The papers of Frances Densmore (1867-1957) span the years 1883 to 1957. The collection documents over fifty years of Densmore's work studying and preserving Native American music. The papers are primarily in English with some materials written in French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, German, Italian, and Greek.

The collection documents Densmore's work as an ethnomusicologist, including her extensive work learning, recording, transcribing, and documenting the uses of American Indian music. Her papers include field notebooks, correspondence, song lists and indexes, lecture notes, scrapbooks, photographic prints, lantern glass slides, and glass plate negatives relating to her work collecting Native American music and culture. Materials are included from her work with tribes including the Chippewa, the Mandan, Hidatsa, the Sioux, the northern Pawnee of Oklahoma, the Papago (Tohono O'odham) of Arizona, American Indians of Washington and British Columbia, Winnebago and Menominee of Wisconsin, Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, the Seminoles of Florida, and the Kuna Indians of Panama. Also included in this collection are Densmore's publications and publications sent to her by anthropologists prominent in the field, a phonodeik (a photographic visualization of sound) by Dayton C. Miller, and a Chippewa birchbark drawing.