnology manuscript collection. Since 1972, it has been used for small collections and historical manuscripts unrelated to collections. The collection also includes Bureau of American Ethnology administrative records. In addition, there are a large number of manuscripts cataloged as separate items or in several small groups, by many Bureau of American Ethnology staff and collaborators, including Franz Boas, David Ives Bushnell, Jr., William H. Dall, Frances Densmore, Gerard Fowke, Henry W. Henshaw, J.N.B. Hewitt, William Henry Holmes, William B. Marye, Truman Michelson, James Mooney, James C. Pilling, John Wesley Powell, Erminnie Smith, John Swanton, and Cyrus Thomas.
Most material is of a professional rather than a personal nature.
Considering his important positions with the Bureau of American Ethnology, there are relatively few papers of Frederick W. Hodge. Hodge's papers, including many manuscripts of Frank H. Cushing and others interested in the Southwest, are in the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. In addition, a body of papers of WJ McGee is in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Appendix B provides a list of names and terms used as headings in the card catalog to the numbered manuscripts. Appendix C provides descriptions the large and unified collections not completely indexed in the card catalog.