Native languages make a comeback, with an assist from UW

Scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest, flickering like distant campfires, the embers of ancient languages are flaring back to life.

Scorned, ignored and nearly stamped out over the course of the last century, numerous native tongues are slowly being rekindled—not by scholars but by descendants of the people who once spoke the words every day.

“It’s such a big part of who we are as a people,” says Misty Kalama-Miller, a member of the Puyallup Tribe and teacher at the Wa He Lut Indian School on the Puyallup Reservation.

For Kalama-Miller and others like her, rediscovering the lost languages of their ancestors is a proud, but difficult, quest. With no written tradition, the trail grows fainter all the time as the last fluent speakers of many native languages are aging—and dying—before their knowledge can be saved.

There is one path, however, that is well-preserved, if not always well-known. It leads to the basement of the south wing of the Allen Library at the University of Washington. There, tucked away in the Manuscripts, Special Collections and Archives Division of the UW Libraries, reside 130 cardboard boxes.

Inside the boxes lie dozens of meticulously inscribed notebooks—the life’s work of a dedicated scholar and a precious resource for those trying to revive the Pacific Northwest’s native tongues. While far from being the only gem in the University’s Northwest Linguistics Collection, the Melville Jacobs Collection is most certainly the crown jewel.

Melville Jacobs.

“The Jacobs Collection is one of the most important collections in the entire University archives,” says Gary Lundell, a library specialist and former Jacobs student who has handled the collection for more than 30 years.

No wonder it takes more than a library card to view the Melville Jacobs Collection. Between the standing rules of the University archives and special rules imposed by the collection’s guardians, access to the collection requires jumping through an unusual number of hoops.

For trained scholars, the hoops may be a nuisance, but they’re not insurmountable. On the other hand, for those whose interest in the collection is most intrinsic and passionate, the region’s tribal communities, the hoops can be a barrier, limiting both awareness of the collection and access to its contents.

“I think some of the information that was collected a long time ago was collected with good intentions … but it’s just never been available,” says Lois Henry, a member of the Tulalip Tribe and a teacher at Tulalip Elementary School.

Last fall, all that changed. Inspired by a similar event at the University of California, Berkeley, Alice Taff, a research associate in the UW’s linguistics department, organized a Breath of Life workshop. Stretched across an entire week, the workshop guided more than 40 members of 13 local tribes through all the hoops standing between them and the Jacobs materials as well as other important collections.

Thanks to “outstanding support” from numerous University departments, the Breath of Life was a free event staffed by docents, all with ties to the UW, who worked the entire week without pay, says Taff. “I think [participants] found for the most part that there is even more here than they expected,” says Taff. “We’re hoping that people will feel comfortable about coming back to the archives on their own and finding what they need.”

When they do return, chances are the Jacobs Collection will command a great deal of their attention. A disciple of renowned Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas, Melville Jacobs taught anthropology at the University of Washington from 1928 until 1971. However, it was in the field, not the classroom, that Jacobs forged his legacy. Documenting Pacific Northwest tribal cultures by focusing on their grammar, vocabulary and folklore, he spent the early part of his career traveling to numerous tribal communities, filling notebook after notebook—and a few recordings—with interviews and conversations, stories and songs, collected from native people in their native tongues.

Born in New York City, Jacobs studied history and philosophy at the College of the City of New York and history and anthropology at Columbia University. It was there that Jacobs met the mentor and benefactor who set him on the path that he followed for the rest of his life.

Franz Boas has been called “the father of American anthropology.” Known for his extensive field work with the Kwakiutl Indians from Vancouver Island, Boas went on to establish a new concept of race that drew a distinction between biology and culture. A prolific author, his work influenced an entire generation of anthropologists—including Jacobs and other former students such as Margaret Mead. Typical of senior professors, Boas frequently dispatched graduate students to perform field work in support of his research, which is how Jacobs found himself in Eastern Washington in 1926. Later, describing Jacobs as “by far the best man I have had for many years,” Boas recommended his protégé to the UW as an associate professor in anthropology. Thus began his 43-year career at the University.

Jacobs did all of his field work between 1926 and 1939, stopping primarily because “he had accumulated more stuff than he’d ever be able to publish,” says Bill Seaburg, an associate professor of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at UW Bothell and an expert on Jacobs’ research. During this time—which coincided with the Depression—Jacobs relied heavily on grants secured by Boas, whose public and private financial connections made him “a real power broker,” says Seaburg. In addition, Jacobs also counted on the cooperation of the UW, which let him split his time between teaching and field research.

Without being able to ask Jacobs directly, it’s hard for anyone to say why he devoted so much of his life to studying and preserving the languages of Pacific Northwest tribes. Some have speculated his own Jewish heritage sensitized him to the plight of maligned minority cultures. Seaburg suspects it was probably Boas who ignited his interest in documenting the region’s disappearing native languages. “There were few people in the country, outside of anthropology, who believed in the intrinsic value of unrecorded languages and oral traditions when Jacobs was doing his field work and Boas and his many students led the way in championing these disparaged and threatened cultures,” says Seaburg.

In some ways, Jacobs seemed unsuited for the rigors of traveling to remote reservations and spending long hours interviewing tribal elders. “Anyone who knew Melville Jacobs, fastidious in dress and grooming, cultivated and witty, always had difficulty imagining him coping with bad roads, seedy hotels and truck-stop food,” wrote Seaburg in a book on the Jacobs collection.

Even so, Jacobs also possessed a number of traits that served him well in the field, says Seaburg. “I think he had a way with people that would help them feel at ease,” he says. “He had a good sense of humor and a really good ear for the spoken word.” Not only that, “he had beautiful handwriting,” says Seaburg.

One of the biggest challenges facing Jacobs is that the 26 letters of the English alphabet fail to reflect all of the sounds of Native American languages. Jacobs responded by employing an enhanced alphabet with additional symbols. Once satisfied that his pencil and paper version was phonetically authentic, he would read the words back to his subjects and ask them to translate them into English. Today, a linguist would undoubtedly use a tape recorder. However, when Jacobs was doing his research, audio technology was still very crude. Plus Jacobs was biased. “He always felt it was kind of lazy to do it that way,” says Seaburg. “He thought it was more important to learn how to listen.”

While Jacobs did make some recordings—copies reside in the School of Music Ethnomusicology Archives—they consist mostly of short songs as the wax and later vinyl cylinders originally used to produce the recordings were of extremely limited duration. Later he also recorded on 78 rpm disks.

Nevertheless, the brief and scratchy recordings, cleaned up and transferred onto lengthy reel-to-reel tapes, are valuable supplements to the rest of the Jacobs Collection, says Seaburg. “You can come pretty close to reproducing the sounds by reading the symbols, but you miss the intonation,” he says.

Even more, the recordings also ignite the spirit of those who listen to the tapes and sense the presence of their ancestors. “I could feel it,” says Kalama-Miller, shaking her arm.

Kalama-Miller was just one of many Breath of Life participants who listened to the recordings. Some were surprised to hear family members, says Laurel Sercombe, ethnomusicology archivist. “I heard people saying, ‘Oh my God! That’s my great grandfather.’ ”

Such powerful personal reactions give Sercombe “mixed feelings about the whole academic collecting tradition.” Of course, if scholars had not taken and preserved pieces of Native American culture, “there might not be much left,” she says.

As participants in the Breath of Life Workshop, Donna Starr and her daughter, Birdie, were clearly delighted to discover how much information had been preserved. “Are we having fun yet? Yes! Yes!” said Donna. “It’s been an exciting week.”

Members of the Muckleshoot Tribe, the Starrs are “students and teachers of the Whulshoutseed language,” one of many branches of the Sahaptian language family spoken by Pacific Northwest tribes. Their motivation is simple but profound. “To be Muckleshoot,” says Donna, “you need to know the Muckleshoot language.”

If that’s true, then the disappearance of the Muckleshoot language as well as many other Native American languages is a case of cultural identity theft. The culprit? A turn-of-the-century government strategy designed to erase the Indian way of life by targeting an entire generation of children. “[Our language] was wrongly taken away from us through the boarding school system where our grandparents … were punished for speaking their native language,” says Donna Starr.

That sad chapter in history is all the more reason why the Breath of Life represented such a powerful—and perhaps overdue—opportunity, says Taff. “This is a very sensitive, emotional [issue] because these communities have been so devastated by the treatment of their cultures, and the loss of language is at the core of that devastation,” she says.

None of that escaped Melville Jacobs. In fact, had the cultures and languages he studied not been threatened with extinction, his work would not be nearly so important. “Every one of his notebooks is an exact transcription of what [the languages] sounded like,” says Lundell. “If he hadn’t written it down, we would have nothing.”

Bill Seaburg never met Melville Jacobs, but as the author of an extensive guide to his collection, he came to know and respect him through the richness of his research. “I was overwhelmed by the enormity of his field work,” says Seaburg, who later co-authored (with Pamela T. Amoss) a book about Jacobs and his work entitled Badger and Coyote Were Neighbors.

“Funded by a 1981 federal grant, Seaburg’s yearlong stint cataloging the Jacobs collection was “the most exciting job I’ve ever had,” he says. “You never knew what you would encounter the next day.” That was not, however, Seaburg’s first encounter with the work of Melville Jacobs. Years earlier, while still a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, he came to Seattle to view the Jacobs Collection as part of a research project and wound up working closely with his widow, Elizabeth Jacobs.

More than once, Elizabeth Jacobs accompanied her husband into the field, transcribing stories and documenting tribal culture. Seaburg helped her work on a manuscript based on her experience with the Nehalem Tillamook. “Bess was a tremendous person,” says Seaburg. “We got along famously.” Although Elizabeth Jacobs died in 1983 before finishing the manuscript, Seaburg later resumed work on it. The Nehalem Tillamook: An Ethnography will be published this year, he says.

With such a mountain of data to mine—not to mention classes to teach—Jacobs was able to publish only a fraction of his research. His plan was to publish much more after he retired, but he never got the chance. Jacobs died from lung cancer one year short of retirement at age 69.

Had Jacobs died in a sudden accident, who knows what would have become of his materials. However, between his diagnosis and his death, Jacobs took time to ponder the future of his collection. It wasn’t the first time he’d agonized over its safekeeping. Following Pearl Harbor, Jacobs had sent all of his materials to Eastern Washington in case the West Coast was attacked, says Lundell.

Wanting to ensure other scholars could use his materials to pick up where he left off, Jacobs ultimately donated the collection to the University archives—with one unique provision. Anyone wanting access would have to write a detailed request, specifying exactly what they were looking for and why, to a board of former students and colleagues appointed by Jacobs.

Obviously, Jacobs was concerned about theft or damage. However, he also was worried that the contents of some of the notebooks might prove hurtful as tribal members often shared with him personal gossip about other tribal members—and other anthropologists—explains Lundell.

For the UW, the rules governing the Jacobs Collection represent a rare and exacting arrangement—so exacting that it even caused Lundell to hesitate before letting a writer covering the Breath of Life take a quick glance at a notebook. Such tight control makes last fall’s workshop all the more noteworthy. While the board generally approves virtually every request for access to the Jacobs Collection, it usually does so on an individual basis, explains Lundell. For Breath of Life, Taff was able to wrangle an exception.

“This is the first time the Melville Jacobs Collection has been [made available] to a group of people,” says Taff. “For the most part, only individuals have gotten access to materials and there are all kinds of conditions. For instance, usually, only one person can look at one notebook at a time.”

In 2006 researchers may find access to the Jacobs Collection easier as the public will no longer need permission from its guardians to view it. When Jacobs donated his materials to the UW, he stipulated that the restrictions he placed on them be lifted after 35 years—presumably long enough to protect the privacy of those mentioned in his notebooks until they died.

Whether the Breath of Life becomes a regular event remains uncertain. However, by uniting people who had previously worked in isolation, Taff believes last fall’s workshop may galvanize tribal communities seeking broader access to the resources available at institutions such as the UW. “These are people who want to work together to take another step,” she says.

Party politics: Jacobs’ communist past prompted UW probation

State Rep. Albert Canwell holds up an information card in this 1948 photo. Photo courtesy Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, MOHI.

As an undergraduate student at the College of the City of New York, Melville Jacobs majored in history. Later, as an anthropology professor at the University of Washington, he played a reluctant part in it.

Targeted by the controversial Canwell Committee, Jacobs was one of several UW professors whose past membership in the Communist Party thrust their names into the spotlight and their careers into jeopardy during the start of the Cold War.

“In many ways, (the Canwell Committee) was a defining episode of the whole Red Scare,” says Jane Sanders, ’71, ’76.

Sanders, a UW graduate and current district director for Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Seattle), is the author of Cold War on Campus: Academic Freedom at the University of Washington, 1946-64.

The Canwell Committee was created by the state Legislature in 1946 to determine to what extent the Communist Party was influencing public and private institutions within the state. In 1948, it turned its attention to the UW.

Like more than a few folks—especially intellectuals—Jacobs had at one time believed the Communist Party represented the best response to the Depression and the rise of fascism, says Sanders. However, after belonging to the party from approximately 1935-45, Jacobs became disillusioned and gradually drifted away.

When confronted by the Canwell Committee, Jacobs admitted his past involvement but refused to name any other party members. For that—and for initially concealing his party membership from UW President Raymond Allen—he was disciplined.

While the discipline was temporary—two years probation —its impact was permanent, says Sanders. “He stayed away from political activity for the rest of his life, pretty much,” she says.

In her book, she wrote, “Jacobs remained especially bitter about the fact that Allen singled him out for lying. Always an active scholar, Jacobs told how he could not concentrate enough to write during his probationary years, and his anger intensified because he received no raises or promotions. Finally, he forced himself to eat daily at the Faculty Club and eventually found a good deal of reward in the form of faculty support. Throughout the remainder of his teaching years, he would not sign anything even remotely political.”

Today, Sanders is pleased that Melville Jacobs is once again making news—only this time for his research and not his politics. “I’ve always hoped he didn’t just become a footnote in history … known simply for being somebody who was at one time a member of the Communist Party,” she says.

At top, Anthropology Professor Melville Jacobs records the voice of Annie Miner Peterson with his newly built portable electric phonograph during his visit to Charleston, Ore., in July 1934. Photo courtesy MSCUA, University of Washington Libraries.

Brad Broberg is a free-lance journalist and former newspaper reporter/editor living in Federal Way.