Frank T. Siebert was not an anthropologist, nor a linguist, but a doctor. And yet his contributions to Northeast American Indian ethnography and linguistics equals, perhaps even exceeds, most professionals. According to one colleague, he was the most important Algonquian linguist.

There are photographs around of the pathologist at his desk, papers strewn over every surface, journals and more papers stacked against the walls, creating a veritable nest of paper. Those who knew him feared for the life of this intense and unremitting scholar. An errant spark would have left him no chance.

Who would have thought that somewhere among all these papers were the treasures that are now on view at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor? The rows of beaded moccasins, brilliantly beaded collars, cuffs and belts – some using beads so tiny they look like filaments of glass – are in pristine condition. A bag woven from the inner bark of the basswood tree exemplifies work that many American Indian experts had only read about, never seen. Even though Siebert may have hinted at some of these glories, even though he clearly had the eye of a fine collector, the extent, quality and condition of these items have astounded his friends.

Clearly Siebert had a lifelong love of American Indians, a true fascination and gift for language, and yet this work was his avocation, not his vocation. Raised in Philadelphia, he became fascinated by American Indians at a very young age. When his family came to Maine in 1932 for a summer visit, Siebert, at age 19, arranged to make the trek to Old Town and take the ferry across to Indian Island to visit Lewis Lolar, one of only about 100 speakers of the Penobscot language. Still only a teenager, the young Siebert sat with Lolar for hours, annotating his words as he spoke. Already Siebert was doing linguistic research.

Yet Siebert trained as a medical doctor and spent the middle third of his life as a pathologist, reserving his vacations for ethnological research. Then, around 1968, he gave up his practice and moved to Old Town to commit himself full time to linguistic and ethnographic research, focusing on the Penobscot language and its legends.

When he died in 1998, his daughter, Stephanie Finger, was bequeathed Siebert’s American Indian artifacts. She first lent them to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, where the collection was cataloged, then decided to send them closer to their home. The collection is now on long-term loan to the Abbe Museum.

The artifacts, many from Maine tribes, will probably be shown frequently, says exhibit designer Betts Swanton, to bolster other exhibits at the Abbe. This year, though, “The Frank T. Siebert Collection of Native American Art” is the show. The collection is on view through December.

As in most Abbe exhibits, the personal angle is the connection, for the museum frames its presentations in story. This time, the story is the relationship between Siebert and the native speakers who were his informants and their relationship to the objects that form his collections. Much of what is on display at the Abbe is related to the people Siebert worked with, whether these objects were given to or bought by the intense doctor. At times, though, the stories are rather bare. Siebert documented languages, not his life. I know this firsthand, having had the pleasure of helping to write the labels used in the exhibit, drawing from a text researched by the museum’s curator and staff archeologist, Rebecca Cole-Will, who teased out the little that was known about Siebert’s informants.

Siebert worked with three Maine families: the Lolars, the Stanislauses and the Danas. Even the very slight traces of biography that the Abbe can offer adds meaning to these artifacts. We look at a narrow belt, with simplified deer or caribou beaded on it, and imagine Lolar’s wife sewing the belt while she and her husband painstakingly spoke to Siebert. We look at the hatchet passed down to Lolar from his warrior ancestor, Loron, one of the signatories to the 1725 peace treaty between the British and the French and American Indians at Annapolis Royale, Nova Scotia. This rare and valuable hatchet, made in 1695, was one of only 200 sold by French settlers to American Indians. Few others – if any – survive, and yet Lolar bequeathed it to Siebert.

Another item is an articulated wooden doll, about a foot tall, with a traditional headdress, buckskin leggings, even a miniature wooden bow. This belonged to Andrew Dana, who as a child had lived with his grandfather, Francis Joseph Dana, one of the last traditional Penobscot storytellers. When Dana became an elder, he told these stories to Siebert, who recorded them. The meaning of the doll, however, is lost to history.

Siebert’s American Indian collections are extensive. Displayed is less than a quarter of the artifacts he gathered. These are divided into three main categories: the Penobscot artifacts; the frequently more showy bead and buckskin work of the Plains; and words.

Though the exhibit dazzles with elaborate beadwork on red wool and the full regalia of Francis Stanislaus, these alluring artifacts spiral around something perhaps more potent, though hugely subtle: language. The idea of annotating a language, creating an alphabet to carry sounds, describing grammar and defining meanings might ultimately have the greatest impact to the museum’s visitors, though they might not realize it.

The opening graphic screened on the pillar at the entrance to the exhibit hints at the painstaking work of trying to write down another’s language, giving it form in letters as well as meaning. On the opposite wall, there’s a station where visitors may listen to tapes of Siebert talking to some of his Penobscot speakers. Here, we can begin to touch upon the connections Siebert made, taking one step further to understanding the connection between word and phrase and culture.

When I visited the museum about two weeks after the opening, the staff was still talking about the event, which drew many Penobscots. One particular moment was spoken of with awe: A visitor had wandered over to the audio section, pressed the button that launches the sound and heard none other than his own grandfather, Andrew, long since gone, speaking Penobscot to Siebert. The man’s little boy was with him, a child who had never known his great-grandfather.

“The Frank T. Siebert Collection of Native American Art” is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Columbus Day. The show will continue with reduced hours until the end of December. For information, call 288-3519. Donna Gold can be reached at carpenter@acadia.net.