First Families
A Photographic History of California Indians
L Frank and Kim Hogeland
The authors reached out to California Indian communities to arrange meetings centered around family photo albums and then spent over six months crisscrossing the state and listening to stories. The meetings produced a stunning and poignant collection of photos of mining sites, logging camps, rodeos, and women riveting during World War II. There is a fire captain, a phone company supervisor, and advocates for federal recognition in Washington D.C. There is the construction of a roundhouse, a library presentation, a celebration of Mexican Independence Day, and events at the Barona Cultural Center. The text provides historical background, such as about Toypurina, disenrollment, the Mexican period, recognition, the Gold Rush and the ghost dance, but the book is firmly grounded in stories of families and individuals. Reading it feels as if you are sitting beside someone in a living room while they talk about their family’s journey through life.
The Chumash and the Presidio of Santa Barbara: Evolution of a Relationship, 1782-1823
Marie Christine Duggan, Ph.D.
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This book provides a peek under the hood at a California mission in the decades leading up to Mexico's independence from Spain, revealing tensions and dynamics among the Native residents, Church authorities, and soldiers at the presidios.
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1500 California Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning
William Bright
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If you have ever wondered how Azusa or La Tijera got their names, then this book is for you. You will learn about Antelope Valley, Beverly Hills, Daly City, Castaic, the Golden Gate, Los Angeles, Ojai, Pasadena, Tijuana, Temescal Canyon, and countless others. The book is compact and easy to digest, perfect for reading a page at a time. It provides valuable insight into the state's history, dispelling many common myths and misconceptions about how particular places were named, and offers many illuminating surprises.
The Chumash World at European Contact
Lynn H. Gamble
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This book details various aspects of society within the Chumashian cultural sphere of California in 1769, the year King Charles III initiated Spanish colonization to thwart the expansion of the Russian fur trade along the Sonoma Coast north of San Francisco Bay. The author explores daily and household life in the towns, leadership structures, politics, social class distinctions, gender issues, warfare, and the economy, conveying the essence of life during the era.
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Flutes of Fire
Essays on California Indian Languages
Leanne Hinton
In Flutes of Fire, Leanne Hinton cites to examples of how Wintu speakers think differently from English speakers. Instead of saying, “I live with my sister,” a Wintu speaker would say, “I am sistered.” Rather than, “I took the baby,” a Wintu person would say, “I went with the baby.” In Wintu, speakers conceive of their bodies and the clothes holistically, and so rather than say, “Her dress is striped,” one would say, “She is dress striped.” Rather than, “My head aches,” one would say, “I head ache.” While English has the concepts of singular and plural, the Wintu default is unified categories of beings. In Wintu, a speaker would have to specifically point to an individual member of a category. So, while a person raised speaking English sees a painting of a deer, the Wintu painter represents “deerness.”
Flight: A Novel
Sherman Alexie
Michael, also known as Zits, is a troubled teen with violent fantasies who contemplates applying "justice" with firearms to commit a bank robbery and a mass shooting. He receives divine intervention, however, in the form of a flight through time and across different personalities, which helps him better understand himself and his circumstances.
Crystals in the Sky: An Intellectual Odyssey
Involving Chumash Astronomy, Cosmology and Rock Art
In this book, Chumash elites observe celestial objects moving through the sky and conclude that they are intelligent beings. These objects are believed to influence earthly events such as wind, rain, and climate. The elites use their wits, knowledge, experience, and skills to interpret the roles of the sun, moon, stars, and planets as divine actors. Maintaining good relations with powerful sky entities and inhabitants of other realms is considered essential for a happy life. A secret society of intelligentsia works to maintain these relations through proper rituals, ceremonies, prayers, offerings, and devices such as a striped disc designed to align with the sun’s angles at sunrise and sunset during solstices.
Rock Paintings of the Chumash
Campbell Grant
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When the author was growing up in Berkeley at the turn of the twentieth century, one of his heroes was his uncle, a marine painter. Inspired, Grant attended what would become the California College of the Arts on a scholarship after high school. He then continued his education at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts, also on a scholarship, where he co-illustrated a children’s book about the Chumash with Channing Peake, not knowing that three decades later he would devote serious effort to Chumash paintings.
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December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives
Thomas C. Blackburn, Editor
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This is a collection of Chumash stories, varying from long and complicated to quite short. The book also includes relevant background on Chumash family life, culture, languages, cosmology, gender roles, and political life, supplemented with photos of those responsible for the source material, such as John Harrington, Fernando Librado, and María Solares, among others.
While many in California are acquainted with mythical figures from afar—such as Morpheus, Nike, Hercules, Calypso, the Sirens, Mercury, Nemesis, and Pan—this volume introduces readers to local personalities who merit equal recognition: Momoy, the Elyewun, the nunashish, the ksen, Slo’w, Qaq, Shnilemun, and more. The volume provides interesting tables of material culture and social roles derived from the stories, and Blackburn provides his own insights into the underlying meanings of the stories included.
Chumash Ethnobotany
Jan Timbrook
This book lists plants by their Chumash, Latin, English, and Spanish names and discusses their roles in daily life. It features dozens of illustrations, a map of Chumash and neighboring areas, and a detailed description of the local environment, with a focus on flora. The author details the uses of plants for food, medicine, shelter, tools, utensils, clothing, and religious items. Moreover, the plants are explored not only in terms of their material culture but also for their roles in associated stories and philosophy. The primary source is John C. Harrington's notes from his work with Chumash people. Julie Tumamait-Stenslie and others reviewed the manuscript before publication, which includes charts detailing the plants and their parts. The author was the Curator of Ethnography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History at the time of publication.
Monterey in 1786: Life in a California Mission
The Journals of Jean François de La Pérouse
with an Introduction and Commentary by Malcolm Margolin
This book offers a firsthand account of life at a California mission, drawn from the journals of Jean François Galaup de La Pérouse. He led a goodwill expedition from France in the late 1700s, commissioned by the French king to explore new lands and assess European activities abroad. His visit to Monterey, California, marked the first time non-Spanish vessels visited Spanish California.
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