The Papers document Sawyer's nearly three decades of research on indigenous languages of California, especially members of the Yukian family. The collection includes Wappo field notes collected from the late 1950s to the 1980s and derived materials such as vocabulary files and descriptive and comparative articles. His principal Wappo consultant was Laura Fish Somersal, with additional data provided by Jack Wobo. Sawyer's Yuki consultants were Minnie Fulwider, Arthur Anderson, and Leland Fulwider. The collection also includes Sawyer's notes and linguistic data from other languages of California taken from various published and unpublished sources.