Some books encourage and reward thumbing back and forth between the text and endnotes. Chehalis Stories is such a book. It is a rich storehouse of stories and commentaries that collectively constitute a “reconciliation of fragments” (ix) of the stories told by the Chehalis people of the State of Washington. The editor, Jolynn Amrine Goertz, views her work as gathering and contextualizing these stories by showing the engagement of anthropologists, notably Franz Boas and his students Thelma Adamson and Melville Jacobs, with Chehalis storytellers of the past and present. Her hope is to make these stories, which had been lost, lingering in archives, available again to the Chehalis people.

Pages 33 through 194 are filled primarily with long stories of transformation told by Jonas Secena, which detail Moon’s exploits: “I am Moon. I am always travelling. I am setting right the world” (61). In a second story, Secena says “It...

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