Tillamook Indians of the Oregon Coast

3 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
A broad ethnographic look at the Tillamook people of the north-central Oregon coast.

Review
I live in Tillamook County, on the Oregon Coast, so naturally I'm curious about the history of the place. The Tillamook tribe (the last known native Americans to live here) are part of the Salish language group, but were severely depopulated by contact with foreign explorers, and eventually moved to a reservation. Unlike many tribes, they eventually forced the federal government to honor a contract for sale of their land, though they earned only a pittance for it. In any case, this is one of few books describing their history and culture.

The book is factual, and it's clear that the authors are doing the best they can to provide an accurate picture with only limited data. The book suffers for it. While enlivened by the occasional anecdote passed down by locals or tribal descendants, the bulk of the book is dry, and it never manages to escape it's outsider's view of the matter. To its credit, it includes a large number of photographic plates of tribal members, objects, residences, and geographic features. Necessarily, it mostly describes the tribe after their encounters with foreign explorers such as Lewis & Clark, though it does try to include those earliest observations when possible. The authors, seemingly driven largely by their own involvement with archaeological digs triggered by chance finds, are clearly cognizant of bigotry toward the Tillamook and Native Americans in general, and make an effort to speak up for the tribe at second hand.

Overall, the book is useful and mildly enlightening, if not a page turner, and it does successfully document a now largely vanished or transformed people. A section at the end describes the authors' own digs in far more detail than necessary (or interesting). Of interest principally to locals like myself.