Research Catalog

Title

Death stalks the Yakama : epidemiological transitions and mortality on the Yakama Indian Reservation, 1888-1964 / Clifford E. Trafzer.

Author

Trafzer, Clifford E.

Publication

East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, c1997.

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Details

Description

xiii, 278 p. : ill.; 23 cm.

Summary

• Clifford Trafzer's disturbing new work, Death Stalks the Yakama, examines life, death, and the shockingly high mortality rates that have persisted among the fourteen tribes and bands living on the Yakama Reservation in the state of Washington. The work contains a valuable discussion of Indian beliefs about spirits, traditional causes of death, mourning ceremonies, and memorials. More significant, however, is Trafzer's research in heretofore unused parturition and death records from 1888-1964. In these documents, he discovers critical evidence to demonstrate how and why so many reservation people died in "epidemics" of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and heart disease.
• Death Stalks the Yakama takes into account many variables, including age, gender, listed causes of death, residence, and blood quantum. In addition, analyses of fetal and infant mortality rates, as well as crude death rates arising from tuberculosis, pneumonia, heart disease, accidents, and other causes are presented. Trafzer argues that Native Americans living on the Yakama Reservation were, in fact, in jeopardy as a result of the "reservation system" itself. Not only did this alien and artificial culture radically alter traditional ways of life, but sanitation methods, housing, hospitals, public health, education, medicine, and medical personnel affiliated with the reservation system all proved inadequate, and each in its own way contributed significantly to high Yakama death rates.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books.

Subject

• Epidemiologic Studies
• Mortality
• Indians, North American
• Yakama Indians > Mortality > Statistics
• Yakama children > Mortality > Statistics
• Yakama children > Diseases > Statistics
• Yakama children > Nutrition > Statistics
• Epidemics > Yakama Indian Reservation > Statistics
• Indians, North American > Yakama Indian Reservation (Wash.)
• Mortality > Yakama Indian Reservation (Wash.)
• Epidemiologic Studies > Yakama Indian Reservation (Wash.)
• Yakama Indian Reservation (Wash.)
• Washington
• Yakama Indian Reservation (Wash.) > Statistics, Medical
• Yakama Indian Reservation (Wash.) > Statistics, Vital

Genre/Form

• Statistics
• Medical statistics
• Vital statistics

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

pt. 1. Introduction -- pt. 2. The Yakama -- pt. 3. Yakama Death Certificates: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations -- pt. 4. Comparison of Yakama Death Rates with Other Populations -- pt. 5. Conclusion.

ISBN

0870134639

LCCN

^^^96052172^

OCLC

• 36178544
• SCSB-10857194

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library