California Indian

News from Native California
Spring 2010 issue

Published by Heyday, News from Native California is a unique quarterly magazine devoted to the Indian people of California. Written and produced by California Indians and those close to the community, News provides an intimate portrait of traditional and contemporary...

Blue Jay Girl
Sylvia Ross

On the rim of a great valley, where the hills turn into mountains, lives Blue Jay Girl, a Yaudanchi child who goes where she wants to go and does what she wants to do. While the other girls are learning...

O, My Ancestor: Recognition and Renewal for the Gabrielino–Tongva People of the Los Angeles Area
Claudia Jurmain and William McCawley; Foreword by Kevin Starr

In O, My Ancestor, members of the Los Angeles area's Gabrielino-Tongva community reflect on what it means to be Gabrielino-Tongva today, when centuries of domination by the Spanish and then Americans have left little of the native culture intact. This...

Medicine Trails: A Life in Many Worlds
Mavis McCovey and John F. Salter

Sometime in 1933, in Northern California's lush Humboldt County, a Karuk medicine woman named Daisy Jones had a vision identifying the tribe's next medicine woman. Later that year, Mavis Smither (McCovey) was born, and in the first twelve years of...

Legends of the Yosemite Miwok
Compiled by Frank La Pena, Craig D. Bates, and Steven P. Medley;
Illustrated by Harry Fonseca

Read about the greed of His'-sik the Skunk, about how Ah-hā'-le the coyote created humans, and about the quarreling couple who became Half Dome and North Dome. For centuries these stories have instructed and entertained the Indians of Yosemite. Presented...

Two Bear Cubs: A Miwok Legend from California's Yosemite Valley
Retold by Robert D. San Souci; Illustrated by Daniel San Souci

This enormously popular children's book is a delightful retelling of the Southern Sierra Miwok legend of the mountain El Capitan and how it came to be. Mother Grizzly Bear thinks that her two playful cubs are wrestling and having fun...

Indian Life of the Yosemite Region: Miwok Material Culture
S. A. Barrett and E. W. Gifford

This book is an authoritative source for anyone interested in the history and heritage of the Yosemite Miwok. It is a classic study of Miwok tribe culture written by two anthropologists and covering topics such as shelter, food, art, and...

Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider: A California Indian Feast
Margaret Dubin and Sara-Larus Tolley; Foreword by Kathleen Rose Smith

Starting with fish and then moving on through shellfish, meat, vegetables, fruits, flowers, nuts, seeds, and acorns, Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider is a tour of the most authentically "local" food there is: Native American cuisine, in this case from...

The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs, and Reminiscences
Edited with Commentary by Malcolm Margolin

Presenting a new and revised edition of this well-loved and popular classic. The Way We Lived is a rich and varied collection of stories, love songs, chants, and more from native people around the state. Sometimes poignant, often humorous, and...

To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman
Lucy Thompson (Che-na-wah Weitch-ah-wah); Foreword by Peter Palmquist; Introduction by Julian Lang

Lucy Thompson is, even today, one of the few Native American women to have written a book about her people. When she published To the American Indian in 1916, the world of the Yurok Indians of northern California seemed on...

Straight with the Medicine: Narratives of Washoe Followers of the Tipi Way
Warren L. d'Azevedo

Twenty years after its initial publication, Heyday Books is proud to re-release Straight with the Medicine with eleven new chapters that add more depth to the original. The narratives here were collected in the 1950s from seven members of the...

Spring Salmon, Hurry to Me!: The Seasons of Native California
Edited by Margaret Dubin and Kim Hogeland

Spring Salmon, Hurry to Me! offers a literary calendar at once ancient and yet in some ways more relevant than the markers of time we are accustomed to. Combining old-time stories and sacred myths with contemporary poems and short stories,...

The Smokehouse Boys
Shaunna Oteka McCovey


Love begins upriver, at Katamiin, the Karuk center of the world. Here creation was danced into existence; here "the might of a bulldozer does not equal the will of ten thousand years." Shaunna Oteka McCovey is a river guide to...

Remember Your Relations: The Elsie Allen Baskets, Family & Friends
Suzanne Abel-Vidor, Dot Brovarney, and Susan Billy

The Pomo Indians of Northern California are widely considered to be among the world's most skilled weavers, and no finer collection of their baskets exists than that created by Elsie Allen and her mother, Annie Burke. Basketweavers themselves, these women...

Panamint Shoshone Basketry:
 An American Art Form
Eva Slater

The Panamint, or the Koso, numbered only two or three hundred and lived in California's Death Valley through the early history of the state. Panamint Shoshone Basketry is the product of years of Slater's research on an art largely ignored...

Our People, Our Land, Our Images: International Indigenous Photography
Edited by Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie and Veronica Passalacqua

Whether probing personal identity or exploring the world around them, twenty-six indigenous photographers present images that are fresh, provocative, iconoclastic, surprising, and—in the broadest and deepest meaning of the word—authentic. Their works range from the artful studio portraits of Benjamin...

The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area
Malcolm Margolin; Illustrations by Michael Harney

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...

Native Ways: California Indian Stories and Memories
Malcolm Margolin and Yolanda Montijo

California Indians vividly describe various aspects of traditional and contemporary Indian life, in a clear, easy-to-read style. With eighty photographs, index, map of Native California, and listing of California Indian resources. Native Ways has been approved by the California Department...

The Morning the Sun Went Down
Darryl Babe Wilson

Born into the Achumawi and Atusgewi tribes (often called the Pit River Nation) of northeastern California, Darryl Babe Wilson's early years were spent with his parents and eight brothers and sisters, in a world still rich in Indian tradition, feeling,...

The Maidu Indian Myths and Stories of Hanc'ibyjim
Edited and Translated by William Shipley; 
Foreword by Gary Snyder

A stunning combination of master storytelling and deft translation produced this world-class collection of Maidu myths, with a forward by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder. Published in conjunction with Rick Heide...

Lion Singer
Written and Illustrated by Sylvia Ross

There was once a time when there was no metal in the Chukchansi people's world... So begins this story set in the old days—before there were cars or television sets, in a time when much of California was covered in...

Life on the River: The Archaeology of an Ancient Native American Culture
William R. Hildebrandt and Michael J. Darcangelo

In this detailed account of an archaeological dig along the banks of the Upper Sacramento River in Northern California, we gain unforgettable glimpses into the village life of a Wintu tribe 175 years ago, including signs of their often contentious...

Life in a California Mission: Monterey in 1786
Jean François de la Pérouse; Introduction and Commentary by Malcolm Margolin; Illustrations by Linda Yamane

On the afternoon of September 14, 1786, two French ships appeared off the coast of Monterey, the first foreign vessels to visit Spain's California colonies. Aboard was a party of eminent scientists, navigators, cartographers, illustrators, and physicians. For the next...

Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History
Joaquin Miller; Introduction by Malcolm Margolin; Afterword by Alan Rosenus

Although Joaquin Miller is widely viewed as one of the "founding fathers" of the literature of the west, this new edition of his classic work proves him to be a writer of considerable power and appeal, with something fresh and...

It Will Live Forever: Traditional Yosemite Acorn Preparation
Beverly R. Ortiz, as told by Julia F. Parker; Photographs by Raye Santos

For centuries, the Yosemite Indians have been gathering acorns, drying and storing them, and pounding, winnowing, sifting, leaching, and cooking them in a highly evolved, elegant, and skillful process. It Will Live Forever looks at Julia Parker, a Kashaya Pomo...

Indian Tales
Jaime de Angulo; Introduction by Darryl Babe Wilson

Jaime de Angulo was a man of legendary vices and pure brilliance. He was a linguist of California Indian languages and is still vividly remembered and talked about fifty years after his death, as much a myth as a scholar...

Indian Summer: Traditional Life among the Choinumne Indians of California's San Joaquin Valley
Thomas Jefferson Mayfield;
 Introduction by Malcolm Margolin

With accuracy, zest, and insight, Indian Summer portrays the nearly lost and unspeakably beautiful world of the Choinumne Yokuts and the valley in which they lived....

How to Keep Your Language Alive: A Guide to One-on-One Language Learning
Leanne Hinton with Matt Vera and Nancy Steele

Amid worldwide accounts of dying languages, author Leanne Hinton and a group of dedicated language activists are doing something about it: they have created a master-apprentice language program, a one-on-one approach that has been remarkably successful in ensuring new speakers...

Grass Games and Moon Races: California Indian Games and Toys
Jeannine Gendar

Dozens of traditional games are described through personal accounts, anecdotes, photographs, and drawings....

Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages
Leanne Hinton

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...

First Families: A Photographic History of California Indians
L. Frank and Kim Hogeland

When L. Frank and Marina Drummer went on the road in 2002, they set out to visit as many people from different California tribes as possible. Crisscrossing the state, they taped hundreds of hours of interviews and collected copies of...

The Fine Art of California Indian Basketry
Edited by Brian Bibby

California Indian baskets are considered by many to be among the world's most beautiful, sophisticated, and cherished art objects. This full-color book brings together 62 of the finest baskets ever created, each carefully chosen for their aesthetic value from museums...

Fast Cars and Frybread: 
Reports from the Rez
Gordon Johnson

These essays are about fiestas with frybread and beans, storytelling, dancing, snow cones, dogfights, and sometimes human fights. They are about sweat lodges and funerals and the dangers of "commod bod" (obesity caused by eating government surplus food). They are...

Dream Songs and Ceremony: Reflections on Traditional California Indian Dance
Frank LaPena

This collection of paintings by acclaimed artist Frank LaPena draws upon the symbols of California Indian dances—sacred events that cannot be photographed or videotaped. Himself a Nomtipom Wintu dancer, singer, and ceremonial leader, LaPena complements his vibrant paintings with an...

The Dirt is Red Here: Art and Poetry from Native California
Edited by Margaret Dubin

"Grandma slammed the bottle down on the table, and it burst into a wind of green shards caught in candlelight" The Dirt is Red Here brings together works by many of today's finest artists and poets of California's Indian communities....

Deeper Than Gold: A Guide to Indian Life in the Sierra Foothills
Brian Bibby; Photographs by Dugan Aguilar

Brian Bibby brings together the present and the past—both ancient and recent—in a fascinating compilation of anecdote, myth, recollection, and reflection. Five years in the making and the result of almost thirty years of dedicated work among California's native communities,...

Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California
Jan Timbrook, with botanical watercolors by Chris Chapman

The Chumash people have lived in coastal California from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara for thousands of years. Their homeland is an area of uncommon biological richness and diversity, featuring over 1,500 species of plants. Their traditional foods, medicine,...

Chief Marin:
 Leader, Rebel, and Legend
Betty Goerke

It's a little known fact that the San Francisco Bay Area's Marin County is named after a Coast Miwok chief who achieved notoriety for defying Spanish authority over his people. Anthropologist and archaeologist Betty Goerke has pieced together a portrait...

Adopted by Indians: A True Story
Thomas Jefferson Mayfield; Edited by Malcolm Margolin; Illustrations by Hilair Chism and Rick Jones

The children's version of our best-selling title Indian Summer, this book gives younger readers a close-up view of traditional California Indian life and early California. Thomas Jefferson Mayfield kept a wonderful secret for almost sixty years; the secret of his...