I have accrued many debts in researching and writing this book. Without the help of numerous individuals and institutions, I could never have embarked on this path, much less completed it. Fortunately, others found this project interesting and provided significant financial support. During graduate school at the University of California, Davis, I received support from the university and the Ford Foundation with both the Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship and the Dissertation Diversity Fellowship—they were even kind enough to support me with the Postdoctoral Fellowship after I completed my doctorate. The American Philosophical Society’s Phillips Fund Grant for Native American Research financed several trips to the Makah Nation to conduct oral history interviews and a trip to the National Archives in Washington, DC. Without these substantial awards, I would not have had the luxury to focus solely on researching and writing.
UC Davis proved to be an outstanding place to earn my doctorate. Louis Warren was an ideal advisor and continues to be a valued mentor and friend. I have greatly appreciated his guidance since I met him at Yale years ago where he taught the Studies in the Environment Senior Colloquium, in which I first began exploring some of the ideas that took shape in this book. Alan Taylor was a patient teacher and careful proofreader. I enjoyed our many conversations about the overarching concepts and minutiae of this project. Steve Crum is probably one of the best-read historians I know, and his advice helped me connect the themes of the project to larger historiographical discussions and debates, especially as pertaining to American Indian history. Ari Kelman listened to and read my haphazard ideas and drafts and brought clarity to them. He also responded immediately to numerous phone calls and queries at all hours. Together, the members of my dissertation committee exemplified the best for which a fledgling historian could wish. While at Davis, I had the good fortune of being part of a smart, dynamic graduate cohort. Many of them responded to earlier versions of this project and have remained engaged throughout the process.
While working in various archives, I received assistance from many archivists and librarians. Carla Rickerson, Gary Lundell, and Nicole Bouché assisted me in navigating through the University of Washington’s collections. At the regional branch (Pacific Alaska Region) of the National Archives, Patty McNamee’s expertise streamlined my time both at Sand Point and the DC branch. While in Washington, Mary Francis Ronan saved me valuable time and gave me a tour of the archive’s stacks, which made me much more appreciative of the work the archival technicians at NARA do for us researchers. I am also very grateful to George Miles, Curator of the Western Americana Collection at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, for ferreting out obscure documents and images I had only dreamed to exist. The staffs at the Washington State Archives, the British Columbia Archives, and the Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center also deserve my thanks, especially because I usually appeared unannounced, with a long list of requests in my fist.
I enjoyed all of my research visits, but my favorite ones took me to Neah Bay, Washington, in the Makah Nation. Janine Ledford, Director of the Makah Cultural and Research Center (MCRC), has earned my deepest thanks. Her interest and support in my project from the beginning provided invaluable access to the wealth of Makah sources on the subject. Janine helped organize oral history interviews, and she gave me valuable feedback on several ideas just as they began to take shape. Keely Parker, archivist at the MCRC, has proved unflagging in her efforts to locate documents, images, and earlier oral histories that illuminate parts of the story I have tried to tell. I have enjoyed sharing with both Keely and Janine my findings from the many archives I have been fortunate to visit. Maria Pascua patiently helped me with the Makah language terms that appear in this book … and put up with my efforts to pronounce words my mouth found difficult to form. I am most grateful for the time several Makahs have taken to share their oral histories with me. I learned an enormous amount from Greig Arnold, Ed Claplanhoo, Charles “Pug” Claplanhoo, Mary Ann Claplanhoo-Martin, Dan Greene, Dale Johnson, John McCarty, Maria Pascua, and Dave Sones; I hope they enjoyed the time they spent with me at least half as much as I did with them. Marc Slonim and Russell Svec also provided valuable feedback on portions of the manuscript. During my visits to Neah Bay, I benefited from many informal conversations, but most especially the late-night sessions with my friend Micah McCarty, whether we sat around a fire with his family or in his backroom as he carved a mask. I am greatly indebted to the stunning art he provided for the cover. Various iterations of the Makah Tribal Council have also provided assistance over the years, carefully reading portions of this book and offering valuable suggestions and feedback. Any mistakes here are solely mine.
I have presented and published portions of my work and received excellent feedback and advice from colleagues at a host of conferences and other venues. An earlier version of a portion of chapter 5 was published in Tribal Worlds, edited by Brian Hosmer and Larry Nesper (State University of New York Press, 2013); an earlier version of portions of this book were previously published in “Marine Tenure of the Makahs,” in Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment in Africa and North America, edited by David M. Gordon and Shepard Krech III (Ohio University Press, 2012). I gratefully acknowledge the publishers and editors for their support of my work. At the risk of leaving out any of the countless individuals who offered invaluable suggestions and assistance, I will not list everyone here. Just know that I greatly appreciate the support and input I received from you all, whether we were sitting around a campfire, sharing some grilled reindeer, talking between sets in a New Orleans jazz dive, swapping stories while kayaking in Puget Sound or Doubtful Sound, or skulking in a hotel bar long after conference sessions had ended. However, I would especially like to express my gratitude to Jay Gitlin for setting me on this course years ago in a history seminar I took at Yale University. His continued support and encouragement have helped to maintain my own excitement.
The University of Massachusetts, Boston, has proved an outstanding academic home for me over the past several years. My colleagues in the History Department, the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, and various workshops and seminars have been especially supportive, attending talks, responding to ideas, reading chapters, and helping out where they can. Everyone has been generous with their time and hospitality. A very special thank-you is due to Conevery Bolton Valencius, who carefully read an entire draft of this work and provided advice that improved every chapter—I am hard pressed to think of a better critic. I have also had the good fortune to work with outstanding graduate research assistants, including Nicole Breault, Krystle Beaubrun, Deirdre Kutt, and Phill Marsh. They transcribed oral history recordings, scanned through gobs of newspapers online, and performed other invaluable research tasks. The College of Liberal Arts has also been generous with time off from teaching and research funding that has allowed me to complete this book.
During my second year at UMass Boston, I took a Ford Foundation Post-Doc Fellowship at Yale. The Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders kindly offered me a home, where I worked under the guidance of Ned Blackhawk as I began revising the dissertation into this book. His engagement with my project at this time helped prepare it for publication in the Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity, something for which I am greatly appreciative. While at Yale, I benefitted from participation in the Yale Group for the Study of Native America and from involvement with the Native American Cultural Center, then under the supervision of Ted Van Alst. Being back at Yale long after my undergraduate years was an invigorating experience, especially as I got to be a part of the increasingly supportive place it has become for Native students and scholars.
Yale University Press has been delightful to work with on my first book. Editorial Director Chris Rogers took an interest in this project years ago, and his advice and careful reading have improved the book through every stage of the process. Erica Hanson patiently provided assistance with the images and interfacing with the press on various issues. I must also thank the two readers, David Igler and Colin Calloway, for their careful insights on an earlier version of this manuscript. They pushed me to clarify my thinking and fine-tune my arguments for the final version. Thanks are also due to Bill Nelson for his prompt attention to my various map requests and to Laura Jones Dooley for her careful copyedits. I cannot imagine finding a better home than Yale University Press for this book.
I have benefitted from the support and hospitality of friends outside the academic world. Many have maintained a constant interest in the project, asking good questions that have encouraged me to avoid convoluted explanations when something more straightforward makes better sense. For years they have been telling me that they are looking forward to “the book.”
I reserve my closing acknowledgments for my family. My grandfather, Marvin Dailey, first introduced me to the ocean and the notion that it is a site rich with history. Stories of his grandmother, smoking a corn-cob pipe as she paddled her canoe through local waters, fired my young imagination as we sat around driftwood campfires on the Pacific coast. My parents, Gary and Virginia Reid, also sparked my connection to the sea by taking my sister Lisa and me on our first backpacking trip to Ozette, a former Makah village and archaeological site just south of Cape Flattery. Lisa and her family have offered welcome support and distractions, reminding me that there is more than just my narrow academic world. Last, I would like to thank my wife, Maya Reid. I have truly appreciated her patience as I relocated us from Seattle to Davis, then back to Seattle, and now to Boston—I know that the peripatetic life of the academic can be challenging. She has been a constant companion, whether exploring the wine country of northern California, jazz scene of Seattle, state parks in Vermont, the ghosts of old London, or winding roads of the Olympic Peninsula. I dedicate this book to my family.