Within months of receiving his doctorate from Harvard, Swanton began working for the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, at which He continued for the duration of his career, spanning more than 40 years. Swanton first did fieldwork in the Northwest. In his early career, he worked mostly with the Tlingit and Haida. He produced two extensive compilations of Haida stories and myths, and transcribed many of them into Haida. These transcriptions have served as the basis for Robert Bringhurst's recent (1999) translation of the poetry of Haida mythtellers Skaay and Gandl. Swanton spent roughly a year with the Haida.