Melville Jacobs

Melville Jacobs (July 3, 1902 – July 31, 1971) was an American anthropologist and folklorist known for his work preserving indigenous cultures and languages of the Pacific Northwest United States. Jacobs was a doctoral student of Franz Boas, a German-American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist who did fieldwork with the Chinookan Peoples. After his time in the field, Jacobs became member of the faculty of the University of Washington in 1928 and remained there until his death in 1971. During the McCarthy Era, Jacobs was targeted for his progressive political activism and his association with the Communist Party USA.

Education and personal life Jacobs graduated with his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1922. He went on to receive a master's degree in American history from Columbia University in 1923 and his doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University in 1931. After studying under anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia, Jacobs went on to do linguistic and anthropologic fieldwork with tribes in the state of Oregon. His fieldwork was funded six months at a time by Boas between the years of 1928 and 1936.

Jacobs was a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and an associate editor of the American Anthropologist under Ralph Linton from 1939-1944. He was president of the American Folklore Society from 1963-1964 and served as their delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies from 1966-1968.

Jacobs met with a number of last speakers of indigenous languages and worked extensively to preserve as much of these dying languages as possible for future study. Jacobs recorded audio on wax cylinders, in the earlier years, and on acetate records using a custom-built portable phonograph recorder which he took into the field. After completing his fieldwork in 1939, the latter part of Jacobs' career was spent transcribing and translating his recordings and research notes.

Published works Northwest Sahaptin Texts I (1929) A Sketch of Northern Sahaptin Grammar (1931) Notes on the Structure of Chinook Jargon (1932) Northwest Sahaptin Texts, II (1934) Texts in Chinook Jargon (1936) Northwest Sahaptin Texts, III (1937) Coos Narrative and Ethnologic Texts (1939) Coos Myth Texts (1940) Historic Perspectives in Indian Languages of Oregon and Washington (1941) Kalapuya Texts (1945) Outline of Anthropology (1947) General Anthropology; A Brief Survey of Physical, Cultural, and Social Anthropology (1952) Clackamas Chinook Texts I (1958) Clackamas Chinook Texts II (1959) The content and style of an oral literature: Clackamas Chinook myths and tales (1959) The Content and Style of an Oral Literature (1959) The People are Coming Soon; Analyses of Clackamas Chinook Myths and Tales (1960) Pattern in Cultural Anthropology (1964) The Anthropologist Looks at Myth (1966)