Editing Morris Swadesh (section)

==Early career==
In the 1930s, Swadesh conducted extensive fieldwork on more than 20 [[indigenous languages of the Americas]], with travels in Canada, Mexico, and the US. He worked most prominently on the [[Chitimacha language]], a now-extinct [[language isolate]] found among indigenous people of [[Louisiana]]. His fieldnotes and subsequent publications constitute the main source of information on this extinct language. He also conducted smaller amounts of fieldwork on the [[Menominee language|Menominee]] and [[Mahican language|Mahican]] languages, in Wisconsin and New York, respectively; both are part of the [[Algonquian languages|Algonquian language family]].

Swadesh taught linguistics and anthropology at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin in Madison]] from 1937 to 1939. During this time he devised and organized the highly original Oneida Language and Folklore Project. This program hired more than a dozen [[Oneida tribe|Oneida Indians]] in Wisconsin for a [[Works Progress Administration|WPA]] project (under the [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] administration) to record and translate texts in the [[Oneida language]]. (The Oneida were historically one of the five nations of the [[Iroquois Confederacy]], with their historic territory located in central New York state, but some had moved to Wisconsin in the 19th century.) In this same period in other WPA projects, writers were recording state histories and guides, and researchers were collecting oral histories of [[African Americans]] who had been born into slavery before the end of the Civil War.

Swadesh was let go by the University of Wisconsin just as he was to begin the project. [[Floyd Lounsbury]], then an undergraduate, was assigned to finish it. Lounsbury continued his studies in linguistics, later serving as Sterling Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at [[Yale University]].

In May 1939 Swadesh went to Mexico, where he had been hired to assist the government of Mexican President [[Lázaro Cárdenas]], who was promoting the education of indigenous peoples.<ref name="obit"/> Swadesh learned the [[Purépecha language]] for this work. Together with rural school teachers, Swadesh worked in indigenous villages, teaching people to read first in their own languages, before teaching them Spanish. His Mexican colleagues remembered him for his impressive physical complexion, nicknaming him "The Paunch", as well as for his outspoken [[Communism]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Friedrich |first=Paul |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2hrlAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA58 |title=The Princes of Naranja: An Essay in Anthrohistorical Method |date=2014-02-19 |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=978-0-292-76254-1 |pages=58 |language=en}}</ref> He worked with the [[Tarahumara people|Tarahumara]], [[Purépecha people|Purépecha]], and [[Otomi people|Otomi]] peoples. Swadesh also learned Spanish in less than a year; he was fluent enough that he was able to give a series of linguistics lectures (in Spanish) at the [[Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo]] and publish his first book, {{Lang|es|La Nueva Filologia}}'','' in Spanish in 1941.<ref name="obit">{{cite journal |title=Obituary: Morris Swadesh |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=70 |year=1968 |doi=10.1525/aa.1968.70.4.02a00070 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

Returning to the U.S., during the Second World War Swadesh worked on military projects for the [[U.S. Army]] and the [[Office of Strategic Services|OSS]] to compile reference materials on Burmese, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.<ref name="obit" /> He also wrote easy-to-learn textbooks for troops to learn Russian and Chinese.<ref name="obit" />

Swadesh served in [[Burma]], where Lt. [[Roger Hilsman]] described his linguistic skills as extraordinary. Swadesh learned enough of the Naga language,{{which|date=October 2019}} after spending only one day with a local guide, that he was able to give a ten-minute thank-you speech in that language.<ref name="hilsman">{{cite book |author=[[Roger Hilsman]] |title=American Guerrilla |publisher=Potomac Books |year=2005 |pages=142–143 |isbn=9781574886917}}</ref> Hilsman recalled that Swadesh had been strongly opposed to [[racial segregation in the United States]].<ref name="hilsman" />