Born in Gardiner, Maine, after the death of his father, Walter Scott Swanton, he was raised by his mother, née Mary Olivia Worcester,[1] his grandmother, and his great aunt.

From his mother, in particular, he was imbued with a gentle disposition, a concern for human justice, and a lifelong interest in the works of Emanuel Swedenborg.

[3] His mentor at Harvard was Frederic Ward Putnam, who sent him to study linguistics with Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1898 and 1899, as he worked on his PhD dissertation, The Morphology of the Chinook Verb.

[4][5] Within months of receiving his doctorate from Harvard, Swanton began working for the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, at which he continued for the duration of his career, spanning more than 40 years.

[7] He also documented analyses about many other less well-known groups, such as the Biloxi, Ofo, and Tunica, the last of which supplemented earlier work by Albert Samuel Gatschet.

[7] He worked with Earnest Gouge, a Creek who recorded a large number of traditional stories at Swanton's request.