MS 9 George Gibbs collection
name: label: Creator
content: Gibbs, George, 1815-1873
topic: label: Topic
content: Language and languages -- Documentation
label: Topic
content: Ethnology
creator: label: Creator
content: Gibbs, George, 1815-1873
setName: label: See more items in
content: MS 9 George Gibbs collection
abstract: label: Summary
content: George Gibbs (1815–1873) was an ethnologist, naturalist, geologist, and cartographer who contributed to the study of the Native American languages.  The George Gibbs collection consists of linguistic and ethnographic materials created and collected by Gibbs for his own research and on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution.
bioghist: label: Biographical Note
content: George Gibbs (1815–1873) was an ethnologist, naturalist, geologist, and cartographer who contributed to the study of the Native American languages.  Gibbs was born in Long Island, New York to Lt. Col. George Gibbs and Laura Wolcott Gibbs.  He was educated at the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard University with a degree in law in 1838.   From 1840-1849, he practiced law in New York City, while also serving as librarian of The New-York Historical Society from 1842-1848.   

Bored by city life and yearning for adventure, he traveled to the Oregon Territory during the 1848 Gold Rush and became established in Astoria, Oregon in 1849.  In Astoria, he was appointed Assistant Collector of customs and practiced law.  Here he also began collecting linguistic and ethnographic information about the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.  He was particularly interested in the study of languages, and collected linguistic data based on a word list originally developed by Albert Gallatin.  Throughout the 1850s, which he spent in California and the Oregon and Washington Territories, he collected data from his own informants and also distributed comparative vocabulary schedules to solicit language data from others.  During this time, he also held several positions as secretary, cartographer, surveyor, ethnologist, and geologist with the Redick McKee Treaty Commission, Willamette Valley Treaty Commission, Western Washington Treaty Commission, Pacific Railroad Survey, and Northwest Boundary Survey.   

Gibbs returned to New York in 1860; he had not intended to remain in the East, but the outbreak of the Civil War changed his plans. From 1861-1871, he was Scholar in Residence at the Smithsonian Institution, where he was placed in charge of the Smithsonian's collection of Native American vocabularies and ethnographic notes.  He continued to collect vocabularies from various sources and devoted much time to arranging and copying the vocabularies in his care into standard schedules and forms.  During this period, he also served as Secretary to the Hudson's Bay Claims Commission, wrote reports for the Northwest Boundary Survey, and collaborated with John G. Shea of the Library of American Linguistics.   

In 1871, Gibbs married his cousin, Mary Kane Gibbs.  He died two years later on April 8, 1873 at his home in New Haven, Connecticut.  His collection of linguistic and ethnographic papers was bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution.  Much of his linguistic work was published posthumously under the direction of John Wesley Powell in:

Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region and Smithsonian Institution. Contributions to North American Ethnology. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1877. 

Sources Consulted

Beckham, Stephen Dow. George Gibbs, 1815-1873: Historian and Ethnologist. PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1969.

Kirtley, Karen, and Stephen Dow Beckham. Eminent Astorians: From John Jacob Astor to the Salmon Kings. Salem, Oregon: East Oregonian Publishing Company, 2010.

Stevens, John Austin. "A Memorial of George Gibbs." Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1873.  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1874. 219-225.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 6 Linear Feet (14 boxes and 1 folder)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1849-1896
label: Date
content: undated
custodhist: label: Custodial History
content: The manuscripts in this collection were compiled from numerous sources.  Collaborators sent material to Gibbs and to the Smithsonian for study and publication.  Materials created by Gibbs were willed to the Smithsonian after his death.  

On October 2, 1876, John Wesley Powell, then Geologist in Charge, U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, wrote to Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, to ask for the linguistic collections for both his own study and publication on behalf of the Smithsonian.  On October 10, 1876, Henry sent the manuscripts to Powell.  In 1877, Powell published this correspondence with a selection of the manuscripts in Volume 1 of Contributions to North American Ethnology.  When the Bureau of Ethnology (BAE) was founded in 1879 with Powell as its director, the manuscript collection returned to the Smithsonian Institution as the property of the BAE.   

There are a few items in the collection which are known to have been in Gibbs' possession during his lifetime but were not included in the 1876 transfer to Powell.  These materials were subsequently acquired by the BAE.  More information is available in the records for these individual items.
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.MS9
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The collection is arranged into six (6) series: (1) Inventories; (2) Vocabularies recorded by Gibbs; (3) Vocabularies recorded by others; (4) Correspondence; (5) Research; (6) Writing.
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: The material in this collection has been organized and cataloged in various ways by the Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), and National Anthropological Archives (NAA) since the 1870s.  Evidence of all these cataloging and organizational systems is present on the documents themselves, many of which have several different numbers written directly on them.

Although the collection contains a few lists of manuscripts made by Gibbs himself, it is unclear how he himself organized the documents.  The same manuscripts appear multiple times in his inventories and are variously organized by creator, place, and/or language.

The first organizational system employed by the Smithsonian Institution were two numerical lists, referred to as "SI Numbers" in early BAE records.  It is unclear when or by whom these lists were created.  It is most likely that the lists were created by either a Smithsonian Institution clerk just prior to the transfer of the material to Powell in 1876 or by a Geological Surveys clerk just after receiving the material on behalf of Powell.  The first list is an inventory to the vocabularies in which each vocabulary was given a number. This included vocabularies of different languages recorded on the same form or in the same manuscript.  The second list inventories linguistic material other than vocabularies.  These numbers were written directly on the manuscripts in red, blue, or green crayon.  When known, these numbers have been included in "Local Numbers" notes as "Index to Indian Vocabularies No." or "Miscellaneous Philological Materials No."  Note that approximately half of the manuscripts referenced in these indexes were not found in the NAA collections at the time of processing in 2024.  The disposition of these missing documents is unknown.

When the Gibbs manuscripts became the property of the BAE, they were cataloged individually.  James Constantine Pilling, BAE Chief Clerk, was first custodian of the manuscripts collection.  Pilling compiled the first catalog of BAE manuscripts in 1881 as "Catalog of Linguistic Manuscripts in the Library of the Bureau of Ethnology" in the First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.  This catalog includes the materials in the Gibbs collection, as well as other material then in the BAE manuscript collection.  The Pilling catalog organizes the manuscripts alphabetically by compiler and does not include the SI Numbers.  

In 1893, BAE linguist James Owen Dorsey, with the help of J.N.B. Hewitt, began to compile an in-house catalog of BAE manuscripts. This system involved organizing the manuscripts onto shelves by language group, and involved separating vocabularies from related items, such as letters, related notes, and other vocabularies.  Most of the manuscripts are marked with shelf numbers from this system (e.g., Sh-30, Sh-81-v, Athabaskan shelf, etc.) This work was interrupted by Dorsey's death in 1895 and never completed.  The incomplete Dorsey-Hewitt catalog in now in  MS 1524.  

In 1896, an inventory was conducted on the manuscript collection.  An inventory list has not been preserved, but many of the manuscripts have been marked "'96" in ink indicating that they were accounted for in this inventory.  

In 1926, Hewitt, with the assistance of typist Mae Tucker, began to assign Manuscript Numbers to BAE collections.  The numbers loosely corresponded to language families, but this may have been a result of the numbers being assigned to the manuscripts in the order in which they were already arranged on the shelves.  The manuscripts were stamped with a BAE stamp including the month and year they were cataloged and the catalog number was stamped or written on the documents.  In some cases, manuscripts numbers were reassigned, resulting in several different numbers appearing on the documents.  

In 2024, the material held by the NAA that had been created and collected by George Gibbs was reprocessed and incorporated into a single collection now known as the George Gibbs collection (MS 9).  The Archivist attempted to assemble the set of manuscripts as it was transferred to Powell in 1876.  This includes some items collected in the period after Gibbs' death in 1873 but prior to the transfer to Powell in 1876.  The Archivist used "Index to Indian Vocabularies" and "Miscellaneous Philological Materials" lists, as well the inventories compiled by Gibbs and Pilling to identify material for inclusion in the collection.   

Due to the numerous cataloging and arrangement schemes imposed on the materials and a lack of documentation, the Archivist was unable to determine an original order of the collection.  The Archivist organized the collection into six (6) series.  Whenever possible, documents that had been received together were reunited (e.g., letters of transmittal were associated with their enclosures, vocabularies that were compiled by the same person were associated with each other, etc.).  Old SI and BAE/NAA manuscript numbers have been recorded as "Local Numbers" for each file.  In some cases, more than one BAE/NAA manuscript has been incorporated into a single file.  In other cases, BAE/NAA manuscripts have been divided among several new files.  Original titles and wording on the documents were used when possible, even when they included outdated or offensive terminology.  Supplied titles, including modern terminology, are in square brackets [].
bibliography: label: Selected Bibliography
content: 1854. ed. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. "Journal of the Expedition of Colonel Redick McKee, United States Indian Agent, through Northwestern California"; "Observations on some Indian Dialects of Northwest California"; and "Vocabularies of Indian Languages in Northwest California."   -- Information Respecting the History, Conditions and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. --  Vol. 3. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1854.

1855. ed. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. "No Antiquities in Oregon."   -- Information Respecting the History, Conditions and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. --   Vol. 5. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1855.

1855. "Report of George Gibbs on a Reconnaissance of the Country Lying upon Shoalwater Bay and Puget Sound" and "Report of Mr. George Gibbs to Captain Mc'Clellan on the Indian Tribes of the Territory of Washington"  -- Pacific Railroad Reports -- .  Washington, DC: Beverly Tucker, 1855.

1862. "Instructions for Archaeology Investigation in the United States."  --  Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1861 -- .  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1862.

1862. with J.G. Shea.  -- Grammar and Dictionary of the Yakima Language -- .  New York: Cramoisy Press: 1862.

1863.  -- Alphabetical Vocabularies of the Clallam and Lummi -- . New York: Cramoisy Press, 1863.

1863.  -- Alphabetical Vocabulary of the Chinook Language -- . New York: Cramoisy Press, 1863.

1863.  -- A Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon -- .  New York: Cramoisy Press, 1863.

1863. "Vocabularies of the Yuba and Yukeh Languages of California."  -- Historical Magazine --  7 (1863): 123-125.

1865. "The Intermixture of Races."  -- Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1864  -- . Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865.

1867. "Notes on the Tinneh or Chepewyan Indians of British and Russian America,"  -- Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1866 -- .  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1867.

1869. with Joseph Henry and Spencer F. Baird.  "Suggestions Relative to Objects of Scientific Investigation in Russian America."  -- Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections VIII -- . Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1869.

1869. "What More Efficient Measures Can Be Taken to Preserve from Destruction the Aboriginal Languages?"  --  American Philological Association Proceedings --  1869. 

1871. "The Mode of Expressing Number in Certain Indian Languages."  -- American Philosophical Association Proceedings -- .  1871. 

1871. "On the Language of the Aboriginal Indians of America."  -- Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1870 -- .  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1871.

1872. "Navajo Indians"  -- Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1865 -- .  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872.

1877. "Comparative Vocabularies"; "Tribes of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon"; "Niskwalli-English Dictionary / English-Niskwalli Dictionary"; "Note on the Use of Numerals Among the T'Sim Si-An."   -- Contributions to North American Ethnology -- . Vol. 1 Washington, DC: Goverment Printing Office, 1877.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The collection consists of linguistic and ethnographic materials created and collected by George Gibbs and the Smithsonian Institution and transferred to John Wesley Powell in 1876.  Because Gibbs bequeathed his large collection of manuscripts to the Smithsonian and because he oversaw the ethnographic and linguistic manuscript collection of the Smithsonian from 1861 until his death in 1873, the majority of the collection consists of materials created, collected, and maintained by him. 

The bulk of the collection is comprised of vocabulary lists of dozens of indigenous North American languages.  These materials reflect Gibbs' interest in identifying and preserving these languages.  Also included are early inventories to the material, correspondence, research materials (including ethnographic research), and published and unpublished writing.   

Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) holds additional materials by many of the individuals represented in this collection.  Because this collection only includes materials transferred from Henry to Powell in 1876, material acquired from the same collaborators by Powell or the BAE subsequent to the transfer is held other collections.  

The Department of Anthropology object collections holds artifacts collected by Gibbs under Accessions 51, 2040, 2240, and 69A0005.

The Smithsonian Institution Archives holds the George Gibbs papers. 


The National Portrait Gallery holds a photograph of Gibbs.  .

The Beinecke Library at Yale University holds the George Gibbs notebooks of scientific observations of the Pacific Northwest and George Gibbs Letters to John Russell Bartlett.

The Wisconsin Historical Society holds the Gibbs Family papers. 

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee holds Gibbs'  Map of the western part of Washington Territory in the American Geographical Society Library collection.

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University holds drawings by Gibbs.