Tsin-is-tum

Tsin-is-tum (Jennie Michel), as she appeared around the turn of the 20th century. Tsin-is-tum, also known as Jennie Michel (c. 1814–1905, Clatsop), was a Native American folklorist based on the Pacific Coast of Oregon. Called "Last of the Clatsops" at the time of her death in 1905, Tsin-is-tum was much photographed. She provided oral history for scholars of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Among her accounts was of family members who interacted with members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the winter of 1805-1806; she helped historians to locate salt works they had used.

Biography

Tsin-is-tum (known to some during her lifetime as "Jennie Michel" ) was a Clatsop woman born about 1814 to a family on the coast of what is today part of the American state of Oregon. She was the daughter of a woman named Wah-ne-ask, who was an eyewitness of the Lewis and Clark Expedition that visited the Pacific Northwest in 1805 and 1806. The name of her father has been lost to history. He was killed in a bombardment of her village by a warship, probably in spring 1829. ), a man of French Canadian descent and a retired steam-boat captain and sailing master.

Tsin-is-tum died in March 1905 at the age of approximately 89. At the time of her death, she was referred to as "the last of the Clatsops" — perhaps the last surviving full-blooded member of that Native American tribe.