11 Facts About Victoria Howard

Victoria Howard was a Molala, Clackamas, and Tualatin citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon.

Victoria Howard Wishikin was born circa 1865 on the Grand Ronde Reservation in northwest Oregon, only a decade after the reservation was founded.

Victoria Howard was evidence of this, being the daughter of Sarah Quiaquaty Wishikin, herself a daughter of a Molalla tribe chief, and of William Wishikin, a Tualatin who died when his daughter was about ten.

Victoria Howard gained her knowledge of Clackamas language and culture partly from her maternal grandmother Wagayuhlen Quiaquaty, a Clackamas medical shaman at Grand Ronde with whom she lived after her father's death, and later from her first mother-in-law, Charlotte Wacheno.

In 1928, Victoria Howard was approached by Melville Jacobs, a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington state, keen to document the endangered indigenous languages and oral literature of the area.

Jacobs had wanted to document the Molalla language, but as Victoria Howard was more fluent in Clackamas and spoke English too, Jacobs spent a year with Victoria Howard transcribing the Clackamas vocabulary, songs, myths, folktales, and traditional narratives that she dictated to him in the Clackamas language.

Victoria Howard made audio recordings of her extensive repertoire of Indigenous songs.

Victoria Howard Wishikin married Marc Dan Wacheno, a son of a Clackamas tribal chief at Grand Ronde, at about fifteen.

Victoria Howard had nine children with him, many of whom died before her as a result of the disease and poverty at Grand Ronde.

Victoria Howard died on September 26,1930, possibly as a result of a hit-and-run car accident while walking her grandchildren to church.

Victoria Howard left her husband Eustace, their daughter and two granddaughters.