author
Albert S. (Albert Samuel) Gatschet
1832–1907
A pioneering linguist and ethnologist, he devoted much of his career to documenting Indigenous languages of North America, preserving knowledge that might otherwise have been lost. His work helped lay early foundations for the scientific study of Native American languages in the United States.
2 Audiobooks
Illustration of the Method of Recording Indian Languages From the First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
by James Owen Dorsey, Albert S. (Albert Samuel) Gatschet, Stephen Return Riggs
A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, vol. 1 With a Linguistic, Historic and Ethnographic Introduction
by Albert S. (Albert Samuel) Gatschet
About the author
Born in Beatenberg, Switzerland, in 1832, he trained in linguistics at the Universities of Bern and Berlin before moving to the United States. He became known as a Swiss-American scholar whose interests joined language, history, and ethnology.
His most important work focused on the languages and cultures of Indigenous peoples of North America. He studied and recorded many languages, including some that were endangered, and his research is remembered for its breadth and for the care he brought to collecting vocabulary, texts, and cultural information.
He later worked with major U.S. scientific institutions and remained active in research for decades. By the time of his death in Washington, D.C., in 1907, he was widely recognized as an important early figure in American linguistics and ethnology.