“An important and delightful contribution to the study of Native American ethnopoetics and verbal art. In Mason’s careful ethnopoetic renderings of the narratives of raconteur Victoria Howard we hear her voice, as never before, as she tells the personal and cultural stories that compose this wonderful corpus of the Molalla-Clackamas narratives that emerged from her collaboration with Jacobs.”-Paul V. Kroskrity, coeditor of The Legacy of Dell Hymes: Ethnopoetics, Narrative Inequality, and Voice “The Clackamas Chinook narratives by Victoria Howard (1865-1930) evoke tribal traditions, values, and human experiences of the tribes of the Western Oregon Grande Ronde. More than sixty years following the publication of Melville Jacob’s original publication, Catharine Mason’s selection from Howard’s Clackamas corpus, presents for republication a remarkable selection of well-crafted texts taken from an almost forgotten vocal performance artist accessible to both scholars and Chinookan descendants and members of the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde. This new and updated collection will provide a source of reading enjoyment as well as a significant contribution to American Northwest Coast oral traditions and literatures.”-Gus Palmer Jr., editor of When Dream Bear Sings: Native Literatures of the Southern Plains “Drawing on developments in ethnolinguistics, ethnopoetics, and narratology, Catharine Mason offers a beautifully presented, and fully annotated edition and verse translation of a selection of the works of Victoria Howard, one of the great North American storytellers. Mason’s respectful handling of these performances gives full recognition to the necessity for reading/hearing them in consultation with the communities whose ancestors were their creators.”-John Leavitt, author of Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought
