University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

The papers of Louis Shotridge are one of the most extensive groups in the Arctic research collections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives. Shotridge, a Tlingit Indian, was intermittently employed by the museum to make ethnographic collections of Northwest Coast materials between 1903 and 1912. The archives has papers concerning his original research, arranged topically, manuscripts for articles published in The Museum Journal, oral histories, Tlingit language notes, and general ethnographic notes on the Tlingit and other Northwest Coast groups.

Robert Burkitt lived and worked in Guatemala for most of his life. A graduate of Harvard University, he first traveled to Central America in 1894 with George Gordon as Gordon's assistant on the Fourth Coban Expedition. Burkitt became enamored with the culture and language of the Maya and never returned to North America. He traveled the countryside, corresponding with Gordon, and collecting items for the Museum under a loosely binding agreement with Gordon and later Horace Jayne. Burkitt's letters and catalogues are rich documents depicting the cultural, linguistic, topological, and historical features of the Guatemala Highlands. Burkitt wrote and worked from the areas of Chama, Chipal, Coban, Senahu, Chiantla, Chocola, and other areas of the Alta Verapaz region. He produced a detailed catalogue of his discoveries accompanied by photgraphs and drawings. Among Burkitt's discoveries is the Ratinixul Vase unearthed in 1923. His work was published in the Museum Journal in 1924 and 1930. Burkitt also wrote about the languages of the Maya, leaving an unfinished grammar and dictionary of the Kekchi language at his death in 1945.