The division of responsibility for collating and arranging facts for the various divisions of the Native Races was made apparently toward the latter part of the year 1872. We are told that routine work was laid aside for three or four weeks in the middle of the summer, and this time devoted to placing the library in order and cataloguing the new books which had been added. This was obviously done preparatory to entering upon the new work. To a young Englishman who called himself T. Arundel-Harcourt, and who entered the library in November, was assigned the preparation of that portion of the work devoted to the manners and customs of the civilized nations. (This man's true name he did not reveal. His collaborator Nemos says that he attended a boarding school, and then continued his studies in Germany, at Heidelberg, according to his own account. He claimed to have come to America with $5,000 in pocket money, and found his way first to Montana. On his arrival at San Francisco he entered the library. Leaving in 1874 to assume editorship of the Overland Monthly with Fisher, he was soon back in Bancroft's employ. Naturally he was the most able of the library corps. But while he was brilliant, handsome, and witty, he was at the same time erratic and unreliable. He died in 1884.)
Mr. Fisher's part was mythology, while the division of the work relating to language was given to Albert Goldschmidt, a German, who had been employed in the library since the end of 1871. (According to Nemos, Goldschmidt was said to have been the son of a Jewish clothing dealer at Hamburg. In early life he ran off to sea, and claimed to have become master of a vessel. He had acquired much general knowledge, and was musically inclined, often singing in church choirs. Before coming to the library Nemos says that he led a "vagarious life" in Nevada. As a linguist he had great ability, and was able to translate almost any language which he encountered, but was inclined to fritter away his time. Nemos declared him "the most systematic idler in the library." This failing brought about his discharge. Later he became a mining superintendent in Chihuahua.) Mr. Oak took the subject of Antiquities and Aboriginal History (preface to Native Races I, p. 13).
The undertaking was an enormous one, because of the vast quantities of material to be handled, as well as the inexperience of the workers, which made it necessary for them to devise their own system as they proceeded. It is said that by an actual calculation the sum total of all the labor expended upon each of the five volumes of the series represents an equivalent to the work of one man for ten years. (Literary Industries, 305). Indeed, Mr. Bancroft's own reason for entrusting this work to others is that it would have taken him a half century, leaving his main work untouched. Mr. Oak's indexing system proved a great labor saver, as by it the indexers went through all the material, classifying and making references. They were followed immediately by note-takers, who copied the facts indicated in these references. The writers then had the data placed before them for arrangement. When Mr. Bancroft's chapter on the Hyperboreans was completed he went over it with them, all making criticisms and suggestions to be adopted in the arrangement of the other divisions as well as that one. By this means was the library system perfected, a common method developed, and a corps of library workers trained: (Lit. Ind., 304).
The Native Races was very much in the nature of a compilation, and our knowledge concerning the authorship of its various parts is necessarily less exact than is true of any of the other Bancroft works. Such facts as are at hand come from two schedules—one of his own works, the other of that of the corps generally—prepared by William Nemos, a gifted Swedish writer who entered the library in 1873, subsequently becoming Oak's chief assistant, and ultimately his successor in the librarian's office; from separate information gained by Frances Fuller Victor as to the part of the work done by Oak. (This consists of three different statements, one in a letter to a friend, another in an autobiographical sketch, and a third in a statement copied by Mrs. Victor. Mr. Oak himself refuses to give testimony, doubtless on account of his former intimate personal connection with Mr. Bancroft and his acquiescence in the plan followed, as well as his poor health, which renders him unwilling to enter into a discussion of the question, and from statements in an autobiography of Thomas Savage, chief Spanish interpreter in the library after August, 1873.)
The facts as deduced from these sources show that Oak wrote more of the Native Races than any one else, two fifths of the entire work, or to be exact, fifteen hundred and ninety-seven pages out of four thousand. While engaged in this writing, it must be remembered that he also acted as "chief assistant to Mr. Bancroft, manager of all details of this work, as well as that on the History, overseer of the corps of workers, and chief proof reader," duties which so engrossed his time that he wrote principally between eight o'clock in the evening and midnight. The fourth volume on Antiquities is his work entire, as is also the fifth on Primitive History, except the introductory chapter on the Origin of the Americans, in the preparation of which it would appear that Bancroft had a hand (Lit. Ind., 570), and the last three chapters dealing with the tribes of Central America, the authorship of which the writer has no means of determining. Nemos says, however, that he prepared "a good deal of clean manuscript" for this volume as well as for some others.
To Harcourt the division of the field as already given points as the author of the second volume. Oak wrote the introductory chapter entitled General View of the Civilized Nations, and also the chapter on the Aztec Picture Writing and Maya Arts Calendar and Hieroglyphics. Bancroft is the author of the chapter on Savagism and Civilization, and Nemos is to be credited with the writing of some parts. As Harcourt wrote six hundred and thirty-six pages of the Native Races, and there appears but one reference to his writing in connection with another volume, and that a chapter of a hundred and fifty pages, we may conclude that the remainder of Volume II is from his pen.
With Fisher rests the credit for the authorship in the main of the Mythology portion of the third volume. Nemos relates that Fisher sought his aid for this work soon after he came to the library, believing that his previous training in philosophy fitted him for mythology, and that Fisher obtained for him the continuation of the volume, when in October, 1874, he left it "half finished" to accept the editorship of the Overland Monthly. Nemos then being new to the work, Harcourt revised his manuscript.
To Goldschmidt had been assigned the task of writing the treatise on Indian languages for the third volume. The evidence of Nemos shows that Goldschmidt prepared this part of the work, although the quotation from the Literary Industries already given seems to show that it was revised throughout once, and afterward rewritten, in part, at least, by Bancroft. Goldschmidt also prepared the ethnographical map of the coast.
Of the first volume, Oak wrote about half of the preface, and the chapter on the Columbians, Harcourt the chapter on the Californians, and Nemos and Savage the remainder, with the exception of a few slight parts prepared by others.
In a compilation like the Native Races, there was of necessity much matter printed in such a form that those who prepared it could not claim the authorship. Of this character were the contributions of Mr. Savage, the Spanish expert. Nemos also claimed to be the author of parts of every volume except the fourth, but from his own statements we learn that much of his work, like Savage's, consisted in making translations.