[3] A 1922 graduate of Culdesac High School,[4] Phinney attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
The text was funded by the Committee on Research in Native American Languages, composed of Franz Boas of the anthropology department of Columbia University and Leonard Bloomfield and Edward Sapir of the anthropology department of the University of Chicago.
[5] Upon returning to the U.S., Phinney worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a Field Agent at Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Denver, and Window Rock, Arizona.
Hospitalized in Lewiston for several days, he died from a hemorrhage due to an ulcer on October 29 at age 45.
He was buried at the Jacques Spur cemetery in Culdesac, alongside his parents and not far from his great-grandfather, William Craig.