author

T. T. (Thomas Talbot) Waterman

1885–1936

Best remembered for helping bring Ishi to the University of California’s Museum of Anthropology, this early American anthropologist wrote vividly about Indigenous communities in California and beyond. His work helped preserve language, geography, and cultural knowledge that might otherwise have been lost.

1 Audiobook

Types of canoes on Puget Sound

Types of canoes on Puget Sound

by Geraldine Coffin, T. T. (Thomas Talbot) Waterman

About the author

Born in Hamilton, Missouri, in 1885 and raised in California, he became an American anthropologist whose fieldwork focused on Indigenous peoples of North and Central America, especially in Northern California. Sources agree that he is most often associated with Ishi, the Yahi man he helped bring to the University of California’s Museum of Anthropology in 1911.

Waterman studied at the University of California, graduating in 1907, and later taught anthropology as well as carrying out extensive research. Records from library and museum sources point to a career shaped by close attention to language, place, and oral tradition, with notable work on Yurok geography and other Native Californian subjects.

He died in Honolulu in 1936. Although he is not a widely known public figure today, his writing remains important to readers interested in early anthropology, Native Californian history, and the complicated historical record surrounding Ishi and the academic world that documented him.