author
T. T. (Thomas Talbot) Waterman
1885–1936
An early American anthropologist with a gift for fieldwork, he is best remembered for documenting Indigenous communities of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest at a formative moment in the history of anthropology.
1 Audiobook
Types of canoes on Puget Sound
by T. T. (Thomas Talbot) Waterman, Geraldine Coffin
About the author
Born in Hamilton, Missouri, in 1885 and raised in California, Thomas Talbot Waterman studied at the University of California, Berkeley and later completed a Ph.D. in anthropology at Columbia University. His work focused on Indigenous peoples in North and Central America, especially in Northern California.
He became widely known for his connection to Ishi, whom he helped bring to the University of California's Museum of Anthropology. Waterman also carried out important research on Native languages, oral traditions, and material culture, and his fieldwork in places such as California, Washington, and Alaska left a lasting record for later scholars.
Contemporaries remembered him as a vivid and influential teacher as well as a serious researcher. He died in Honolulu in 1936, at just 50 years old, but his writings and collections remain part of the historical record of American anthropology.