Melville Jacobs was born on July 3, 1902 in New York, New York, and died in Seattle, Washington on July 31, 1971. Dr. Jacobs was best known for his research on Northwest Coast American Indian languages and Folklore. His contributions include a structural sketch of Chinook Jargon. With extensive linguistic fieldwork, Dr. Jacobs still thought of himself primarily as a cultural anthropologist.
In addition to his fieldwork Dr. Jacobs was also a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington from 1928 to 1971. During his early years at Washington, He engaged in intensive field research in cultural anthropology, focusing primarily among western Oregon American Indian groups. From 1926 to 1939 he collected large quantities of lexical and grammatical materials. He also used audio recordings from speakers of the Sahaptin, Molale, Kalapuya, Clackamas, Tillamook, Alsea, Upper Umpqua, Galice and Chinook Jargon. Often taking time to work with the last speakers of these languages. Such texts provided valuable linguistic, folkloric, and ethnographic data.
During the 1930s and 1940s Dr. Jacobs theoretical interest were concerned with correlating types of historical processes of change in cultures with types of socioeconomic systems. In the 1950s Dr. Jacobs interests turned to the psychological analysis of cultures, especially in folklore. Dr. Jacobs interpreted the expressive content of folktales as the “projection” onto myth and tale “screens” of stressful events and social relationships, which were not satisfactorily resolved by other cultural means. Dr. Jacobs stressed the need for anthropological folklorists to relate the folklore of a culture into is system of social relationships, value ideals and world views. Dr. Jacobs, like his mentor Franz Boas, spent many months out in the field seeking out and interviewing native people. He made it his life work to preserve and interpret the fast-disappearing languages and traditions of the Indian people of Oregon and Washington. Many of Dr. Jacobs’ works on the Northwest Indian oral traditions introduce his theory and method of folklore research. Eight of his stories include extensive interpretations of the Indian culture.
One of Dr. Jacobs’ major challenges was to understand and appreciate the Native folk literature. In one of his newest volumes Northwest Readers, many of his colleagues believe he has done so with great success. Some of Dr. Jacobs other works are as follows, Northwest Sahaptin Texts (University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 2, no. 6.) and A Sketch of Northern Sahaptin Grammar (University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol.4 no. 2.), as well as works with the Clackamas, Chinook, and Coo cultures. Many of his works can be found in the University of Washington library as well as on the Internet at the University of Oregon. Dr. Jacobs’ work is greatly respected by fellow colleagues as well as future anthropologist and he is greatly missed by many.
References:
Winters, Christopher. International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York: Garland, 1991.
Seaburg, William “Badger and Coyote Were Neighbors: Melville Jacobs on Northwest Indian Myths and Tales” Oregon State University Press (11-14-00) http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press/Badger.html
Written by: Jason Jensen