Annie Miner Peterson

Who was Annie Miner Peterson?

Annie Miner Peterson was a Coos Indian from the U.S. state of Oregon who was a cultural and linguistic consultant to Melville Jacobs, an anthropologist at the University of Washington. In 1933 while searching for a suitable consultant in the Hanis Coos language from among the eight or ten elderly Coos Indians who were still fluent at that time, Jacobs discovered that Peterson was fluent not only in Hanis, but also in Miluk Coos, a Penutian language thought to have been extinct for at least fifteen years. Through the summers of 1933 and 1934, Jacobs interviewed Peterson in those two languages, collecting 32 Coos myth texts in Miluk, eight in Hanis, and two in both Hanis and Miluk for comparison of the two languages. Wax-cylinder phonograph recordings were also taken of the myths and songs during both years. In addition, Jacobs collected from Peterson a large number of narrative and ethnologic texts in Miluk, a smaller number in Hanis, and eight texts in both Hanis and Miluk. The narrative and ethnologic texts were published in 1939; the myth texts in 1940.