The Densmore Collection



  • perhaps 3,000 sound recordings of Native American songs
    (handful available through Folkways)

  • roughly 2,500 published transcriptions
    (most published as BAE Bulletins)

  • from some 30 First Nations groups across North America

  • collected between 1906 and 1956; majority collected by end of '30s

  • field notes, some photographs, ethnographic annotations

  • our plan is to encode & distribute all of the published materials
    (primarily transcriptions; not including recordings)

  • some quality issues will be discussed later ...