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Reviews
The Nehalem Tillamook: An Ethnography
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By Elizabeth Jacobs, edited by William R. Seaburg
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Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2004. Illustrations, notes, references, index. 272 pages. $21.95 paper.
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Reviewed by Rick Minor
Heritage Research Associates, Inc., Eugene, Oregon
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| One of the most complete and most accessible accounts of Native American mythology and folklore from western Oregon was recorded from Nehalem Tillamook informant Clara Pearson by Elizabeth Derr Jacobs in September 1934. Pearson's stories were edited by Elizabeth Jacobs's husband, Melville Jacobs, an anthropological linguist at the University of Washington, and published by the University of Oregon Press in 1959 as Nehalem Tillamook Tales (reprinted in 1990 by Oregon State University Press). Elizabeth Jacobs also collected ethnographic information on the Nehalem Tillamooks — the northernmost subgroup of the Tillamook people of the north-central Oregon coast — from Clara Pearson during interviews conducted in November and December 1933 at Garibaldi, Oregon. The ethnographic information Jacobs collected has now been organized and edited by anthropologist William R. Seaburg and published as The Nehalem Tillamook: An Ethnography. |
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Born in the early 1870s, Clara Pearson was one of the few Tillamooks who could still speak their native language by 1933. Elizabeth Jacobs noted that Pearson "had been cited by all of those interviewed as the person most knowledgeable about the ancient culture" (p. 65). Pearson had acquired her knowledge of traditional culture from her mother and her knowledge of Tillamook folklore primarily from her father. The additional presence of a great-aunt in their home during Pearson's childhood contributed to "her knowledge of so many things about which practically nothing was known by others in her age group" (p. 66). |
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Jacobs turned the ethnographic field notes from her interviews with Pearson into a manuscript during the mid- to late 1930s, but she subsequently pursued a career as a psychotherapist. After her retirement in 1975, Jacobs began working with Seaburg to edit her manuscript for publication. Thus followed "eight years of close friendship, scholarly collaboration, and mutual support" between the two, until Jacobs died at her home at the age of eighty on May 21, 1983 (p. 59). |
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Seaburg has done a masterful job of organizing Jacobs's manuscript and bringing it to publication. Yet, he has gone much further than simply serving as an editor. In his introduction, Seaburg provides a history of ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork among the Native people of western Oregon that clearly sets Jacobs's fieldwork with Pearson in historical perspective. His introduction stands on its own as a significant contribution to the history of anthropological research in the Pacific Northwest. |
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Seaburg has organized Jacobs's ethnography into five chapters: "Material Culture and Subsistence," "Social Organization, the Life Cycle," "Worldview and Ceremonial Expression," and "Expressive Culture." Supplemental information is presented in four appendices and includes a table summarizing Northwest Coast language classification, biographical notes on Tillamook individuals mentioned in the ethnography, an inventory of Jacobs's Nehalem Tillamook sound recordings, and a guide to Nehalem Tillamook linguistic transcriptions. |
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Seaburg is candid about evaluating the weaknesses and the strengths of Jacobs's ethnographic research. Having come to ethnography by marriage rather than by training, Jacobs showed little interest in eliciting information on such traditional ethnographic topics as village names and place-names, identification and use of plants and animals, and material culture. On the other hand, as Seaburg notes, "this is a remarkably rich ethnography, especially in the areas of female roles, worldview, and social expressions of supernaturalism" (p. 46). |
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Jacobs's ethnography greatly expands the range and quality of information available about the Tillamook. It is a highly readable account that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. The Nehalem Tillamook: An Ethnography, now represents the major anthropological source on the Tillamook people, and as such will certainly be consulted and cited by scholars for many years to come. |
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