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Indian Tales

Jaime de Angulo, Introduction by Darryl Babe Wilson

Trade paper, 256 pages, (5.5 x 8.25), with b&w illustrations
ISBN: 1-890771-66-x, $12.95

A California Legacy Book.

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 ffity years after his death, as much a myth as a scholar or writer. He lived among Indians, he drank with them, he could be found in their roundhouses and in their kitchens. No one had a better ear for the music of their language, for the nuances of their thoughts, for the sad, sweet poignancy and laughter of their lives.

Berkeley radio station KPFA invited Jaime de Angulo to broadcast a program of Indian songs and stories. Each week he unfolded the magic that came to be known as Indian Tales—some of them transcribed directly from native sources, some totally invented, all authentic in tone. Angulo’s Indian Tales is musical, quirky, funny, and entirely moving.

These captivating stories recount the journey of Bear, his wife Antelope, and their son Fox as they set out to visit relatives on the coast. "Good ethnography buried in…stories," Andrew Schelling calls it.

Indian Tales is a literary masterpiece that transcends bounds: appealing to both adults and children, it combines fact and fiction, literature and anthropology.

We are pleased to reissue this classic under our California Legacy series, with an introduction by Darryl Babe Wilson, a member of the Achumawe and Atsugewi tribes of Northern California and author of The Morning the Sun Went Down and Surviving in Two Worlds.

Reviews:

"Indian Tales has enchanted me. It brings to mind The Wind in the Willows, although it is more often frankly funny than that masterpiece. It is a book that causes the reader to laugh aloud or exclaim his delight….I imagine children will love the result; I am quite sure that adults will delight in it."—Oliver La Farge, New York Times, March 22, 1953

Author Biography:

Jaime de Angulo (1887-1950) was a cowboy, rancher, ethnographer, trained medical doctor, psychologist, renowned linguist, and novelist. Besides Indian Tales, his books include Indians in Overalls, The Lariat, Don Bartolomeo, Coyote Man and Old Doctor Loon, How the World Was Made, and Coyote’s Bones.