ISSN 1538-2834 JOURNAL OF NORTHWEST ANTHROPOLOGY Experiences in the University of Washington Anthropology Department, 1955–1991 Simon Ottenberg ................................................................................................... 1 The Undervalued Black Katy Chitons (Katharina Tunicata) as a Shellfish Resource on the Northwest Coast of North America Dale R. Croes ........................................................................................................ 13 Incised Stones from Idaho Jan Snedden Kee and Mark G. Plew .................................................................... 27 A Partial Stratigraphy of the Snakelum Point Site, 45-IS-13, Island County, Washington, and Comment on the Sampling of Shell Midden Sites Using Small Excavation Units Lance K. Wollwage, Guy L. Tasa, and Stephenie Kramer ................................. 43 Big Dog/Little Horse—Ethnohistorical and Linguistic Evidence for the Changing Role of Dogs on the Middle and Lower Columbia in the Nineteenth Century Cheryl A. Mack .................................................................................................... 61 Smallpox, Aleuts, and Kayaks: A Translation of Eduard Blashke’s Article on his Trip through the Aleutian Islands in 1838 Richard L. Bland .................................................................................................. 71 The 66th Annual Northwest Anthropological Conference, Portland, Oregon, 27–30 March 2013 ....................................................................................... 87 Spring 2015 Vol. 49, No. 1 JOURNAL OF NORTHWEST ANTHROPOLOGY FORMERLY NORTHWEST ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH NOTES EDITORS Darby C. Stapp Deward E. Walker, Jr. Richland, WA University of Colorado ASSOCIATE EDITORS C. Melvin Aikens (University of Oregon), Haruo Aoki (University of California), Virginia Beavert (Yakama Nation), Don E. Dumond (University of Oregon), Don D. Fowler (University of Nevada), Raymond D. Fogelson (University of Chicago), Rodney Frey (University of Idaho), Ronald Halfmoon (Lapwai), Tom F.S. McFeat (University of Toronto), and Jay Miller (Lushootseed Research) Julia G. Longenecker Operations Manager Kara N. Powers Editorial Assistant Composed by Northwest Anthropology LLC, Richland, WA; Printed by Copy Court, Moscow, ID; Bound by Arts & Crafts, Oakesdale, WA. Missing issue claim limit 18 months. 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Additional reprints may be produced by the author; however, they must be exact duplicates of the original and are not to be sold for profit. © by Northwest Anthropology LLC, 2015 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 JOURNAL OF NORTHWEST ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 49 Spring 2015 NUMBER 1 EXPERIENCES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 1 ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT, 1955–1991 Simon Ottenberg with Footnotes by Jay Miller ABSTRACT Recurrent commentaries on the history of the University of Washington Anthropology Department have highlighted the Department’s decisions from 1955 through the 1970s to expand its international expertise, in keeping with national scholarship trends. Over the years, anthropology faculty with interests in indigenous Northwest groups were systematically forced out of the Department, replaced by scholars with interests in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, and who had funding unavailable to the Northwest scholars. A retired professor with a lifelong career in the Department provides perspectives and reflections on these events and the unfortunate impact that resulted on Northwest scholarship. Having developed an interest in Coast Salish culture and history in recent years, I was inspired in 2013 to write a response to the comments made in Bruce Millerʼs Introduction to his edited book, Be of Good Mind: Essays on the Coast Salish, regarding an unnamed major university in the region that failed to continue first peoplesʼ studies (Miller 2007). Miller had written: In the 1970s and early 1980s, at least one major university in the region chose simply to dump anthropology faculty member whose area of research was primarily the Coast Salish in favor of those who worked in more exotic and supposedly more intellectually exciting regions of the world, such as Papua New Guinea [and Africa]. But this appears to have been short-sighted and to reflect a lack of concern for the relationship between the local universities and local peoples, along with the old, lingering notion that the Coast Salish lack 1 This commentary presents the thoughts of a 91-year-old scholar who was involved in both the study of political anthropology and the growth of the University of Washington anthropology department within the scholarly world. Clarifications and additions from other sources and comparative work have been added in footnotes by Jay Miller. 2 authenticity and are too assimilated to be of interest. During the 1970s and 1980s, little attention was paid to promoting the education of local Aboriginal people and to attracting them to a university that took their lives and view of the world seriously never mind respecting the fact that the universities themselves are built on Aboriginal traditional lands. (Miller 2007:24). My comments, however, were never sent to Bruce Miller. After recently reading Jay Millerʼs history of the University of Washington (UW) Anthropology Department (Miller 2014), I thought that I would revise my history focusing on the Watson leadership period to see whether it was worth publishing, and send a copy to the Anthropology Department archives and another to the University of Washington University Library Special Collections. I taught social and cultural anthropology at the UW from 1955 to 1991, my areas of focus being West Africa, art, ethnicity and political anthropology. I came to the UW Anthropology Department from graduate anthropology training at Northwestern University in African Studies and a year teaching at the then Washington State College with Richard Daugherty. Erna Gunther, who was then chair, hired me. At Northwestern I was trained under Prof. Melville J. Herskovits, who had studied with Boas. I also studied with Herskovitsʼs former graduate student, William Bascom, also a Boasian in outlook. Though I was considered a Boasian at UW, carrying out research for my Ph.D. in Africa and teaching for six months at the University of Chicago before coming west had turned me partly into a social anthropologist of the British structural kind that existed at the time: Durkheim and Mauss to Radcliffe Brown to Evans-Pritchard, Leach, and Fortes. My first two books were in that style. The same year I came to UW, James Watson was hired by the dean as the new chairman of anthropology.2 Watson’s hiring came against the wishes of the anthropology faculty, with the exception of Melville Jacobs, who was at odds with most of the Department. Watson was brought in by the Dean of Social Science to reshape the Department and he did so in some good ways, but as far as Coast Salish and Northwest Coast Studies went, it was a disaster. When I arrived I found the Department faculty to be not very active in research. Erna Gunther was largely tied up in administrative work,3 having for many years headed both the Washington State