From the award-winning author of Children of the Dustbowl comes a sobering look at two of the most frequently romanticized events in American history. For the native peoples of California, the period from 1769, when the first Spanish Mission was founded, to the 1850s, when the Gold Rush was at its height, was one of terrible violence and destruction. First, Spanish priests and soldiers sought to convert the Indians to Christianity and a civilized way of life. Yet for the Indians the story of the missions was one of hunger, disease, rebellion, and death. Then, during the Gold Rush, Indians were frequently kidnapped, murdered, and sold into slavery by white settlers. By the end of the nineteenth century, the surviving California Indians had been forced onto reservations and their way of life had been largely destroyed. With maps, a timeline, and glossaries on California's Indian tribes and mission history, Jerry Stanley tells the story of modern California from the poignant perspective of the Native American.

Now in paperback and newly expanded, this gripping memoir is hailed as essential by the likes of Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, and ELLE magazine. Bad Indians--part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir--is essential reading for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Widely adopted in classrooms and book clubs throughout the United States, Bad Indians--now reissued in significantly expanded form for its 10th anniversary--plumbs ancestry, survivance, and the cultural memory of Native California. In this best-selling, now-classic memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen family and the experiences of California Indians more widely through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. This anniversary edition includes several new poems and essays, as well as an extensive afterword, totaling more than fifty pages of new material. Wise, indignant, and playful all at once, Bad Indians is a beautiful and devastating read, and an indispensable book for anyone seeking a more just telling of American history.

Originally published in 1952 and then reprinted in 1982, "Indian Life at the Old Missions" is filled with detailed photographs and fine line-drawings of the Native Americans who founded California, yet were destined to be forgotten, as settlers took over their land.

This copious collection of reminiscences, reports, letters, and documents allows readers to experience the vast and varied landscape of early California from the viewpoint of its inhabitants. What emerges is not the Spanish California depicted by casual visitors—a culture obsessed with finery, horses, and fandangos—but an ever-shifting world of aspiration and tragedy, pride and loss. Conflicts between missionaries and soldiers, Indians and settlers, friends and neighbors spill from these pages, bringing the ferment of daily life into sharp focus.

A Cross of Thorns reexamines a chapter of California history that has been largely forgotten -- the enslavement of California's Indian population by Spanish missionaries from 1769 to 1821. California's Spanish missions are one of the state's major tourist attractions, where visitors are told that peaceful cultural exchange occurred between Franciscan friars and California Indians.