John Peabody Harrington

John Peabody Harrington (1884–1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist renowned for his extensive documentation of over 100 Native American languages, particularly those of California and the western United States. Working primarily with the Bureau of American Ethnology for nearly 40 years, he amassed over a million pages of field notes by interviewing the last speakers of vanishing indigenous tongues. Despite his prolific output, much of his work remained unpublished during his lifetime due to his secretive and compulsive nature.