Biographical Information
Source: Oregon Historical Society
Tsin-is-tum was a Clatsop Indian woman known to Euroanericans as Jennie Michel. Ms. Michelle was married to the last chief of the Nehalem Indians, Wah-tat-kum. After his death she then married Michel or Marshel Martineau ‘Old Mashell’, who was of both French and Cascades Indian heritage. She lived in the Seaside/Astoria area, and is buried in Seaside. She was a member of the Clatsop Tribe. Ms. Michelle's mother was present at the time that Lewis and Clark came to the Clatsop area, and also passed down to Jennie the stories of the men making salt. Ms. Michelle was present when the Hudson Bay Company bombarded her village, launched because the chief factor of Fort Vancouver, John McLoughlin mistakenly believed the Clatsop had killed a British ship’s crew in order to plunder its cargo.
She claimed to be about 100 years in the early 1900s, though she was probably born sometime in the 1810s or early 1820s. Tsin-is-tum was a popular figure among tourists in Seaside around the turn of the century. She was known for her storytelling and her basketwork. A 1905 obituary noted that “it is doubtful if any person, man or woman in the State of Oregon has been photographed so frequently.”
Ms. Michelle's life spanned the most traumatic period in the history of the Clatsop people. When Tsin-is-tum died in March 1905, she was called the “last of the Clatsops.” Although the descendents of individual Clatsops survived, the Clatsop did not persist as a distinct and separate group into the twentieth century.
