Truman Michelson (August 11, 1879 – July 26, 1938) was a linguist and anthropologist who worked from 1910 until his death for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution.
[3] He was the author of an early influential study classifying the Algonquian languages,[4] although extensive further research has entirely superseded Michelson's pioneering effort.
[8] Michelson also assisted in the posthumous preparation and publication of a number of draft manuscripts left unpublished after the premature death of William Jones.
Among these were: (a) a significant two-volume collection of Ojibwe texts with translations that Jones had obtained in northwestern Ontario at Fort William Ojibwa reserve, and near Lake Nipigon, in addition to stories collected in northern Minnesota;[9] (b) a volume of Kickapoo texts;[10] and (c) an article on Fox for the first Handbook of American Indian languages.
[11] He also undertook field research on, among others, Arapaho; Shawnee; Peoria; Kickapoo; Munsee and Unami, the two closely related Delaware languages;[12] collected notes and texts in the syllabic script from Cree dialects in Québec and northern Ontario; physical anthropology notes on Blackfoot and Cheyenne; Eskimo texts from Great Whale River, Québec, and others.