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In early 1927 the Committee on Research in Native American Languages was established by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, to be administered through the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).'The purpose of the com-mittee was to:" collect data on those languages which are near extinction and also to try to develop the comparative study of diversified linguistic stocks." 2 Of these two goals, by far the most significant was the emphasis on salvage linguistics; comparative study of languages was only rarely funded, although in theory it was encouraged by the committee. During the ten years of its existence the committee was the focus of the major part of the research undertaken in Native American languages, and was directed by those of greatest influence in the subject: Franz Boas and Edward Sapir. 3 It was one of the few sources of funds for linguistic research in the 1920s, since linguistics had …