Harrington, John Peabody (1884–1961)

US linguist and anthropologist. His respect for the American Indians' 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 those of American Indians. Harrington was born in Waltham, Massachusetts. His interest in the languages of American Indians began while an undergraduate at Stanford University. From 1909–15 he studied American Indian languages as an ethnologist at the School of American Archaeology in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in 1915 he joined the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology, from which he retired in 1954.