In the 1930s, Erminie Voegelin attempted to find evidence of "Walam Olum" narrative elements in independent Lenni-Lenape and Delaware sources; the parallels were at best inconclusive. Doubts about the text's authenticity began to grow. In 1952 renowned archaeologist James Bennett Griffin publicly announced that he "had no confidence in the 'Walam Olum'." Historian William A. Hunter also believed the text a hoax. In 1954 archaeologist John G. Witthoft found linguistic inaccuracies and suspicious correspondences of words in the texts to 19th-century Lenape-English word lists. He concluded that Rafinesque composed the narrative from Lenape texts already in print. The following year, he announced in the "Journal of American Linguistics" the start of a "Walam Olum" project for further study, but this project did not take place.