Pliny Earle Goddard

Pliny Earle Goddard (November 24, 1869 – July 12, 1928) was an American linguist and ethnologist noted for his extensive documentation of the languages and cultures of the Athabaskan peoples of western North America.

Between 1892 and 1896 he taught Latin in secondary schools in Indiana and Kansas, but the hard economic times of the mid-1890s led him to accept a position as an interdenominational missionary to the Hupa of northwestern California.

Finding it necessary to learn enough of the Hupa language to communicate with his flock, Goddard soon became engrossed in analyzing a linguistic system radically different from any he had previously studied.

The following year he was given an Assistantship in the university's newly formed Anthropology department, joining Alfred L. Kroeber, who had been hired to administer the fledgeling program.

After finishing his documentation of Hupa, Goddard devoted most of his summers to amassing data on the other surviving varieties of California Athabaskan, traveling hundreds of miles on muleback in search of speakers of such languages as Kato, Wailaki, and Sinkyone.

[3] The most significant source of unpublished Goddard material is his set of notebooks, compiled between 1902 and 1908, that are archived at the American Philosophical Society (APS) in Philadelphia.

In 1909 the substantial subvention from Regent Phoebe Apperson Hearst that had supported much of UC's anthropological research during the early years of the century was greatly reduced, and a fierce contest ensued between Kroeber and Goddard for control of the diminished program.

[5] When Kroeber emerged victorious, Goddard resigned to take a curatorship in ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, engineered for him by Franz Boas.

From this position Goddard came to exert wide influence, primarily as a writer on general ethnological topics and as the editor of the American Anthropologist (1915–20).

"[7] This claim brought Sapir into direct conflict with Goddard, who had reported no tonal contrasts in California Athabaskan, in Navajo or Apache, or in the three Canadian languages he had studied, Sarcee, Chipewyan, and Beaver.