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P. David Seaman collection 1954-1987

NAU.MS.28
NAU.AU.1993.17

Biographical Note

P. David Seaman was born in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, on January 31, 1932, the third of eleven children. His father Albert Leroy Seaman was a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in Connellsville, and his grandfather Albert Redfield Seaman was a minister in the Pittsburgh Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church. At the age of five, David Seaman was placed in the first of a series of foster homes under the auspices of the Fayette county Child Welfare Program. While finishing high school, he worked for the local YMCA, and was a reporter for The Daily Courier in Connellsville.

Seaman served in the U.S. Army from February 1951 to February 1954, during the Korean War. In 1952 he participated in military maneuvers during a live atomic-bomb test at Yucca Flats, Nevada. In 1954 he was honored for efficient administration of a military hospital in Korea. Just before leaving for Korea, Seaman in January 1953 married Mary Miller Seaman of Louisville, Kentucky. They later had three children, Nancy, Mark, and Don, and presently have five grandchildren.

In February 1954, Seaman enrolled in Asbury College near Lexington, Kentucky, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in May 1957. He completed a Master of Arts degree in Ancient Languages and Literatures at the University of Kentucky in August 1958. From 1957 to 1967 he served as instructor and later as divisional chair in foreign languages and literatures at Asbury College. In 1965 he completed his Ph.D. degree in Linguistics at Indiana University, Bloomington. His dissertation Modern Greek and American English in Contact was a model for the study of immigrant bilingualism, and was later published by Mouton Publishers in the same series with Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures.

In June 1967, Seaman accepted a position with Northern Arizona University. His primary assignment was as professor of linguistics in the Anthropology department, but he also served as extension instructor in Phoenix, Cottonwood, and the Indian reservations of northern Arizona, and helped establish NAU linguistics courses in Education, English as a Second Language, Modern Languages, and Speech Pathology.

During the 1967-68 school year, Seaman created the nation's first NSF Summer Linguistics Institute for gifted high-school students. Each year, twenty-five top students were selected from around the country for an eight-week summer institute at NAU, in which they studied the basics of liguistic science and anthropology, and then performed two weeks of actual field work with native speakers of Hopi, Navajo, or Zuni. This program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, was conducted in the summers of 1968 through 1973, when Seaman started his intensive Hopi research documented in this collection.

During the 1969-1970 school year, Seaman recieved a senior Fulbright fellowship to Greece. He was responsible for all U.S. English-language teaching efforts in Greece, including liason with the British Council and the Greek Ministry of Education, held a joint professorship at the University of Athens and the University of Thessaloniki, and was a chair of the 1000-major English Department of the University of Athens. In August 1970 he conducted a four-week national seminar in Athens for Greek teachers of English. Since then, he has made six research and consulting trips to Greece, most recently in June 1990 for a one-week national linguistics seminar for Greek teachers, sponsored by the Panhellenic Association of Language Schools.

Visiting Professorships have included for the National Council of Churches Summer Linguistics Institutes at Stony Point, Drew University, Meadville College, and the University of Toronto in Canada, and English-as-a-Second-Language Summer Insititutes at Marylhurst College in Oregon and the State University of New York at Oswego.

Seaman pursued a long-term interest in the languages and cultures of the Indians of the northern Arizona area, as well as a secondary interest in accounting. In 1970-1972 he consulted with the Zuni Tribal Council to help establish the first official Zuni alphabet. He did compliance and financial auditing on several Indian reservations, and from 1977-1980 worked on setting up the initial tribal-run accounting system for the Fort Mojave Tribe in the Needles, California area. In 1980 he received the prestigious Outstanding University Professor award at Northern Arizona University.

In addition to publication in newspapers and scholarly journals, Seaman's books include Modern Greek and American English in Contact (1972), Hopi Dictionary (1985), Havasupai Habitat (with graduate student Stephen Weber, 1985), A. F. Whiting Collection: User Guide and Index (1993), and Born a Chief (1993). All income from these books is assigned to a scholarship fund for Hopi students at Northern Arizona University, endowed by P. David and Mary M. Seaman in 1986.

Scope and Content

This collection of the Hopi papers of P. David Seaman comprises twelve linear feet, consisting of three boxes of Hopi language tapes and nine boxes of related materials such as Hopi language tape transcripts, field notes, correspondence and other primary data from Seaman's research for his Hopi Dictionary published in 1985, as well as extensive information about Hopi language and culture from other sources. There is a total of approximately 22,000 pages, about 25,000 Hopi language dictionary slips, over 50 Hopi sound spectrographs, and over 100 Hopi tape recordings. In addition, over 100 Hopi language and culture books donated by Dr. Seaman are interspersed throughout the NAU Special Collections and Archives.

The bulk of the collection is arranged in 9x12 fiber binders, with a Table of Contents provided in each binders.

The David Seaman collection also includes 6 different Hopi Language lessons (13 audio tapes). Otherwise there is no information revealing what is held on these tapes.

Arrangement

Restrictions

Conditions Governing Access

All audio recording materials in the P. David Seaman collection are restricted as of April 2023.

In March of 2022, staff with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office reviewed the Hopi language recordings in boxes 10 and 11 of the P. David Seaman collection and determined that the recordings were culturally sensitive. Permission for access to and use of these items will need to be obtained by Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. Please contact Special Collections and Archives for additional information.

In accordance with SCA's commitment to implementing the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials, all audio recordings in the Navajo and Zuni audio recordings series of the P. David Seaman collection are restricted pending further consultation with appropriate cultural authorities (April 2023).

Open reel audio tapes and audiocassettes are considered at-risk or obsolete formats. As of April 2023, SCA cannot safely provide onsite access in the Miriam Lemont Reading Room or online (digital) access to these formats.

Materials in manuscript (NAU.MS.28) Series 8: Hopi language dictionary slips are minimally processed as of April 2023. These materials are currently not available for research access and use in the Miriam Lemont Reading Room. Please contact Special Collections and Archives at least three weeks in advance to request access.

Conditions Governing Use

It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the Arizona Board of Regents for Northern Arizona University, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims made by any person asserting that he or she is an owner of copyright.

Related Material

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

P. David Seaman Collection [manuscript], NAU.MS.28, Box [ ], Folder [ ]. Northern Arizona University. Cline Library. Special Collections and Archives. Flagstaff, Arizona.

P. David Seaman Collection [audio recordings], NAU.AU.26, Box [ ]. Northern Arizona University. Cline Library. Special Collections and Archives. Flagstaff, Arizona.

Processing Information

David Seaman and Mary Seaman arranged and described the P. David Seaman collection in April 1993, with the support of anthropology research assistant Patrick Koeppl and SCA staff members Karen Underhill, William Mullane, and Robert Coody. Audio recordings were originally assigned the call number NAU Tape #26, later NAU.OH.26.

Sam Meier re-organized materials and updated the finding aid in April 2023. Melissa Lawton assigned a corrected call number for audio recordings, NAU.AU.1993.17, at the same time.

Other Finding Aids

A hard-copy version of the April 1993 finding aid for the P. David Seaman collection is available on request.

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