This classic of American Indian ethnography, originally published in 1877, is again available in its complete form. In the summers of 1871 and 1872 Powers visited Indian groups in the northern two-thirds of California. A journalist by profession, he was untrained in ethnography, but was nonetheless an astonishingly intelligent observer who had a gift for writing in a spirited manner. He reported faithfully what he heard and portrayed accurately what he saw among the native survivors of Gold Rush days in a series of seventeen articles published mostly in The Overland Monthly. These were partly unwritten, added to, and reorganized by Powers to be published in 1877 as a report of the U.S. Geographical Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. Powers’ book is still basic and is referred to by everyone who deals with native cultures. The 1877 edition was not large, and Tribes of California is at last reprinted in response to growing demand for this rare volume. For this edition all of the original illustrations have been retained and the basic text printed in facsimile. Professor Robert F. Heizer has provided annotations throughout and an introduction to indicate contemporary thought about the volume.

This classic of American Indian ethnography, originally published in 1877, is again available in its complete form. In the summers of 1871 and 1872 Powers visited Indian groups in the northern two-thirds of California. A journalist by profession, he was untrained in ethnography, but was nonetheless an astonishingly intelligent observer who had a gift for writing in a spirited manner. He reported faithfully what he heard and portrayed accurately what he saw among the native survivors of Gold Rush days in a series of seventeen articles published mostly in The Overland Monthly. These were partly unwritten, added to, and reorganized by Powers to be published in 1877 as a report of the U.S. Geographical Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. Powers’ book is still basic and is referred to by everyone who deals with native cultures. The 1877 edition was not large, and Tribes of California is at last reprinted in response to growing demand for this rare volume. For this edition all of the original illustrations have been retained and the basic text printed in facsimile. Professor Robert F. Heizer has provided annotations throughout and an introduction to indicate contemporary thought about the volume.

A major ethnographic work by a distinguished anthropologist contains detailed information on the social structures, homes, foods, crafts, religious beliefs, and folkways of California's diverse tribes

Before outsiders arrived, about 100 distinct Indian languages were spoken in California, many of them alive today. Each of these languages represents a unique way of understanding the world and expressing that understanding. Flutes of Fire examines many different aspects of Indian languages: languages, such as Yana, in which men and women have markedly different ways of speaking; ingenious ways used in each language for counting. Hinton discusses how language can retain evidence of ancient migrations, and addresses what different groups are doing to keep languages alive and pass them down to the younger generations.

“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White’s California Exposures.”—Kirkus Reviews Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous. Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.

Provides an overview of the daily lives of California's native peoples, profiling their arrival in the area, survival in harsh times, relationships with the environment, rituals, customs, and beliefs.