A look at what Native American life was like in the Bay Area before the arrival of Europeans. Two hundred years ago, herds of elk and antelope dotted the hills of the San Francisco–Monterey Bay area. Grizzly bears lumbered down to the creeks to fish for silver salmon and steelhead trout. From vast marshlands geese, ducks, and other birds rose in thick clouds “with a sound like that of a hurricane.” This land of “inexpressible fertility,” as one early explorer described it, supported one of the densest Indian populations in all of North America. One of the most ground-breaking and highly-acclaimed titles that Heyday has published, The Ohlone Way describes the culture of the Indian people who inhabited Bay Area prior to the arrival of Europeans. Recently included in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Top 100 Western Non-Fiction list, The Ohlone Way has been described by critic Pat Holt as a “mini-classic.” Praise for The Ohlone Way “[Margolin] has written thoroughly and sensitively of the Pre-Mission Indians in a North American land of plenty. Excellent, well-written.” —American Anthropologist “One of three books that brought me the most joy over the past year.” —Alice Walker “Margolin conveys the texture of daily life, birth, marriage, death, war, the arts, and rituals, and he also discusses the brief history of the Ohlones under the Spanish, Mexican, and American regimes . . . Margolin does not give way to romanticism or political harangues, and the illustrations have a gritty quality that is preferable to the dreamy, pretty pictures that too often accompany texts like this.” —Choice “Remarkable insight in to the lives of the Ohlone Indians.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A beautiful book, written and illustrated with a genuine sympathy . . . A serious and compelling re-creation.” —The Pacific Sun

Narratives of Persistence charts the remarkable persistence of California's Ohlone and Paipai people over the past five centuries. Lee M. Panich draws connections between the events and processes of the deeper past and the way the Ohlone and Paipai today understand their own histories and identities.

Describes the culture, government, arts, and religion of the Ohlone people of the central California coastal region, through over one thousand years of their history.

A collection of reminiscences, stories, and songs that reflect the diversity of the people native to California.

“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.

Fifty years of deep hanging out in California's Indian country Writer and publisher Malcolm Margolin has been "deep hanging out"--or immersing himself in a social, informal way--in California's Indian country since the 1970s. This volume collects thirty articles, introductions, and other pieces he wrote about California's diverse Indian country (well over one hundred tribes), drawn mainly from the quarterly magazine he cofounded in 1987, News from Native California. He shares with his readers the experiences, knowledge, and cultural renewal that California Indians have generously shared with him, often after years of friendship, from the erection of a ceremonial enclosure in Northern California--built to fall apart within a generation so that the knowledge of how to construct one is always current--to a visit by aboriginal Hawaiians in diplomatic recognition of native Southern Californian tribes. He draws on both archives and interviews with elders in longer reports about leadership traditions, pedagogical techniques, and conservation practices in various parts of the state--fascinating glimpses into worldviews very different from those of contemporary America. Filled with insight and affection, as well as some of the most gorgeous writing, Deep Hanging Out will appeal both to newcomers and to those whose roots and hearts reside in the state's Indian country.

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

California Archaeology provides a compilation of knowledge for archeologists who are not California specialists. This book explains important cultural events and patterns discovered archeologically. Organized into 11 chapters, this book begins with an overview of California's historic and ancient environments as well as the evidence of Pleistocene human activity. This text then examines the glacial and other environmental conditions that would have influenced the origins, adaptations, and spread of the earliest North Americans. Other chapters consider how California's past is relevant to a wider understanding of human behavior. This book discusses as well the perceptions of Central Coast and San Francisco Bay region prehistory that have changed rapidly as a result of intensive fieldwork performed to comply with environmental law. The final chapter deals with the data of historical linguistics, which indicate something of the cultural relationships and events that might have occurred in the past. This book is a valuable resource for archeologists.

Describes patterns of village life, and covers such subjects as Indian tools and artifacts, hunting techniques, and food.--From publisher description.