Edgar Lee Hewett, an ethnologist with the School of American Archeology at the Archeological Institute of America in Santa Fe, met and hired John P. Harrington in 1909. Harrington, a linguist, was doing research on and working with Native American languages in the Southwest during this time. From September 1911 to June 1912, he served as the assistant curator at the Museum of New Mexico at Santa Fe. This interaction would start Harrington’s work with the Navajo language.

(Stirling 1963: John Peabody Harrington 1884-1963, an obituary)